 1 The White Linden Nurse was so tired that her noble expression ached. Incidentally, her head ached, and her shoulders ached, and her lungs ached, and the ankle bones of both feet ached quite excruciatingly. But nothing of her felt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression. Like a strip of lip-coloured lead suspended from her poor little nose by two tugging wire-grey wrinkles, her persistently conscientious sick-room smile seemed to be wanging aimlessly against her front teeth. The sensation certainly was very unpleasant. Looking back thus on the three-spine curving, chest cramping, foot twinging, ether scented years of her hospital training, it dawned on the White Linden Nurse very suddenly that nothing of her ever had felt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression. Impulsively, she sprang for the prim-white mirror that capped her prim-white bureau, and stood staring up into her own entrancing, bright-coloured, Nova Scotian reflection with tense and unwanted interest. Except for the unmistakable smirk which fatigue had clawed into her plastic young mouth-lines, there was certainly nothing special the matter with what she saw. Perfectly good face. She attested judicially with no more than common courtesy to her progenators. Perfectly good and tidy-looking face, if only—if only—her breath caught a trifle. If only! It didn't look so disgustingly noble and hygienic and dollish. All along the back of her neck, little sharp prickly pains began suddenly to sting and burn. Silly, simpering pink and white puppet. She scolded squintingly, I'll teach you how to look like a real girl. Very threateningly, she raised herself to her tip-toes and thrust her glowing, corporeal face right up into the molten, elusive, quick-silver face in the mirror. Pink for pink, blue for blue, gold for gold, dollish smirk for dollish smirk. The mirror mocked her seething inner fretfulness. Why, darn you! she gasped. Why, darn you! Why, you looked more human than that when you left the Annapolis Valley three years ago. There were at least tears in your face then, and cinders, and your mother's best advice, and the worry about the mortgage and—and—the blush of Jo Hazelton's kiss. Fertively, with the tip of her index finger, she started to surge her imperturbable pink cheek for the spot where Jo Hazelton's kiss had formerly flamed. My hands are all right, anyway. She acknowledged with infinite relief. Triumphantly, she raised both strong, stub-fingered, exaggeratedly executive hands to the level of her childish blue eyes and stood surveying the mirrored effect with ineffable a satisfaction. Why, my hands are dandy! she gloated. Why, they're perfectly dandy. Why, they're why, they're then suddenly and fearfully she gave a shrill little scream, but they don't go with my silly doll face. She cried, why, they don't. They don't. They go with a senior surgeon scowling Heidelberg eyes. They go with a senior surgeon's grim gray jaw. They go with the—oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? With her stubby fingertips prodded deep into every jaded facial muscle that she could compass, she staggered towards the air and dropping down into the first friendly chair that bumped against her knees, sat staring blankly out across the monotonous city roofs that flanked her open window, trying very, very hard for the first time in her life to consider the general phenomenon of being a trained nurse. All around and about her, inexorable as anesthesia, horrid as the hush of tomb or public library, lurked the painful unmistakable sense of institutional restraint. Mournfully to her ear from some remote kitcheny region of pots and pans, a browsing spoon tangled forth from time to time with soft muffled resonance. Up and down every clammy white corridor, innumerable young feet, born to prance and stamp, were creeping stealthily to and fro in rubber-heeled whispers. Along the somber fire escape just below her window-seal, like a cove of snubbed doves, six or eight of her classmates were cooing and crooning together with excessive caution concerning the eminent graduation exercises that were to take place at eight o'clock that very evening. Beyond her dreariest can of muffled voices, beyond her dingiest vista of slate and brick, on a far-faint hillside, a far-faint streak of April-green went roaming jacundly skyward. Altogether sluggishly, as though her nostrils were plugged with warm velvet, the smell of spring and ether and scorched mutton chops filtered in and out, in and out, in and out of her abnormally jaded senses. Taken all in all, it was not a propitious afternoon for any girl as tired and as pretty as the white linen nurse to be considering the general phenomenon of anything, except April. In the real country they tell me, where the young spring runs wild and bears a nymph through every dull brown wood and hay-gray meadow, the blasé farmer lad will not even lift his eyes from the plough to watch the pinkness of her passing. But here, in the prudish brick-minded city, where the young spring at her friskist is nothing more audacious than a sweltering winter-swathed madcap who has impishly assayed some fine mourning to tiptoe down-street in her soft, slusily, green silk-stocking defeat, the whole hob-nailed population reels back aghast and aggrin before the most innocent flash of the rogue's grin-veiled toes. And then, suddenly snatching off its own cumbersome winter-foot habits, goes chasing madly after her in its own prankish, very colored socks. Now, the white linen nurse's socks were black and cotton at that, a combination incontestably sedate. And the white linen nurse had weighted barefoot through too many posed country pastures to experience any ordinary city thrill over the sight of a single blade of grass pushing scarily through a crack in the pavement, or puny, concrete-strangled maple-tree flushing wanley to the smoky sky. Indeed, through three hustling square-toed rubber-heeled city years, the white linen nurse had never even stopped to notice whether the season was flavored with frost or thunder. But now, inexplanably, just at the end of it all, sitting innocently there at her own prim little bedroom window, staring innocently out across indomitable rooftops, with the crackle of glory and diplomas already ringing in her ears, she heard, instead, for the first time in her life, the gaily daredevil voice of the spring, a hoidonish challenge flung back at her, leaf green from the crest of a winter-scarred hill. Hello, white linen nurse! cried the saucy city spring. Hello, white linen nurse! Take off your homely-starched collar, or your silly candy-box cap, or any other thing that feels maddeningly artificial, and come out, and be very wild. Like a puppy-dog cocking its head towards some strange unfamiliar sound, the white linen nurse cocked her head towards the lure of the green-crusted hill. Still wrestling conscientiously with the general phenomenon of being a trained and nurse, she found her collar suddenly very tight, the tiny cap inexpressibly heavy and vexatious. Timidly she removed the collar and found that the removal did not rest, her in the slightest. Equally timidly she removed the cap, and found that even that removal did not rest her in the slightest. Then very, very slowly, but very, very permeatingly and completely, it dawned on the white linen nurse that never while eyes were blue and her hair gold, and lips red, would she ever find rest again, until she had removed her noble expression. With a jerk that started the pulses in her temples throbbing like two tooth-akes, she straightened up in her chair. All along the back of her neck the little blonde curls began to crisp very ticklingly at their roots. Still staring wordly out over the old city's slate gray head to that inciting prance of green across the farthest horizon, she felt her whole being kindle to an indescribable passion of revolt against all hushed places. Seething with fatigue, smoldering with anui, she experienced suddenly a wild, almost incontrollable impulse to sing, to shout, to scream from the housetops, to mock somebody, to defy everybody, to break laws, dishes, heads, anything in fact that would break with a crash. And then at last, through the hills and far away, with all the outraged world her heels to run, and run, and run, and run, and run, and laugh, till her feet ravelled out, and her lungs burst, and there was nothing more left of her at all, ever, ever any more. Discordantly into this rapturously pagan vision of pranks and posies, broke one of her roommates all a whiff with ether, a whirr with starch. Instantly, with the first creak of the door handle, the white linen nurse was on her feet, breathless, resentful, grotesquely defiant. "'Get out of here, Zilla Forsythe!' she cried furiously. "'Get out of here quick, and leave me alone! I want to think.'" Suddenly serenely the newcomer advanced into the room. With her pale ivory tinted cheeks, her great limpid brown eyes, her soft dark hair parted Madonna-like across her beautiful brow. Her whole face was like some exquisite, composite picture of all the saints of history. Her voice also was amazingly tranquil. "'Oh fudge!' she drawled. "'What's eating you, Raimel Gregor? I won't either get out. It's my room just as much as it is yours, and Helen's just as much as it is ours.' And besides, she added more briskly, "'It's four o'clock now, and with graduation at eight, and the dance afterwards, if we don't get our stuff packed up now, when in thunder shall we get it done?' Quite irrelevantly she began to laugh. Her laugh was perceptibly shriller than her speaking voice. "'Say, Ray,' she confided. "'That minister I nursed enough pneumonia last winter wants me to pose as sanctity for a stained-glass window in his new church. Isn't he the softie?' "'Shall you do it?' quizzed Raimel Gregor a trifle tensely. "'Shall I do it?' mocked the newcomer. "'Well, you just watch me. Four mornings a week in June at full weeks' wages, fresh Easter lilies every day, white silk angel robes, all the high soles and high paints cow-towing around me. White would be more fun than a box of monkeys. Sure, I'll do it.' Expeditiously, as she spoke, the newcomer reached up for the framed motto over her own ample mirror, and yanking it down with one single tug, began to busy herself adroitly with a snarl in the picture cord. Like a width of willow yearning over a brook, her slender figure curved to the task. Very scintillatingly, the afternoon light seemed to brighten suddenly across her lap. "'You'll be a long-time dead,' glinted the motto through its sun-dazzled glass. No panting with excitement, still bristling with resentment, Ray Mel Gregor stood surveying the intrusion and the intruder. It does in impertinent speeches were rioting in her mind. Twice her mouth opened and shut before she finally achieved the particular opprobrium that completely satisfied her. "'Bah! You look like a trained nurse!' she blurted forth at last with hysterical triumph. "'So do you,' said the newcomer, amiably. With a little gasp of dismay, Ray Mel Gregor sprang suddenly forward. Her eyes were flooded with tears. "'Why, that's just exactly what's to matter with me!' she cried. My face is all worn out, trying to look like a trained nurse. Oh, Zilla, how do you know you were meant to be a trained nurse? How does anybody know? Oh, Zilla, save me! Save me!' Langerously, Zilla Forsythe looked up from her work and left. Her laugh was like the accidental tenkel of sleigh bells in mid-summer, vaguely disquieting, a shiver of frost across the face of a lily. "'Save you from what, you great big overgrown, toe-headed doll-baby?' she questioned blandly. For heaven's sake, the only thing you need is to go back to whatever toy shop you came from and get a new head. What in creation's the matter with you lately, anyway? Oh, of course you've had rotten luck this past month, but what of it? That's a trouble with you country girls. You haven't got any stamina!' With slow, shuffling, footed astonishment, Ray Mel Gregor stepped out into the centre of the room. "'Country girls?' she repeated blankly. "'Why, you're a country girl yourself!' "'I am not,' snapped Zilla Forsythe. "'I'll have you understand that there are nine thousand people in the town I come from and not a ruby among them. Why, I tended so to fountain in the swellest drugstore there a whole year before I even thought of taking up nursing. And I wasn't as green when I was six months old as you are now.' Slowly, with a soft, snuggling sigh of contentment, she raised her slim white fingers to coax her dusky hair a little looser, a little farther down, a little more Madonna-like across her sweet, mild forehead, then snatching out abruptly at a convenient shirt waist, began with extraordinary skill to apply its dangly lace sleeves as a protective bandage for the delicate, glass-faced motto still in her lap, placed the completed parcel within ordinate scientific precision in the exact corner of her packing-box, and then went on very diligently, very zealously, to strip the men's photographs from the mirror on her bureau. There were twenty-seven photographs in all, and for each one she had already cut and prepared a small square of perfectly fresh, perfectly immaculate, white tissue-wrapping paper. No one so transcendently fastidious, so exquisitely neat, in all her personal habits had ever trained in that particular hospital before. Very soberly, the doll-faced girls stood watching the men's pleasant paper countenances smooth away one by one into their chaste white veilings, until at last, quite without warning, she poked an accusing inquisitive finger directly across Zilla Forsythe's shoulder. Zilla, she demanded preemptorily, all the year I've wanted to know, all the year every other girl in our class has wanted to know. Where did she ever get that picture of the senior surgeon? He never gave it to you in the world. He didn't. He didn't. He's not that kind. Deeply into Zilla Forsythe's pale, ascetic cheek dawned a most amazing dimple. Sort of jarred you girls some, didn't it? She queried, to see me strutting around with a photo of the senior surgeon. The little cleft in her chin showed suddenly with almost startling distinctness. Well, seeing it's you, she grinned, and the years all over, and there's nobody left that I can worry about it any more. I don't mind telling you in the least that I bought it out of a photographer's showcase. There, are you satisfied now? With easy nonchalance she picked up the picture in question and scrutinized it shrewdly. Lord, what a face. She attested. Nothing but granite. Hack him with a knife and he wouldn't bleed but just chip off into pebbles. With exaggerated contempt she shrugged her supple shoulders. Bah, how I hate a man like that. There's no fun in him. A little abruptly she turned and thrust the photograph into Ray Mulgregor's hand. You can have it if you want to, she said. I'll try it to you for that lace corset cover of yours. Like water dripping through a sieve, the photograph slid through Ray Mulgregor's frightened fingers. With nervous apology she stooped and picked it up again and held it gingerly by one remotest corner. Her eyes were quite wide with horror. Oh, of course I'd like the picture well enough. She stammered. But it wouldn't seem exactly respectful to trade it for a corset cover. Oh, very well. Drawed Zilla Forsythe, tear it up then. Expeditiously, with frank non-sentimental fingers Ray Mulgregor tore the tough cardboard across and again across and once again across and through the conglomerate fragments into the waste basket. And her expression all the time was no more, no less than the expression of a person who would infinitely rather execute his own pet dog or cat than risk the possible bungling of an outsider. Then, like a small child trotting with infinite relief to its own dollhouse, she trotted over to her bureau, extracted the lace corset cover, and came back with it in her hand to lean across Zilla Forsythe's shoulder again and watch the man's faces go slipping off into oblivion. Once again, abruptly without warning, she halted the process with a breathless exclamation. Oh, of course this waste is the only one I've got with ribbons in it. She asserted irrevolently. But I'm perfectly willing to trade it for that picture. She pointed out with unmistakable explicit fingertip. Chucklingly, Zilla Forsythe withdrew the special photograph from its half-completed wrappings. Oh, him? She said. Oh, that's a chap I met on the train last summer. He's a breakman or something. He's a— Perfectly, unreluctantly, Ray Mulgregor dropped the fluff of lace and ribbons into Zilla's lap and reached out with cheerful voraciousness to annex the young man's picture to her somewhat bleak possessions. Oh, I don't care a wrap who he is. She interrupted briskly. But he's sort of cute-looking, and I've got an empty frame at home just that odd size and mother's crazy for a new picture to stick up over the kitchen mantelpiece. She gets so tired of seeing nothing but the faces of people she knows all about. Sharply Zilla Forsythe turned and stared up into the younger girl's face and found no guile to wet her stare against. Well, of all the ridiculous, unmitigated green horns—she began— Well, is that all you wanted him for? Why, I supposed, you wanted to write to him? Why, I supposed? For the first time an expression not altogether dollish, darkened across Ray Mulgregor's garishly juvenile blondness. Maybe I'm not quite as green as you think I am. She flared up stormily. With this sharp flaring up, every single individual pulse in her body seemed to jerk itself suddenly into conscious activity again like the soft, plushy pound, pound, pound of a whole stocking-footed regiment of pain descending single file upon her for her hysterical undoing. Maybe I've had a good deal more experience than you give me credit for. She hastened excitedly to explain, I tell you, I tell you, I've been engaged. She blurted forth with a bitter sort of triumph. With a palpable flicker of interest, Zilla Forsythe looked back across her shoulder. Engaged, how many times? She asked, quite bluntly. As though the whole monogamous groundwork of civilization was threatened by the question, Ray Mulgregor's hands went clutching at her breast. Why once? She gasped. Why, once? Convulsively, Zilla Forsythe began to rock herself to and fro. Oh, Lordy! she chuckled. Oh, Lordy, Lordy! Why, I've been engaged four times just this past year. In a sudden passion of fastidiousness she bent down over the particular photograph in her hand, and snatching at a handkerchief, began to rub diligently at a small smooch of dust in one corner of the cardboard. Something in the effort of rubbing seemed to jerk her small round chin into almost angular prominence. And before I'm through, she added, at least two notes below her usual altotones. And before I'm through, I'm going to get engaged to every profession that there is on the surface of the globe. Quite helplessly, the thin paper skin of the photograph peeled off in company with a smooch of dust. And when I marry, she ejaculated fiercely, and when I marry, I'm going to marry a man who will take me to every place that there is on the surface of the globe. And after that, after what? Interrogated a brand new voice from the doorway. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of The White Linen Nurse This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The White Linen Nurse by Eleanor Hallowill Abbott. Chapter 2 It was the other roommate this time. The only real aristocrat in the whole graduating class, high-browed, high-cheek-boned, eyes like some far-sighted young prophet, mouth even yet faintly arrogant, with an irradicable consciousness of cased, a plain eager stripped for a long journey type of face. This was Helen Churchill. There was certainly no innocuous bloom of country hills and pastures in this girl's face, nor any seething small-town passion pounding indiscriminately at all the doors of experience. The men and the women who had bred Helen Churchill had been the breeders also of brick and granite cities since the world was new. Like one infinitely more accustomed to treading on Persian carpets than on painted floors, she came forward into the room. Hello, children! she said casually, and began at once without further paroling to take down the motto that graced her own bureau top. It was the era when almost everybody in the world had a motto over his bureau. Helen Churchill's motto was, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me, on a scroll of almost priceless parchment the text was illuminated with inimitable Florentine skill and color. A little carelessly, after the manner of people quite accustomed to priceless things, she proceeded now to roll the parchment into its smallest possible circumference, humming exclusively to herself all the while and intricate little air from an Italian opera. So the three faces foiled each other, sober city girl, pert town girl, bucolic country girl. A hundred fundamental differences rampant between them, yet each fervid adolescent young mouth, tamed to the same monotonous, drawly exaggerated expression of complacency that characterizes the faces of all people who, in a distinctive uniform, for a reasonable, satisfactory living wage, make an actual profession of righteous deeds. Indeed, among all the thirty or more varieties of noble expression, which an indomitable superintendent had finally succeeded in inculcating into her graduating class, no other physiognomies had responded more plastically, perhaps, than these three to the merciless imprint of the great hospital machine, which in pursuance of its one repetitive design, discipline, had coaxed Zilla Forsythe into the semblance of a lady, snubbed Helen Churchill into the substance of plain womanhood, and, still uncertain just what to do with Ray MalGregor's rollicking rural immaturity, had frozen her face temporarily into the smugly dimpled likeness of a fancy French doll, rigged out as a nurse for some gilt-edged hospital fare. With characteristic desire to keep up in every way with her more mature, better educated classmates, to do everything, in fact, so fast, so well, that no one should possibly guess that she hadn't yet figured out just why she was doing it at all, Ray MalGregor, now with quickly readjusted cap and collar, began to hurl herself into the task of her own packing. From her own bureau drawer, with a sudden impish impulse towards worldly wisdom, she extracted, first of all, the photograph of the young breakman. See, Helen, my new bow! she giggled experimentally. In mild-eyed surprise Helen Churchill glanced up from her work. Your bow? she corrected. Why, that's Zilla's picture. Well, it's mine now, snapped Ray MalGregor with unexpected edginess. It's mine now, all right. Zilla said I could have him. Zilla said I could write to him if I wanted to. She finished a bit breathlessly. Wider and wider Helen Churchill's eyes dilated. Write to a man whom you don't know. She gasped. Why, Ray, why, it isn't even very nice to have a picture of a man you don't know. Mockingly, to the edge of her strong white teeth, Ray MalGregor's tongue crept out in pink derision. She taunted. What's nice. That's the whole matter with you, Helen Churchill. You never stop to consider whether anything's fun or not. All you care is whether it's nice. Excitedly, she turned to meet the cheap little wink from Zilla's sainted eyes. What's nice. She persisted a little lamely. Then suddenly, all the pertinence within her crumbled into nothingness. That's the whole trouble with you, Zilla Forsythe. She stammered. You never give a hang whether anything's nice or not. All you care is whether it's fun. Quite helplessly, she began to wring her hands. Oh, how do I know which one of you girls to follow? She demanded wildly. How do I know anything? How does anybody know anything? Like a smoldering fuse, the rambling query crept back into the inner recesses of her brain and fired once more the one great question that lay dormant there. Impetuously, she ran forward and stared into Helen Churchill's face. How do you know you were meant to be a trained nurse, Helen Churchill? She began all over again. How does anybody know she was really meant to be one? How can anybody, I mean, be perfectly sure? Like a drowning man clutching out at the proverbial straw, she clutched at the parchment in Helen Churchill's hand. I mean, where did she get your motto, Helen Churchill? She persisted with increasing irritability. If you don't tell me, I'll tear the whole thing to pieces. With a startled frown, Helen Churchill jerked back out of reach. What's the matter with you, Ray? She quizzed sharply and then turning round quite casually to her bookcase began to draw from the shelves one by one her beloved Marcus Aurelius, Wordsworth, and Robert Browning. Oh, I did so want to go to China. She confided irrelevantly, but my family have just written to me that they won't stand for it, so I suppose I'll have to go into tenement work here in the city instead. With a visible effort, she jerked her mind back again to the feverish question in Ray Malgreger's eyes. Oh, you want to know where I got my motto? She asked. A flash of intuition brightened suddenly across her absent-mindedness. Oh, she smiled. You mean you want to know just what the incident was that first made me decide to devote my life to humanity? Yes, snapped Ray Malgreger. A little shyly, Helen Churchill picked up her copy of Marcus Aurelius and cuddled her cheek against its tender Morocco cover. Really? She questioned with palpable hesitation. Really, you want to know? Why, why, it's rather a sacred little story to me. I wouldn't exactly want to have anybody laugh about it. I'll laugh if I want to. Attested Zilla foresight forcibly from the other side of the room. Like a pugnacious boy, Ray Malgreger's fluent fingers doubled up into two firm fists. I'll punch her if she even looks as though she wanted to. She signaled surreptitiously to Helen. Shrewdly for an instant the city girl's narrowing eyes challenged and appraised the country girl's desperate sincerity. Then quite abruptly she began her little story. Why, it was an Easter Sunday. Oh, ages and ages ago. She faltered. Why, I couldn't have been more than nine years old at the time. A trifle self-consciously she turned her face away from Zilla foresight a super silly a smile. And I was coming home from a Sunday school festival in my best white muslin dress, with a big spot of purple pansies in my hand. She hastened somewhat nervously to explain. And just at the edge of the gutter there was a dreadful drunken man lying in the mud with a great crowd of cruel people teasing and tormenting him. And because, because I couldn't think of anything else to do about it, I walked right up to the poor old creature scared as I could be and and I presented him with my pot of purple pansies. And everybody of course began to laugh to scream I mean and shout with amusement. And I of course began to cry. And the old drunken man straightened up very oddly for an instant with his battered hat in one hand and the pot of pansies in the other. And he raised the pot of pansies very high, as though it had been a glass of rarest wine, and bowed to me as reverently as though he had been toasting me at my father's table at some very grand dinner. And, inasmuch, he said, just that, inasmuch. So that's how I happened to go into nursing. She finished as abruptly as she had begun. Like some wonderful, phosphorescent manifestation, her whole shining soul seemed to flare forth suddenly through her plain face. With honest perplexity, Zela Forsythe looked up from her work. So that's how you happened to go into nursing. She quizzed impatiently. Her long straight nose was all puckered tight with interrogation. Her dove-like eyes were fairly dilated with slow-daunting astonishment. You don't mean, she gasped. You don't mean that, just for that? Incredulously, she jumped to her feet and stood staring blankly into the city girl's strangely illuminated features. Well, if I were a swell like you, she scoffed. It would take a heaps sight more than a drunken man munching pansies and rum and Bible texts to jolt me out of my limousines and steamy odds and adirondack bungalows. Quite against all intention Helen Churchill laughed. She did not often laugh. Just for an instant, her eyes and Zela Forsythe's clashed together in the irremediable antagonism of Caste. The plebeians scornful impatience with aristocrat, equaled only by the aristocrat's condescending patience with a plebian. It was no more than right that the aristocrat should recover her self-possession first. Never mind about your understanding, Zela dear. She said softly, Your hair is the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life. Along Zela Forsythe's ivory cheek, an incongruous little flush of red began to show. With much more nonchalance than was really necessary, she pointed towards her half-packed trunk. It wasn't Sunday school I was coming home from when I got my motto. She remarked dryly, with a wink at no one in particular. And so far as I know, she proceeded with increasing sarcasm. The man who inspired my noble life was not in any way particularly addicted to the use of alcoholic beverages. As though her collar was suddenly too tight, she rammed her finger down between her stiff white neckband and her soft white throat. He was a New York doctor. She hastened, somewhat eerily to explain. Gee, but he was a swell. And he was spending his summer holiday up in the same main town where I was tending soda fountain. And he used to drop into the drugstore, nights after cigars and things. And he used to tell me stories about the drugs and things, sitting up there on the counter, swinging his legs and pointing out this and that. Gwai 9, Ipikak, opium, hashish, all the silly patent medicines, every sloppy soothing syrup. Lordy, he knew them as though they were people. Where they come from? Where they're going to? Yarns about the tropics that would kink their hair along the nape of your neck. Jokes about your own town soup kettle from ecology that would make you yell for joy. Gee, but the things that man had seen and known. Gee, but the things that man could make you see and know. And he had an automobile. She confided proudly. It was one of those billion-dollar French cars, and I lived just around the corner from the drugstore. But we used to ride home by way of New Hampshire. Almost imperceptibly her breath began to quicken. Gee, those nights. She muttered. Rain or shine, moon or thunder, tearing down those country roads at 40 miles an hour, singing, hollering with spring. It was him that taught me to do my hair like this, instead of all the cheap rats and pompadours every other kid in town was wearing. She asserted quite irrelevantly, then stopped with a quick fruitive glance of suspicion towards both her listeners and mouthed her way delicately back to the beginning of her sentence again. It was he that taught me to do my hair like this. She repeated with the faintest possible suggestion of halter. For one reason or another, along the exquisitely chaste curve of her cheek, a narrow streak of red began to show again. And he went away very sudden at the last. She finished hurriedly. It seems he was marring all the time. Blandly she turned her wonderful face to the caressing light. And I hope he goes to hell. She added, perfectly simply, with a little gasp of astonishment, shock, suspicion, distaste. Helen Churchill reached out an immediate conscientious hand to her. Oh, Zilla! She began. Oh, poor Zilla, dear! I'm so sorry. I'm so. Absolutely serenely, through a mask of insolence and ice, Zilla Forsythe ignored the proffered hand. I don't know what particular call you've got to be sorry for me, Helen Churchill. She drawled languidly. I've got my character, same as you've got yours, and just about nine times as many good looks. And when it comes to nursing, like an alto song pierced suddenly by one shrill treble note, the girl's immobile face sharpened transiently with a single jagged flash of emotion. And when it comes to nursing? Ha! Helen Churchill. You can lead your class all you want to with your silk-lined manners and your fuddy-duddy book-talk, but when gentile people like you are moping around already to fold your patient's hands on their breasts and murmur, if I will be done, why, that's a time that little yours truly's just beginning to roll up her sleeves and get to work. With real passion her slender fingers went clutching again at her harsh linen collar. It isn't you, Helen Churchill. She taunted, that's ever been to the superintendent on your bended knees and begged for the rabbi's case, and the small pox. Gee, you like nursing because you think it's pious to like it, but I like it, because I like it. From Brad Chin, as though fairly stricken with sincerity, her whole bland face furrowed startlingly with crude expressiveness. The smell of ether. She stammered, it's like wine to me. The clang of the ambulance gong. I'd rather hear it than fire engines. I'd crawl on my hands and knees a hundred miles to watching major operation. I wish there was a war. I'd give my life to see a cholera epidemic. Abruptly, as it came, the passion faded from her face, leaving every feature tranquil again, demure, exaggeratedly innocent. With saccharine sweetness she turned to a ray, malgregor. Now, little one, she mocked, tell us the story of your lovely life. Having heard me coily confess that I went into nursing because I had such a crush on this world, and Helen here brazenly affirmed that she went into nursing because she had such a crush on the world to come. It's up to you now to confine to us just how you happen to take of so noble an endeavor. Have you seen some of the young house doctors, beautiful smiling faces depicted in the hospital catalog? Or was it for the sake of the senior surgeon's grim gray mug that you jilted your poor ploughboy lover way up in the Annapolis Valley? Why, Zilla? gasped the country girl. Why, I think you're perfectly awful. Why, Zilla Forsythe, don't you ever say a thing like that again. You can joke all you want to about the flirty young interns. They're nothing but fellows. But it isn't. It isn't respectful for you to talk like that about the senior surgeon. He's too, too terrifying. She finished in an utter panic of consternation. Oh, now I know it was a senior surgeon that made you jilt your country bow. Taunted Zilla Forsythe with soft alto sarcasm. I didn't either, jilt Joe Hazleton. Stormed Ray Mell Gregor explosively. Backed up against her bureau, eyes flaming, breast heaving, little candy box cap all tossed a skew over her left ear. She stood defying her tormentor. I didn't either, jilt Joe Hazleton. She reasserted passionately. It was Joe Hazleton that jilted me, and we had been going together since we were kids, and now he's married the Domine's daughter and they've got a kid of their own, most as old as he and I were when we first began courting each other. And it's all because I insisted on being a trained nurse. She finished shrily. With an expression of real shock, Helen Churchill peered up from her lowly seat on the floor. You mean, she asked a bit breathlessly, you mean that he didn't want you to be a trained nurse? You mean that he wasn't big enough, wasn't fine enough to appreciate the nobility of the profession? Nobility nothing! snapped Ray Malgreger. It was me scrubbing strange men with alcohol that he couldn't stand for, and I don't know as I exactly blame him. She added huskily. It certainly is a good deal of a liberty when you stop to think about it. Quite incongruously, her big childish blue eyes narrowed suddenly into two dark calculating slits. It's comic, she mused, how there isn't a man in the world who would stand letting his wife or daughter or sister have a male nurse. But look at the jobs we girls get sent out on. It's very confusing. With a sincere appeal she turned to Scylla Forsythe. And yet, and yet, she stammered, and yet, when everything's scary that's in you has once been scared out of you, why, there's nothing left in you to be scared with anymore, is there? What? What? Bleeded Helen Churchill. Say it again, what? That's what Joe and I quarreled about my first vacation home, persisted Ray Malgreger. It was a travelling salesman's thigh. It was broken, bad. Somebody had to take care of it, so I did. Joe thought it wasn't modest to be so willing. With a perplexed sort of defiance she raised her square little chin. But you see, I was willing. She said, I was perfectly willing. Just one single solitary year of hospital training had made me perfectly willing. And you can't unwilling or willing, even to please your bow, no matter how hard you try. With a droll, a mixture of shyness and disdain, she tossed her curly blonde head a trifle higher. Shucks, she attested. What's a travelling salesman's thigh? Shucks yourself, scoffed Scylla foresight. What's a silly bow or two up in Nova Scotia to a girl with looks like you? You could have married that typhoid case a dozen times last winter if you'd croaked your little finger. Why, the fellow was crazy about you, and he was richer than Crocius. What queer did it? She demanded bluntly. Did his mother hate you? Like one fairly cramped with astonishment, Ray Mell Gregor doubled up very suddenly at the waistline and thrusting her neck oddly forward after the manner of a startled crane stood peering sharply round the corner of the rocking chair at Scylla foresight. Did his mother hate me? She gasped. Did his mother hate me? Well, what do you think? With me who never even saw plumbing till I came down here, setting out to explain to her with twenty tiled bathrooms how to be hygienic though rich? Did his mother hate me? But what do you think? With her who bore him? Her who bore him, mind you, kept waiting downstairs in the hospital and a room half an hour every day on the raw edge of a raton chair, waiting, worrying, all old and gray and scared, while little young perky, pink and white me is upstairs brushing her own son's hair and washing her own son's face, and altogether getting her own son ready to seize on mother. And then me obliged to turn her out again in ten minutes. Flip as you please for fear she'd stay too long while I stay on the rest of the night. Did his mother hate me? Stealthily as an assassin she crept around the corner of the rocking chair and grabbed Scylla foresight by her astonished linen shoulder. Did his mother hate me? She persisted mockingly. Did his mother hate me? Well, rather, is there any woman from here to Kamchatka who doesn't hate us? Is there any woman from here to Kamchatka who doesn't look upon a trained nurse as her natural born enemy? I don't blame him. She added jokingly, look at the impudent jobs we get sent out on, quarantined upstairs for weeks at a time with their inflammable, diphtheriotic bridegrooms while they sit downstairs brooding over their wedding teaspoons, hacked off indefinitely to Atlantic City with their gaudy bachelor uncles, hearing their own innocent little sisters blood-curdling deathbed deliriums, snatching their own newborn babies away from their breasts and showing them, virgin-handed, how to nurse them better. The impudence of it, I say, the disgusting, confounded impudence, doing things perfectly, flippantly, right for twenty-five dollars a week and washing, that all they aching love in the world don't know how to do right, just for love. Furiously, she began to jerk her victim's shoulder. I tell you, it's awful, Zilla foresight. She insisted. I tell you, I just won't stand it. With muscles like steel wire, Zilla foresight scrambled to her feet and pushed Ray Malgreger back against the bureau. For heaven's sake, Ray, shut up! She said, what in creation's the matter with you today? I never saw you act so before. With the real concern she stared into the girl's turbid eyes. If you feel like that about it, what in thunder did she go into nursing for? She demanded, not unkindly. Very slowly, Helen Church Hill rose from her lowly seat by her precious bouquet and came round and looked at Ray Malgreger rather oddly. Yes, faltered Helen Church Hill. What did she go into nursing for? The faintest possible taint of asperity was in her voice. Quite dumbly for an instant, Ray Malgreger's natural timidity stood battling the almost fanatic professional fervor in Helen Church Hill's frankly open face. The raw scientific passion, a very different caliber, but no less intensity, hidden so craftily behind Zilla foresight's plastic features. Then suddenly her own hands went clutching back at the bureau for support, and all the flaming raging red went ebbing out of her cheeks, leaving her lips with hardly blood enough left to work them. I went into nursing, she mumbled, and it's God's own truth. I went into nursing because... Because I thought the uniforms were so cute! Furiously, the instant the words were gone from her mouth, she turned and snarled at Zilla's hooting laughter. Well, I had to do something! She tested. The defence was like a flat blade slapping the air. Desperately, she turned to Helen Church Hill's goading, faintly supercilious smile, and her voice edged suddenly like a twisted sword. Well, the uniforms are cute, she parrot. They are! They are! I bet you there's more than one girl standing high in the graduating class today, who never would have stuck out her first years bossing and slops and worrying death. If she'd had to stick it out in the unimportant-looking clothes she came from Homan. Even you, Helen Church Hill, with all your pious talk, the day they put your coachman's son in as a new intern, and you got called down from the office for failing to stand when Mr. Young Coachman came into the room. You bawled all night, you did, and swore you'd chuck your whole job and go home the next day if it wasn't that you'd just had a life-size photo taken in full nursing costume to send to your brother's chum at Yale. So there, with a gasp of ineffable satisfaction, she turned from Helen Church Hill. Sure the uniforms are cute. She slashed back at Silla, Forsythe. That's the whole trouble with them. They're so awfully masqueradishly cute. Sure I could have got engaged to the typhoid boy. It would have been as easy as robbing a babe. But lots of girls, I notice, get engaged in their uniforms, feeding a patient perfectly scientifically out of his own silver spoon, who don't seem to stay engaged so especially long in their own street clothes, bungling just plain naturally with their own knives and forks. Even you, Silla, Forsythe. She hacked. Even you, who trot around, like the lords anointed in your pure white tugs, you're just as duchy-looking as anybody else, come to put you in a red hat and a tan coat and a blue skirt. Mechanically she raised her hands to her head as though with some silly thought of keeping the horrid pain in her temples from slipping to her throat, her breast, her feet. Sure the uniforms are cute? She persisted a bit thickly. Sure the typhoid boy was crazy about me. He called me his holy chorus, girl. I heard him raving in his sleep. Lord, save us. What are we to any man but just that? She questioned hotly with renewed venom. Parson, actor, young sinner, old saint, I ask you frankly, girls, on your word of honor, was there ever more than one man in ten went through your hands who didn't turn out soft somewhere before you were through with him, mocking about your sweet eyes while you're racking your optic nerves trying to decipher the dose in a poison bottle, moaning over your wonderful likeness to the lovely young sister they never had, trying to kiss your fingertips when you're struggling to brush their teeth, teasing you to smoke cigarettes with them when they know it would cost you your job. Impishly, without any warning, she crooked her knee and pointed at one homely square-toed shoe in a mind-seed-dancing step. Hoid initially, she threw out her arms and tried to gather Helen and Zilla both into their compass. Oh you holy chorus, girls! She chuckled with maniacal delight. Everybody, altogether now, kick your little kicks, smile your little smiles, tinkle your little thermometers. Steady there, one, two, three, one, two, three. Laughingly, Zilla foresight slipped from the grasp. Don't you dare, holy me! She threatened. In real irritation Helen released herself. I'm no chorus girl, she said coldly. With a little shrill scream of pain, Raymell Gregor's hands went flying back to her temples. Like a person giving orders in a great panic, she turned authoritatively to her two roommates, her fingers all the while boring frenziedly into her temples. Now girls, she warned, stand well back. If my head bursts, you know it's going to burst all to slivers and splinters like a boiler. Ray, you're crazy! hooted Zilla. Just plain vulgar, loony, faltered Helen. Both girls reached out simultaneously to push her aside. Somewhere in the dusty and different street, a bird's note rang out in one wild, delirious ecstasy of untrammeled springtime. To all intents and purposes the sound might have been the one final signal that Raymell Gregor's jangled nerves were waiting for. Oh, I am crazy, am I? She cried with a new fierce joy. Oh, I am crazy, am I? Well, I'll go ask the superintendent and see if I am. Oh, surely they wouldn't try and make me graduate if I really was crazy. Madly she bolted for her bureau, and snatching her own motto down, crumpled its face securely against her skirt and started for the door. Just what the motto was no one but herself knew. Sprawling in paintbrush hieroglyphics on a great flapping sheet of brown wrapping paper, the sentiment, whatever it was, had been nailed face down to the wall for three tantalizing years. No you don't! cried Zilla now as she saw the mystery threatening so meanly to escape her. No you don't! cried Helen. You've seen our motos and now we're going to see yours. Almost crazed with new terror Raymell Gregor went dodging to the right, to the left, to the right again, cleared the rocking chair, a scuffle with padded hands, climbed the trunk, erased with padded feet, reached the door handle at last, yanked the door open and with lungs and temper fairly bursting with momentum, shot down the hall, down some stairs, down some more hall, down some more stairs, to the superintendent's office where, with her precious motto still clutched securely in one hand, she broke open that dignitary startled, near-sighted vision like a young whirlwind of linen and starch and flapping brown paper. Breathlessly, without prelude or preamble, she hurled her grievance into the older woman's grievance dulled ears. Give me back my own face! she demanded preemptorily. Give me back my own face, I say, and my own hands! I tell you, I want my own hands! Helen and Zilla say I am insane, and I want to go home! I tell you, I want my own feet! Face again and my own hands! She reiterated glibly. I mean the face with the mortgage in it and the cinders and the other human expressions. She explained. And the nice grubby country hands that go with that sort of a face. Very accusingly she raised her finger and shook it at the superintendent's perfectly livid countenance. Oh, of course I know I wasn't very much to look at, but at least I matched. What my hands knew, I mean, my face knew. Pies or plowing or maybaskets. What my hands knew, my face knew. That's the way hands and faces ought to work together. But you, you with all your rules and your bossing and your everlasting shh shh, you snubbed all the know anything out of my face and made my hands nothing but two disconnected machines for somebody else to run. And I hate you. You're a monster. You're a blank. Everybody hates you. Mutely then she shut her eyes, bowed her head and waited for the superintendent to smite her dead. The smite she felt quite sure would be a noisy one. First of all she reasoned it would fracture her skull. Naturally then of course it would splinter her spine. Later in all probability it would telescope her knee joints. And never indeed now that she came to think of it had the arches of her feet felt less capable of resisting so terrible an impact. Quite unconsciously she groped out a little with one hand to steady herself against the edge of the desk. But the blow when it came was nothing but a cool finger tapping her pulse. There, there, crooned the superintendent's voice with a most amazing tolerance. But I won't there, there, snapped Raymel Greger. Her eyes were wide open again now and extravagantly dilated. The cool fingers on her pulse seemed to tighten a little. Shhh, admonished the superintendent's mumbling lips. But I won't shhh, shhh, stormed Raymel Greger. Never before in her three years hospital training had she seen her arch enemy, the superintendent so utterly disarmed of irascible temper and arrogant dignity and the sight perplexed and maddened her at one in the same moment. But I won't shhh, shhh. Desperately she jerked her curly blonde head in the direction of the clock on the wall. Here it's four o'clock now. She cried. And in less than four hours you're going to try and make me graduate and go out into the world, God knows where, and charge innocent people twenty-five dollars a week and washing, likelier than not, minding for these hands. She gestured. That don't coordinate at all with this face. She grimaced. But with the face of one of the house doctors or the senior surgeon or even you, who may be way off and come chatka when I need him most. She finished with a confused jumble of accusation and despair. Still with unexplainable amiability the superintendent whirled back into place in her pivot chair and with her left hand which had all this time been rubbaging busily in a lower desk drawer, proffered Ray Malgreger a small fold of paper. Here, my dear. She said. Here's a sedative for you. Take it at once. It'll quiet you perfectly. We all know you've had very hard luck this past month, but you mustn't worry so about the future. The slightest possible tinge of purely professional manner crept back into the older woman's voice. Certainly, Miss Malgreger, with your judgment. With my judgment? cried Ray Malgreger. The phrase was like a red rag to her. With my judgment! Great heavens! That's the whole trouble. I haven't got any judgment. I've never been allowed to have any judgment. All I've ever been allowed to have is a judgment of some flirty young medical student, or the house doctor, or the senior surgeon, or you. Her eyes were fairly piteous with terror. Don't you see that my face doesn't know anything? She faltered, except just a smile and smile and smile and say, yes sir, no sir, yes sir. From curly blonde head to square-toed, common-sand shoes, her little body began to quiver suddenly like the advent of a chill. Oh! what am I going to do? She begged, when I'm way off alone somewhere in the mountains, or a tenement, or a palace, and something happens and there isn't any judgment around to tell me what I ought to do. Abruptly in the doorway, as though summoned by some purely casual flicker of the superintendent's thin fingers, another nurse appeared. Yes, I rang, said the superintendent. Go and ask the senior surgeon if he can come to me here a moment immediately. The senior surgeon? gasped Ray Malgreger. The senior surgeon? With her hands clutching at her throat, she reeled back against the wall for support, like a shore bereft in one second of its tide, like a tree stripped in one second of its leafage. She stood there, utterly stricken of temper, or passion, or any animating human emotion whatsoever. Oh! now I'm going to be expelled. Oh! now I know I'm going to be expelled. She moaned listlessly. Very vaguely into the farthest radiation of her vision, she sensed the approach of a man. Gray-haired, gray-bearded, gray-suited, grayly dogmatic as a block of granite, the senior surgeon loomed up at last in the doorway. I'm in a hurry. He growled. What's the matter? Precipitously Ray Malgreger collapsed into the breach. Oh! there's nothing at all to matter, sir. She stammered. It's only—it's only that I've just decided that I don't want to be a trained nurse. With a gesture of ill-concealed impatience, the superintendent shrugged the absurd speech aside. Dr. Faber, she said, won't you just please assure Miss Malgreger once more that the little Italian boy's death last week was in no conceivable way her fault, that nobody blames her in the slightest or holds her in any possible way responsible. Why? What nonsense? snapped the senior surgeon. What? And the Portuguese woman the week before that? Interrupted Ray Malgreger dully. Stuffened nonsense? said the senior surgeon. It's nothing but coincidence, pure coincidence it might have happened to anybody. And she hasn't slept for almost a fortnight. The superintendent confided, nor touched a drop of food or drink as far as I can make out except just black coffee. I've been expecting this breakdown for some days. And the young drug store clerked the week before that. Ray Malgreger resumed with a sing-song monotony. Bruskly. The senior surgeon stepped forward and, taking the girl by her shoulders, jerked her sharply round to the light and with firm authoritative fingers, rolled one of her eyelids deftly back from its inordinately dilated pupil. Equally bruskly he turned away again. Nothing but moonshine. He muttered. Nothing in the world but too much coffee dope taken on an empty stomach. Empty brain. I'd better have said. When will you girls ever learn any sense? With such light shrewdness his eyes flashed back for an instant over the haggard gray lines that slashed along the corners of her quivering childish mouth. A bit tempersly he began to put on his gloves. Next time you set out to have a brainstorm is Malgreger. He suggested satirically. Tried to have it about something more sensible than imagining that anybody is trying to hold you personally responsible for the existence of death in the world. Bah. He ejaculated fiercely. If you are going to fuss like this over cases hopelessly moribond from the start, what in thunder are you going to do some fine day when out of a perfectly clear and clean sky, security itself turns septic and you lose the president of the United States or a mother of nine children with a hangnail. But I wasn't fussing, sir, protested Ray Malgreger with a timid sort of dignity. Why, it never had occurred to me for a moment that anybody blamed me for anything. Just from sheer astonishment her hands took a new clutch into the torn flapping corner of the motto that she still clung desperately to even at this moment. For heaven's sake, stop crackling that brown paper, stormed the senior surgeon. But I wasn't crackling the brown paper, sir. It's crackling itself, persisted Ray Malgreger very softly. The great blue eyes that lifted to his were brimming full of misery. Oh, can't I make you understand, sir? She stammered. Appealingly she turned to the superintendent. Oh, can't I make anybody understand? All I was trying to say, all I was trying to explain was that I don't want to be a trade nurse after all. Why not? demanded the senior surgeon with a rather noisy click of his glove fasteners. Because my face is tired, said the girl quite simply. The explosive wrath on the senior surgeon's countenance seemed to be directed suddenly at the superintendent. Is this an afternoon tea? He asked, tartly. With six major operations this morning and a probable meningitis diagnosis ahead of me this afternoon, I think I might be spared the babblings of an hysterical nurse. Casually over his shoulder he nodded at the girl. You're a fool! he said and started for the door. Just on the threshold he turned abruptly and looked back. His forehead was furrowed like a Kurdaroy road and the one rampant question in his mind at the moment seemed to be mired hopelessly between his bushy eyebrows. Lord! he exclaimed a bit flounderingly. Are you the nurse that helped me last week on that fractured skull? Yes, sir. said Raymel Greger. Jerkley, the senior surgeon, retraced his footsteps into the office and stood facing her as though with some really terrible accusation. And the freak abdominal? he quizzed sharply. Was it you who threaded that needle for me so blamed slowly and calmly and surely while all the rest of us were jumping up and down and cursing you for no brighter reason than that we couldn't have threaded it ourselves if we had all eternity before us and all creation bleeding to death? Yes, sir. said Raymel Greger. Quite bluntly the senior surgeon reached out and lifted one of her hands to his scowling professional scrutiny. God! he attested. What a hand! You're a wander! Under proper direction you're a wander! It was like myself working with twenty fingers and no thumbs. I never saw anything like it. Almost boishly the embarrassed flush mounted to his cheeks as he jerked away again. Excuse me for not recognizing you. He apologized gruffly. But you girls all look so much alike. As though the eloquence of heaven itself had suddenly descended upon a person hitherto hopelessly, tongue-tied, Raymel Greger lifted an utterly transfigured face to the senior surgeon's grimly astonished gaze. Yes. Yes, sir. She cried joyously. That's just exactly what the trouble is. That's just exactly what I was trying to express, sir. My face is all worn out trying to look alike. My cheeks are almost sprung with artificial smiles. My eyes are fairly bulging with unshed tears. My nose aches like a toothache, trying never to turn up at anything. I'm smothered with the discipline of it. I'm choked with the affectation. I tell you, I just can't breathe through a trained nurse's face anymore. I tell you, sir, I'm sick to death of being nothing but a type. I want to look like myself. I want to see what life could do to a silly face like mine if it ever got a chance. When other women are crying, I want the fun of crying. When other women look scared to death, I want the fun of looking scared to death. Historically, again, with shrewish emphasis, she began to repeat, I won't be a nurse. I tell you, I won't. I won't. Pray, what brought you so suddenly to this remarkable decision? Scoffed the senior surgeon. A letter from my father, sir. She confided more quietly. A letter about some dogs. Togs? Who did the senior surgeon? Yes, sir. Said the white-litten nurse. A trifle speculatively for an instant, she glanced at the superintendent's face and then back again to the senior surgeon's. Yes, sir. She repeated with increasing confidence. Up in Nova Scotia, my father raises hunting dogs. Oh, no special fancy kind, sir. She hastened, in all honesty, to explain. Just dogs, you know. Just mixed dogs, pointers with curly tails and shaggy-coated hounds and brindled spaniels and all that sort of thing. Just mongrels, you know, but very clever. And people, sir, come all the way from Boston to buy dogs of him, and once a man came away from London to learn the secret of his training. Well, what is the secret of his training? Quizzed the senior surgeon with a sudden eager interest of his sportsman. I should think it would be pretty hard. He acknowledged, in a mixed gang like that, to decide just which particular dog was suited to what particular game. Yes, that's just it, sir. Beamed the white-litten nurse. A dog, of course, will chase anything that runs. That's just dog. But when a dog really begins to care for what he's chasing, he wags. That's hunting. Father doesn't calculate. He says on training a dog on anything he doesn't wagon. Yes, but what's that got to do with you? Asked the senior surgeon a bit impatiently. With ill-concealed dismay, the white-litten nurse stood staring blankly at the senior surgeon's gross stupidity. Why, don't you see? She faltered. I've been chasing this nursing job three whole years now, and there's no wag to it. Oh, hell, said the senior surgeon. If he hadn't said oh, hell, he would have grinned, and it hadn't been a grinning day, and he certainly didn't intend to begin grinning at any such late hour as that in the afternoon. With his dignity once reassured, he relaxed then a trifle. For heaven's sake, what do you want to be? He asked, not unkindly. With an abrupt effort at self-control, Raymal Gregor jerked her head into at least the outer semblance of a person lost in almost fathomless thought. Why, I'm sure. I don't know, sir. She acknowledged, wordly. But it would be a great pity, I suppose, to waste all the grand training that's gone into my hands. With sudden conviction her limp shoulders stiffened a trifle. My oldest sister, she stammered, bosses the laundry in one of the big hotels in Halifax, and my youngest sister teaches school in Monkton. But I'm so strong, you know, and I like to move things around so, and everything. Maybe I could get a position somewhere as general housework girl. With a roar of amusement as astonishing to himself as to his listeners, the senior surgeon's chin jerked suddenly upward. You're crazy as a loon. He confided cordially. Great Scott, if you can work up a condition like this on coffee, what would you do on? He hesitated grimly. Malted milk. As unheralded as his amusement gross irritability overtook him again. Will you stop rattling that brown paper? He thundered at her. Innocently as a child she rebuffed the accusation and ignored the temper. But I'm not rattling it, sir. She protested. I'm simply trying to hide what's on the other side of it. What is on the other side of it? demanded the senior surgeon bluntly. With unquestioning docility the girl turned the paper around. From behind her desk the austere superintendent twisted her neck most informally to decipher the scrawling hieroglyphics. Don't ever be bumptious? She read forth jerkily with a questioning incredulous sort of emphasis. Don't ever be bumptious? squinted the senior surgeon perplexedly through his glasses. Yes, said Raymal Gregor very timidly. It's my motto. Your motto? sniffed the superintendent. Your motto? chuckled the senior surgeon. Yes, my motto. Repeated Raymal Gregor with the slightest perceptible tinge of resentment. And it's a perfectly good motto, too. Only, of course, it hasn't got any style to it. That's why I didn't want the girls to see it. She confided a bit drearily. Then palpably before their eyes they saw her spirit leap into ineffable pride. My father gave it to me. She announced briskly. And my father said that when I came home in June, if I could honestly say that I'd never once been bumptious, all my three years here he'd give me a heifer and... Well, I guess you've lost your heifer. So the senior surgeon bluntly lost my heifer. Gasped the girl, beguied and incredulous, she stood for an instant, staring back and forth from the superintendent's face to the senior surgeon's. You mean, she stammered, you mean that I've been bumptious just now? You mean that after all these years of meach and meekness I've lost? Plainly, even to the senior surgeon and the superintendent, the bones in her knees weakened suddenly like knots of tissue paper. No power on earth could have made her break discipline by taking a chair while the senior surgeon stood, so she sank limply down to the floor instead, with two great solemn tears welling slowly through the fingers with which she tried vainly to cover her face. And the heifer was brown, with one white ear it was awful cunning. She confided mumblingly, and a date from my hand a warm and sticky like loving sandpaper. There was no protest in her voice, nor any wine of complaint but merely the abject submission to fate of one who from earliest infancy had seen other crops blighted by other frosts. Then tremulously, with the air of one who, just as a matter of spiritual tidiness, would purge her soul of all sad secrets, she lifted her entrancing tear-flushed face from her strong, sturdy, utterly unemotional fingers and stared with amazing blueness, amazing blandness into the senior surgeon's scowling scrutiny. And I'd named her for you, she said. I'd named her patience for you. Instantly, then, she scrambled to her knees to try and assuage by some miraculous apology the horrible shock which she read in the senior surgeon's face. Oh, of course, sir, I know it isn't scientific. She pleaded desperately. Oh, of course, sir, I know it isn't scientific at all. But up where I live, you know, instead of praying for anybody, we name a young animal for the virtue that that person seems to need the most. And if you tend the young animal carefully and train it right, why, it's just superstition, of course. But, oh, sir, she floundered helplessly. The virtue you needed most in your business was what I meant. Oh, really, sir, I never thought of criticizing your character. Roughly the senior surgeon laughed. Embarrassment was in the laugh and anger and a fierce fiery sort of resentment against both the embarrassment and the anger. But no possible trace of amusement. Impatiently he glanced up at the fast-speeding clock. Good Lord! he exclaimed, I'm an hour late now. Scowling like a pirate, he clicked the cover of his watch open and shut for an uncertain instant. Then suddenly he laughed again, and there was nothing whatsoever in his laugh this time except just amusement. See here, Miss Bozzy Tamer. He said, If the superintendent is willing, go get your hat and coat, and I'll take you out on that meningitis case with me. It's a thirty-mile run if it's a block, and I guess if you sit on the front seat it will blow the cobwebs out of your brain, if anything will. He finished, not unkindly. Like a white hen sensing the approach of some utterly unseen danger, the superintendent seemed to bristle suddenly in every direction. It's a bit irregular. She protested in her most even tone. Bah! saw some of the most useful of the French verbs. snapped the senior surgeon. In the midst of authority his voice could be inestimably soft and reassuring, but sometimes on the brink of asserting said authority he had a tone that was distinctly unpleasant. Oh, very well, conceded the superintendent with some waspishness. Hazily, for an instant, Ray Malgreger stood staring into the superintendent's uncordial face. I'd, I'd apologize, she faltered, but I don't even know what I said. It just blew up. Perfectly coldly and perfectly civilly the superintendent received the overture. It was quite evident, Miss Malgreger, that you were not altogether responsible at the moment. She conceded in common justice. Heavily then, like a person walking in her sleep, the girl trailed out of the room to get her coat and hat. Slamming one desk drawer after another the superintendent drowned the sluggish sound of her retreating footsteps. There goes my best nurse. She said grimly, my very best nurse. Oh, no, not the most brilliant, I didn't mean that, but the most reliable, the most nearly perfect human machine that it has ever been my privilege to see turned out. The one girl that weekend, week out, month after month and year after year has always done what she's told when she was told and in the exact way she was told, without questioning anything, without protesting anything, without supplementing anything, with some disastrous original conviction of her own, and look at her now. Tragically the superintendent rubbed her hand across her worried brow. Coffee, you said it was. She asked, skeptically, are there any special antidotes for coffee? With a queer little quirk to his mouth the gruff senior surgeon jerked his glance back from the open window where, with the glim of a slim torn boy's shankle, the frisky young spring went scurrying through the treetops. What's that you asked? He quizzed sharply. Any antidotes for coffee? Yes, dozens of them, but none for spring. Spring, sniffed the superintendent. A little shiveringly she reached out and gathered a white-knitted shawl around her shoulders. Spring, I don't see what springs got to do with Ray Malgreger or any other young outlaw in my graduating class. If graduation came in November it would be just the same. There are set of ingrates every one of them. Fahemintly she turned aside to her card index of names and slapped the cards through one by one without finding one single soothing exception. Yes, sir, a set of ingrates. She repeated accusingly. Spend your life trying to teach them what to do and how to do it. Cram ideas into those that haven't got any and yank ideas out of those who have got too many. Refind them, toughen them, scold them, coax them everlastingly, drill and discipline them, and then just as you get them to a place where they move like clockwork and you actually believe you can trust them. Then graduation day comes around and they think they're all safe, and every single individual member of the class breaks out and runs amok with the one dare devil deed she's been itching to do every day the past three years. Why, this very morning I caught the president of the senior class with a breakfast train her hands, stealing the cherry out of her patient's grapefruit. And three of the girls reported for duty as bold as brass with their hair frizzed tight as a nigger dolls, and the girl who's going into a convent next week was trying on the laundryman's derby hat as I came up from lunch. And now, now, the superintendent's voice went suddenly a little hoarse. And now here's Miss Mal Gregor intriguing to get an automobile ride with you. Eh? cried the senior surgeon with a jump. What? Is this an insane asylum? Is it a nirvine? Madedly he started for the door. Order a ton of bromides, he called back over his shoulder. Order a carload of them, saturate the whole place with them, drown the whole damned place. Halfway down the lower hall, all his nerves on edge, all his unwanted boyish impulsiveness quenched noxiously like a candle flame, he met and passed Ray Mal Gregor without a sign of recognition. God, how I hate women. He kept mumbling to himself as he struggled clumsily all alone into the torn sleeve lining of his thousand-dollar mink coat. End of chapter three.