No one, whether Princess Royal or Highland cottager, ever appealed to the Queen for sympathy in vain. She was always especially interested in the sick. In her Jubilee year, the women of England made her a present of $375,000, and she gave almost all of it to found an institute which should provide trained nurses for the poor in their own homes. When injured soldiers returned to England, she was never weary of going to see them, of walking down the long rows of beds, saying to one man, "I am afraid you are in great pain," to another, "England owes much to her brave soldiers." If she only asked "Where were you wounded?" or looked at a sufferer with that peculiarly sweet smile of which everyone spoke and which the photographers could never catch, he was content. Some of the hospital patients almost believed that her coming would cure them.
"Oh, it does hurt so," sobbed one little girl in a ward for children, "but if the Queen would only come and see me, I know I'd be well."
"No," cried the little one. "She went right by the door."
Somehow word was carried to the Queen that a little girl who had been terribly burned was crying to see her.
"Is there another ward that I have not visited?" she asked.
"Yes, Madam," answered the Doctor, "but it is at the extreme end of the hospital."
"Never mind," replied the Queen. "I will go and see the child."
After this visit the little girl who had been so honored was the envy of all the other children as she told over and over her story of the royal visit. "She came down just to see me," said the little one, "the Doctor told me she did. She put her hand right on my forehead and she said, 'I have a little granddaughter about as old as you, and I hope you will soon be able to run about as she does.' And then she said 'Good-by,' and she said, 'I shall come to see you again.' I wish she would come to-morrow."
All her life Queen Victoria was fond of children. She liked even the little boy who declared stoutly, "No, I don't like you because you cut Mary Queen of Scots' head off." When she first became Queen, she always managed to have some little folks staying in the palace as visitors, and the ninth child of her own family was just as welcome as the first. In all the displays that were made at her various receptions, she was never more pleased than when throngs of children were gathered together to greet her. She knew how to please children, and when she went to visit a school for boys, she won their hearts by requesting the master to give them an extra week's holiday. She never could bear to disappoint a child. One day when she was driving very rapidly, she caught sight of a little boy by the roadside looking much grieved because he had tried to throw a bunch of flowers into her carriage, and it had fallen into the road. "Drive back," she ordered, and the carriage with its four horses and driver and attendants was turned back. "Will you give me those pretty flowers?" she asked, and the little boy with tears on his cheeks suddenly became the happiest little fellow in the Highlands, as he shyly handed her the rather dusty bouquet. The children of the Balmoral tenants knew that she would never forget her promises, and if she said a toy was coming to them at Christmas, it was as sure to come as the day itself. When the little daughter of the minister in the village nearest to Balmoral was born, the Queen asked that she might be named Alexandrina Victoria for herself. Many gifts were sent to the little namesake, but perhaps the one that pleased her most was the tall sugar ornament from the Queen's birthday cake which the Queen herself brought over to the home of the tiny damsel and presented to her.