LADIES-IN-WAITING
Mrs. G. (patiently). “Just after my youngest child was—”
A nurse passes through the grove, bearing a sterilized tray with peptonized preparations on it.
Mrs. Y. (calling her). “Nurse! what’s the matter with the new man-patient on our floor?”
Nurse (discreetly). “I don’t know, Mrs. Y.”
Mrs. X. (as the nurse vanishes). “She does, but she’s a stiff thing! Anyway, I heard the attendants whispering about him in the corridor before breakfast. Something—I think it’s an organ—is floating about in him.”
All. “Floating? What kind of an organ? Horrors!”
Mrs. X. “I could n’t understand exactly. You know people always roar if they have nothing particular to say, but if it is interesting they whisper. I distinctly heard the word ‘floating.’ I don’t know whether it’s one of his regular organs, or something he swallowed accidentally.”
Mrs. C. (plaintively). “Doctors are never
298
