a beautiful truth, that interest in the children and sympathy with
their sorrows bind these young women to their places far more
strongly than any other consideration could. The best skilled of
the nurses came originally from a kindred neighbourhood, almost as
poor; and she knew how much the work was needed. She is a fair
dressmaker. The hospital cannot pay her as many pounds in the year
as there are months in it; and one day the lady regarded it as a
duty to speak to her about her improving her prospects and
following her trade. ‘No,’ she said: she could never be so useful
or so happy elsewhere any more; she must stay among the children.
And she stays. One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing a
baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak to her
charge, – a common, bullet-headed, frowning charge enough, laying
hold of his own nose with a slippery grasp, and staring very
solemnly out of a blanket. The melting of the pleasant face into
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delighted smiles, as this young gentleman gave an unexpected kick,
and laughed at me, was almost worth my previous pain.
An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called ‘The
Children’s Doctor.’ As I parted from my children’s doctor, now in
question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in his loose buttoned
black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of his dark
hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn of his moustache, the
exact realisation of the Paris artist’s ideal as it was presented
on the stage. But no romancer that I know of has had the boldness
to prefigure the life and home of this young husband and young wife
in the Children’s Hospital in the east of London.
I came away from Ratcliff by the Stepney railway station to the
terminus at Fenchurch Street. Any one who will reverse that route
may retrace my steps.
CHAPTER XXXIII – A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR
It fell out on a day in this last autumn, that I had to go down
from London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour’s business,
accompanied by my esteemed friend Bullfinch. Let the place of
seaside resort be, for the nonce, called Namelesston.
I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, pleasantly
breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the Palais Royal or
the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open air in the Elysian
Fields, pleasantly taking my cigar and lemonade in the open air on
the Italian Boulevard towards the small hours after midnight.
Bullfinch – an excellent man of business – has summoned me back
across the Channel, to transact this said hour’s business at
Namelesston; and thus it fell out that Bullfinch and I were in a
railway carriage together on our way to Namelesston, each with his
return-ticket in his waistcoat-pocket.
Says Bullfinch, ‘I have a proposal to make. Let us dine at the
Temeraire.’
I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire? inasmuch as I
had not been rated on the books of the Temeraire for many years.
Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recommending the
Temeraire, but on the whole was rather sanguine about it. He
‘seemed to remember,’ Bullfinch said, that he had dined well there.
A plain dinner, but good. Certainly not like a Parisian dinner
(here Bullfinch obviously became the prey of want of confidence),
but of its kind very fair.
I appeal to Bullfinch’s intimate knowledge of my wants and ways to
decide whether I was usually ready to be pleased with any dinner,
or – for the matter of that – with anything that was fair of its
kind and really what it claimed to be. Bullfinch doing me the
honour to respond in the affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as an
able trencherman on board the Temeraire.
‘Now, our plan shall be this,’ says Bullfinch, with his forefinger
at his nose. ‘As soon as we get to Namelesston, we’ll drive
straight to the Temeraire, and order a little dinner in an hour.
And as we shall not have more than enough time in which to dispose