"What is the use of a lot old has-beens?" asks a hospital nurse at the outset of the story, and the story itself provides the answer. One of the minor yet cruel problems of this was was the lot of the aged and infirm. This story tells how an incongruous company of such forlorn people lived in the refuge of an admirable Nursing Home run by the three delightful sisters, the Misses Brown, in a far suburb of London. There were other cases admitted, of a younger and very different type, so that the contrasts in age and circumstances were striking. Very different too were the types of nurses who waited upon them, and their reactions to the whims and complaints of their old patients and the outrageous behaviour of one and very beautiful maternity case. The story covers only some hours of one day, when omens of evil seem to hang over the Home called "Tranquillity", and a night of tragedy. But the story shows that there may be some consolation for the old and helpless, and still some work to be done by them.
Tranquillity
