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her jaw faltered. “Miss, um—Meshle?”
    “Never mind, Florrie.”
    “Ye’re going to look fer Mrs. Tupper?”
    “Of course, Florrie. But let us hope she makes her way home on her own before too long.”
    Would that it were to be so.
     
    The streets of the East End brawled as always with unwashed humanity—ragged, half-starved street urchins, a beggar with hideous festering “burns” made of soap scum and vinegar, street vendors bawling “Puddings an’ pies!” or “Ginger beer!” or “Fish ’ere! Fresh ’erring!” with voices hoarse from shouting. Walking amidst washerwomen and other sorts of daily help hurrying towards the city, I noticed a tall, muscular workman, his plaid cloth cap rather too large for him, sauntering along; he would be late for his job at that rate.
    Once I had passed the Aldgate Pump, a twenty-foot monstrosity topped with a grandiose lamp, I was able to summon a cab, for the monument to Light and Hygiene marked the beginning of a less odiferous, more respectable part of the city. As the cab-driver stopped for me, I told him, “Florence Nightingale School of Nursing.”
    “Right-o, miss.” I settled back into the open seat of the hansom cab as if I assumed the man knew where I was going, although I myself had no idea; I had heard only that there was such a school somewhere in London.
    As we trotted along, I heard my cabbie yell to another one, “’Ey! Whereabouts be the nursie school?”
    It turned out to be across London Bridge, on the other side of the Thames, in Lambeth near St. Thomas’ Hospital. As I alighted from the cab and paid the driver, I observed—walking the paths of a small formal garden two by two, silently, as if performing a task, in the fine May sunshine—young women wearing starched white collars, aprons, and caps over brown frocks so homely that even my merino seemed handsome by comparison. These, I surmised, were the nurses-in-training.
    As they seemed indisposed to speak to me or even to look at me, I made for the massive front door of the sizeable but unlovely brick building, knocked, then saw a small placard directing one to “Walk In,” and did so.
    Another small sign, with a hand painted upon it pointing the direction, showed me to the office. Within, I found a desiccated-looking matron, dressed in black, who looked me up and down in an appraising manner.
    Oh, dear. She thought I was applying to be a trainee. To my annoyance I found myself babbling with nerves. “I have not come—that is—I’m not, um—I am trying to locate some member of the Nightingale family in regard to a personal matter.”
    The dried-out woman blinked several times. “Some member?”
    “I, um, Miss Florence Nightingale—”
    I was trying to say in the most delicate way that surely the famous spinster herself was no longer available to be interviewed—but I spoke no farther, for quite briskly the matron nodded, reaching for a piece of paper. When she had written upon this, she handed it to me.
    “Thirty-five South Street,” I read aloud, then looked up in astonishment. “Miss Nightingale is alive ?”
    I am sure I looked quite mawkish, for the twiggy matron smiled. “Oh, very much so. Although she does not go out at all.”
    Oh, dear, it would be scarcely bearable if she were alive but unable to speak with me. “Is she unwell? Or, um, wandering in her mind?”
    “Senile? Hardly.” The dry stick actually chuck-led. “Nor is she often ill. It’s mostly that, after coming home from the Crimea and taking to her bed, she simply has not got out again.”
    “She’s, ah, um, she’s an invalid?” Bad news, or so I thought, for I knew invalids as peevish, malingering, demanding people who simply chose not to be valid, so to speak. Scarcely a household in upper-class England had not at one time or another suffered under the paradoxical power of the invalid. Many a lady thwarted had taken to her bed for the sake of ordering folk about. Indeed, I had done so myself, for