Page:Una and the Lion by Florence Nightingale.djvu/27

 Father Himself. "I do not say to Him, Give success," she once said; "if all fails to human eyes, if I do nothing, 'not my way, but His be done; not as I will, but as Thou wilt.

More completely and unreservedly than any one I ever knew, she gave herself: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to Thy word."

And it was so. What she went through during her work-house life is scarcely known but to God and to one or two. Yet she said that she had "never been so happy in all her life."

All the last winter she had under her charge above fifty nurses and probationers, above one hundred and fifty pauper scourers, from 1,290 to 1,350 patients, being from two to three hundred more than the number of beds. All this she had to provide for and arrange for, often receiving an influx of patients without a moment's warning. She had to manage and persuade the patients to sleep three and four in two beds; sometimes six, or even eight children had to be put in one bed; and being asked on one occasion whether they did not "kick one another," they answered, "O, no, ma'am, we're so comfor'ble." Poor little things, they scarcely remembered ever to have slept in a bed before. But this is not the usual run of work-house patients. Among them are the