Sweetapple Cove | Page 2

to their patients. "Our lives
are practically only beginning. Until now we have been like the
vegetables that are brought up in little wooden boxes. We are to be
taken up and planted in a field, where we are to grow up into something
useful."
"And we shall enjoy a great advantage over the young cabbages and
lettuces," I chimed in. "We shall have the inestimable privilege of being

permitted to select the particular farm or enclosure that pleases us best."
"Of course," said Dora Maclennon, cheerfully.
"But I should be ever so glad to have you select for the two of us," I
told her. "I guarantee to follow you blindly."
She put her hand on my arm and patted it in the abominably soothing
way she has doubtless acquired in the babies' ward. In my case it was
about as effectual as the traditional red rag to a bull.
"Don't you dare touch me like that," I resented. "I'm quite through with
the mumps and measles. My complaint is one you don't understand at
all. You are unable to sympathize with me because love, to you, is a
mere theoretical thing. You've heard of it, perhaps you are even ready
to admit that some people suffer from such an ailment, but you don't
really know anything about it. It has not been a part of your curriculum.
I've been trying to inoculate you with this distemper but it won't take."
"I suppose I'm a poor sort of soil for that kind of culture," she replied,
rather wistfully.
"There is no finer soil in the world," I protested, doggedly.
Every man in the world and at least half the women would have agreed
with me. The grace of her charming figure, her smiles and that one little
dimple, the waving abundance of her silken hair, the rich inflections of
her voice, each and all contradicted that foolish supposition of hers.
"Well, I thought this was an invitation to dinner," remarked Dora,
sweetly, with all the brutal talent of her sex for changing the drift of
conversation. "Of course they fed us well at the hospital, when we had
time to eat, but...."
"Is that your last word?" I asked, trying to subdue the eagerness of my
voice.
"If you don't really care to go...."

I rose and sought my hat and overcoat, while Dora wandered about my
unpretentious office.
"Your landlady could take lessons from Paddy's pig in cleanliness," she
declared, running a finger over my bookcase and contemplating it with
horror. "I wonder that you, a surgeon, should be an accomplice to such
a mess."
"It's pretty bad," I admitted, "but the poor thing has weak eyes, and she
has seen better days."
"She deserves the bad ones, then," Dora exclaimed.
"As in the case of many other maladies, we have as yet been unable to
discover the microbe of woman's inhumanity to woman," I observed.
"When doggies meet they commonly growl," said Dora, "and when
pussies meet they usually spit and scratch. Each according to his or her
nature. And it seems to me that you could afford a new overcoat. That
one is positively becoming green."
"I do believe I have another one, somewhere," I admitted.
"Then go and find it," she commanded. "You need some one to look
after you."
I turned on her like the proverbial flash, or perhaps like the
Downtrodden worm.
"Isn't that just what I've been gnashing my teeth over?" I asked. "I'm
glad you have the grace to admit it."
"I'll admit anything you like," she said. "But, John dear, we can't really
be sure yet that I'm the one who ought to do it. And--and maybe there
will be no room at the tables unless we hurry a little."
She was buttoning up her gloves again, quite coolly, and cast approving
glances at some radiographic prints on my wall.

"That must have been a splendid fracture," she commented.
"You are a few million years old in the ways of Eve," I told her, "but
you are still young in the practice of trained nursing. To you broken
legs and, perhaps, broken hearts, are as yet but interesting cases."
She turned her shapely head towards me, and for an instant her eyes
searched mine.
"Do you really believe that?" she asked, in a very low-sweet voice.
I stood before her, penitently.
"I don't suppose I do," I acknowledged. "Let us say that it was just
some of the growling of the dog. He doesn't usually mean anything by
it."
"You're an awfully good fellow, John," said the little nurse, pleasantly.
"I know I've been hurting you a bit. Please, I'm sorry the medicine
tastes so badly."
The only thing I could do was to lift up one of her hands and kiss a