They stood huddled in their drab serge suits and pinafores on the steps of the Master’s house, warbling about shepherds and the baby Jesus, their breath ascending in frozen clouds. Maggie could see them as she passed along the open corridor between the infirmary and the dining hall. She was stiff from bending and ached all over from scrubbing the floors of the ward, but she still paused in the cold to watch the determined group of carollers waiting for some small treat for their efforts. Were they all orphans? she wondered. Or were they separated from their parents, locked away in their own wards and schools while their widowed mothers or pauper fathers worked as scrubbers and gardeners, kitchen maids and bricklayers for the workhouse? Maggie had been inside St Chad’s for barely a month, yet it felt like an age since she had done anything else but wash floors in the hospital alongside the drunks and the mad. At first she had been horrified that all patients were thrown together; the consumptives and the mentally sick, the elderly infirm and those with venereal disease, and all looked after by a handful of probationer nurses who were largely pauper girls raised in the workhouse.
