Pelton thought—but hardly older than Mamie, it seemed.

That older woman was so good yesterday! Aunt Jane's look and cap came floating hazily to her; and she slipped a hand under her cheek and fell asleep, thinking of it.

The thin face on the pillow, with the hair drawn tightly back and braided in its two small braids, had somehow a heroic look. There were lines of suffering on the forehead, but the mouth had a touch of something like courage, even in its sleep—as if it would smile, when the next hard thing was over.

Aunt Jane, who had come in silently and stood looking down at it, called it "the woman look."

"They always have it," she sometimes said—"the real ones have it—kind of as if they knew things would come better—if just they could hold on—not give up, or make a fuss or anything—just hold on!"

The woman opened her eyes and smiled faintly. "I didn't know as you came to see us—in the rooms," she said.

Aunt Jane nodded. "Yes, I'm 'most everywhere."

She seated herself comfortably and looked about the room. "You've got a good day for your operation," she said. "It's a good, sunny day."

The woman's startled eyes sought her face. She had been living so alone in the hours of the night, that it seemed strange to her that any one should speak out loud of—"the operation."

Her lips half opened, to speak, and closed again.

Aunt Jane's glance rested on them and she smiled. "Dreading it?" she asked.

The lips moistened themselves and smiled back. "A little," said the woman.

Aunt Jane's face grew kinder and rounder and beamed on her; and the woman's eyes rested on it.

"You never had one, did you?" said Aunt Jane.

The woman shook her head.

"I thought likely not. Folks don't generally dread things that they've had—not so much as they do those they don't know anything about.... You won't dread it next time!" She said the words with a slow, encouraging smile.

The woman's face lighted. "I hope there won't be any next time," she replied softly.

"More than likely not. Dr. Carmon does his work pretty thorough." Aunt Jane made a little gesture of approval. "He does the best he knows how.... You won't mind it a bit, I guess—not half so much as you mind thinking about minding it."

"Do they carry me out?" asked the woman quickly. All the troubled lines of her face relaxed as she asked the question.

It was the look Aunt Jane had been waiting for. The blessedness of talking out was a therapeutic discovery all Aunt Jane's own.

Long before scientists had written of the value of spoken expression as a curative method—long before "mental therapy" was fashionable—Aunt Jane had come to know that "a good talk does folks a lot of good."

"Let them kind of spit it out," she said, "get it off the end of their tongues 'most any way.... It seems to do them a world of good—and it don't ever hurt me— Seems to kind of slide off me."

She watched the light break in on the tense look, with a little smile, and bent toward the bed.

"No, you don't have to be carried—not unless you want to. I guess you're pretty good and strong; and you've got good courage. I can see that."

"I'd rather walk," said the woman quickly.

"Yes, I know." Aunt Jane nodded. "I'll go with you—when the time comes. We just go down the hall here a little way—to the elevator. The operating-room's on the top floor— It's a nice, sunny, big room. And you'll have the ether in the room next to it. There's a lounge there for you to lie on and a nice comfortable chair for me."

"Shall you go with me?" It was a quick word.

"Yes, I'm going up with you. I go, a good many times, with folks that want me——"

"Yes, I want you."

The small face had grown relaxed; the eyes were clear and waiting. The unbleached nightgown, with the bit of coarse edging at neck and wrists, seemed a comely garment.

Something had taken place in Room 5, for which scientists have not yet found a name. At ten o'clock Dr. Carmon would perform his difficult operation on the frail body of Mrs. John Pelton. But the spirit that would go under the knife was the spirit of Aunt Jane, smiling and saying placidly:

"There, he's just come. That's his car tooting out here. Now we're ready to go."

IX

The room had a sunny stillness. The sun poured in at the window on the whiteness and on the figure lying on the couch and on the young doctor bending toward it and adjusting the ether cone with light touch, and on Aunt Jane rocking placidly in her chair by the couch.

"You won't mind it a mite," said Aunt Jane. Her hand held the thin one in its warm clasp. "You won't mind.... Dr. Doty'll give it to you, nice. He's about the best one we've got—to give it."

The doctor smiled at the words—a boyish, whimsical smile at flattery. He adjusted the cone a little. "Breathe deep," he said gently.

There was silence in the room—only a little burring sound somewhere, and the soft creak of Aunt Jane's rockers as they moved to and fro.

The door of the operating-room stood open. Through the crack Aunt Jane could see a round, stout figure, enveloped from head to foot in its rubber apron, bending over a tray of instruments. The great arms, bare to the shoulders, the exposed neck, and round head with short bristling hair, a little bald at the top, gave a curious sense of alert power and force.

Aunt Jane had never seen a picture of St. George and the Dragon, or of St. Michael. She had scant material for comparison. But I suspect if she had seen through the open door of the operating-room, either of these saints fastening on his greaves—whatever greaves may be—and getting ready for the dragon, he would have seemed to her a less heroic and noble and beautiful figure than the short, square man, bending over his case of instruments and selecting a particularly sharp and glittering one for use.

The young doctor leaning over the figure on the couch moved a little and lifted his head. "All right," he said quietly. He nodded toward the door of the operating-room.

A nurse appeared in the doorway.

Aunt Jane pushed back her chair; and the nurse and doctor, at either end, lifted the movable top of the couch by its handles and carried the light burden easily between them to the open door.

Aunt Jane watched till the door was shut.... Her work began and ended at the door of the operating-room.

Inside that door, Dr. Carmon was supreme. Elsewhere in the hospital Aunt Jane might treat him as a mere man; she might criticise and advise, and even rebuke the surgeon for whose use the hospital had been built and endowed. But within the operating-room he was supreme. She allowed patients to enter that door without word or comment, and she received them back from his hands with a childlike humility that went a long way—it may be—toward reconciling the surgeon to her rule elsewhere.

"Aunt Jane knows what she knows—and what she doesn't know," Dr. Carmon had been heard to say. And if she regarded him as a mere man, it is only fair to say that he, in turn, looked upon Aunt Jane as a woman; a mere woman, perhaps, but remarkably sensible—for a woman.

When the door of the operating-room closed upon her, Aunt Jane stood a minute in the sunny room, looking tranquilly about. She drew down a shade and returned the rocking-chair to its