Love Stories | Page 9

soiled dressings--Jane Brown gritted her teeth.
"Keep quiet," said the S.S.I., who was a good fellow, but had never
been stabbed in the neck for running away with somebody else's wife.
"Eet hurt," said Tony. "Ow."
Jane Brown turned very pink.

"Why don't you let me cut it off properly?" she said, in a strangled tone.
The total result of this was that Jane Brown was reprimanded by the
First Assistant, and learned some things about ethics.
"But," she protested, "it was both stupid and cruel. And if I know I am
right----"
"How are you to know you are right?" demanded the First Assistant,
crossly. Her feet were stinging. "'A little knowledge is a dangerous
thing.'" This was a favorite quotation of hers, although not Browning.
"Nurses in hospitals are there to carry out the doctor's orders. Not to
think or to say what they think unless they are asked. To be intelligent,
but----"
"But not too intelligent!" said the Probationer. "I see."
This was duly reported to the Head, who observed that it was merely
what she had expected and extremely pert. Her cold was hardly any
better.
It was taking the Probationer quite a time to realise her own total lack
of significance in all this. She had been accustomed to men who rose
when a woman entered a room and remained standing as long as she
stood. And now she was in a new world, where she had to rise and
remain standing while a cocky youth in ducks, just out of medical
college, sauntered in with his hands in his pockets and took a
boutonnière from the ward bouquet.
It was probably extremely good for her.
She was frightfully tired that day, and toward evening the little glow of
service began to fade. There seemed to be nothing to do for Johnny but
to wait. Doctor Willie had seemed to think that nature would clear
matters up there, and had requested no operation. She smoothed beds
and carried cups of water and broke another thermometer. And she put
the eggs from home in the ward pantry and made egg-nogs of them for
Stanislas Krzykolski, who was unaccountably upset as to stomach.

She had entirely forgotten Twenty-two. He had stayed away all that day,
in a sort of faint hope that she would miss him. But she had not. She
was feeling rather worried, to tell the truth. For a Staff surgeon going
through the ward, had stopped by Johnny's bed and examined the pupils
of his eyes, and had then exchanged a glance with the Senior Surgical
Interne that had perplexed her.
In the chapel at prayers that evening all around her the nurses sat and
rested, their tired hands folded in their laps. They talked a little among
themselves, but it was only a buzzing that reached the Probationer
faintly. Some one near was talking about something that was missing.
"Gone?" she said. "Of course it is gone. The bath-room man reported it
to me and I went and looked."
"But who in the world would take it?"
"My dear," said the first speaker, "who does take things in a hospital,
anyhow? Only--a tin sign!"
It was then that the Head came in. She swept in; her grey gown, her
grey hair gave her a majesty that filled the Probationer with awe.
Behind her came the First Assistant with the prayer-book and hymnal.
The Head believed in form.
Jane Brown offered up a little prayer that night for Johnny Fraser, and
another little one without words, that Doctor Willie was right. She sat
and rested her weary young body, and remembered how Doctor Willie
was loved and respected, and the years he had cared for the whole
countryside. And the peace of the quiet room, with the Easter lilies on
the tiny altar, brought rest to her.
It was when prayers were over that the Head made her announcement.
She rose and looked over the shadowy room, where among the rows of
white caps only the Probationer's head was uncovered, and she said:
"I have an announcement to make to the training school. One which I
regret, and which will mean a certain amount of hardship and

deprivation.
"A case of contagion has been discovered in one of the wards, and it
has been considered necessary to quarantine the hospital. The doors
were closed at seven-thirty this evening."
II
Considering that he could not get out anyhow, Twenty-two took the
news of the quarantine calmly. He reflected that, if he was shut in, Jane
Brown was shut in also. He had a wicked hope, at the beginning, that
the Senior Surgical Interne had been shut out, but at nine o'clock that
evening that young gentleman showed up at the door of his room, said
"Cheer-o," came in,