Love Stories | Page 6

of
crashes.
Jane Brown stooped and picked them both up and placed them on his
lap. Then, very stern, she marched out of the ward into the corridor, and
there subsided into quiet hysterics of mirth. Twenty-two, who hated to
be laughed at, followed her in the chair, looking extremely annoyed.
"What else was I to do?" he demanded, after a time. "Of course, if you
report it, I'm gone."
"What do you intend to do with it now?" she asked. All her
professional manner had gone, and she looked alarmingly young.
"If I put it back, I'll only have to steal it again. Because I am absolutely
bored to death in that room of mine. I have played a thousand games of
solitaire."
The Probationer looked around. There was no one in sight.
"I should think," she suggested, "that if you slipped it behind that
radiator, no one would ever know about it."
Fortunately, the ambulance gong set up a clamour below the window
just then, and no one heard one of the hospital's most cherished rules
going, as one may say, into the discard.
The Probationer leaned her nose against the window and looked down.
A coloured man was being carried in on a stretcher. Although she did
not know it--indeed, never did know it--the coloured gentleman in
question was one Augustus Baird.
Soon afterward Twenty-two squeaked--his chair needed
oiling--squeaked back to his lonely room and took stock. He found that

he was rid of Mabel, but was still a reporter, hurt in doing his duty. He
had let this go because he saw that duty was a sort of fetish with the
Probationer. And since just now she liked him for what she thought he
was, why not wait to tell her until she liked him for himself?
He hoped she was going to like him, because she was going to see him
a lot. Also, he liked her even better than he had remembered that he did.
She had a sort of thoroughbred look that he liked. And he liked the way
her hair was soft and straight and shiny. And he liked the way she was
all business and no nonsense. And the way she counted pulses, with her
lips moving and a little frown between her eyebrows. And he liked her
for being herself--which is, after all, the reason why most men like the
women they like, and extremely reasonable.
The First Assistant loaned him Browning that afternoon, and he read
"Pippa Passes." He thought Pippa must have looked like the
Probationer.
The Head was a bit querulous that evening. The Heads of Training
Schools get that way now and then, although they generally reveal it
only to the First Assistant. They have to do so many irreconcilable
things, such as keeping down expenses while keeping up requisitions,
and remembering the different sorts of sutures the Staff likes, and
receiving the Ladies' Committee, and conducting prayers and lectures,
and knowing by a swift survey of a ward that the stands have been
carbolised and all the toe-nails cut. Because it is amazing the way
toe-nails grow in bed.
The Head would probably never have come out flatly, but she had a
wretched cold, and the First Assistant was giving her a mustard
footbath, which was very hot. The Head sat up with a blanket over her
shoulders, and read lists while her feet took on the blush of ripe apples.
And at last she said:
"How is that Probationer with the ridiculous name getting along?"
The First Assistant poured in more hot water.

"N. Jane?" she asked. "Well, she's a nice little thing, and she seems
willing. But, of course----"
The Head groaned.
"Nineteen!" she said. "And no character at all. I detest fluttery people.
She flutters the moment I go into the ward."
The First Assistant sat back and felt of her cap, which was of starched
tulle and was softening a bit from the steam. She felt a thrill of pity for
the Probationer. She, too, had once felt fluttery when the Head came in.
"She is very anxious to stay," she observed. "She works hard, too. I----"
"She has no personality, no decision," said the Head, and sneezed twice.
She was really very wretched, and so she was unfair. "She is pretty and
sweet. But I cannot run my training school on prettiness and sweetness.
Has Doctor Harvard come in yet?"
"I--I think not," said the First Assistant. She looked up quickly, but the
Head was squeezing a lemon in a cup of hot water beside her.
Now, while the Head was having a footbath, and Twenty-two was
having a stock-taking, and Augustus Baird was having his symptoms
recorded, Jane Brown was having a shock.
She heard an unmistakable shuffling of feet in