Ida's eyes--they looked preternaturally large, violet orbs in her white
face--beamed gratefully.
"Oh, yes, yes! if I may. Shall I be ill long?--how soon will it be
before I can go?"
It is about as difficult to get a definite answer from a nurse as from
a doctor.
"Oh, some days yet," replied the sister, cheerfully. "You must not go
until you are quite strong; in fact, we should not let you. Now you lie
quite still and try and sleep again if you can; and you can think over
whether you would like to communicate with your friends or not. If you
ask my advice, I shall say, like Mr. Punch, 'Don't!'"
"I won't," said Ida, with her rare smile.
The sister nodded and left her, and Ida closed her eyes again: but not
to sleep. She recalled her flight from Laburnum Villa, her wandering
through the streets, the crowded and noisy quay, and the strange
hallucination, the vision of Stafford standing on the stern of the
vessel. Of course, it was only a vision, an hallucination; but how real
it had seemed! So real that it was almost difficult to believe that it
was not he himself. She smiled sadly at the thought of Stafford, the
son of the great Sir Stephen Orme, sailing in a cattle-ship!
The hours passed in a kind of peaceful monotony, broken by the frequent
visits of Nurse Brown and the house surgeon, with his grave face and
preoccupied air; and for some time Ida lay in a kind of semi-torpor,
feeling that everything that was going on around her were the unreal
actions in a dream; but as she grew stronger she began to take an
interest in the life of the great ward and her fellow-patients; and on
the second day after her return to consciousness, began a conversation
with her next-door neighbour, a pleasant-looking woman who had eyed her
wistfully several times, but who had been too shy to address "the young
lady." She was a country woman from Dorsetshire--up to London on a
visit "to my daughter, miss, which is married to a man as keeps a
dairy." It was her first visit to London; she had wandered from her
daughter's lost her, and, in her confusion, tumbled down the cellar of
a beer-shop. She told Ida the history of some of the other cases, and
Ida found herself listening with an interest which astonished her.
Nurse Brown, seeing the two talking, nodded approvingly.
"That's right," she said, with a smile. "You keep each other company.
It passes the time away."