The White Linen Nurse | Page 4

girl in our class has wanted to know! Where did you 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 Zillah Forsyth's pale, ascetic cheek dawned a most amazing dimple. "Sort of
jarred you girls some, didn't it," she queried, "to see me strutting round 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 year's 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 show-case! 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 Rae Malgregor's hand. "You can have
it if you want to," she said. "I'll trade it to you for that lace corset-cover of yours!"
Like water dripping through a sieve the photograph slid through Rae Malgregor'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--to trade it for a corset-cover."
"Oh, very well," drawled Zillah Forsyth. "Tear it up then!"

Expeditiously with frank, non-sentimental fingers Rae Malgregor tore the tough
cardboard across, and again across, and once again across, and threw 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 doll-house she trotted over to her bureau, extracted the lace
corset-cover, and came back with it in her hand to lean across Zillah Forsyth's shoulder
again and watch the men's faces go slipping off into oblivion. Once again, abruptly
without warning, she halted the process with a breathless exclamation.
"Oh, of course this waist is the only one I've got with ribbons in it," she asserted
irrelevantly. "But I'm perfectly willing to trade it for that picture!" she pointed out with
unmistakably explicit finger-tip.
Chucklingly Zillah Forsyth 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 brakeman
or something. He's a--"
Perfectly unreluctantly Rae Malgregor dropped the fluff of lace and ribbons into Zillah'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 rap 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 Zillah Forsyth turned and stared up into the younger girl's face, and found no
guile to whet her stare against.
"Well of all the ridiculous--unmitigated greenhorns!" 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 Rae Malgregor's
garishly juvenile blondeness.
"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 Zillah Forsyth 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, Rae Malgregor's hands went clutching at her breast. "Why, once!" she gasped.
"Why, once!"
Convulsively Zillah Forsyth 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!"