The White Linen Nurse | Page 5

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 smouch 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 alto tones, "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 the smouch 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.

CHAPTER II
It was the other room-mate this time. The only real aristocrat in the whole graduating
class, high-browed, high-cheekboned,--eyes like some far-sighted young prophet,--mouth
even yet faintly arrogant with the ineradicable consciousness of caste,--a plain, eager,
stripped-for-a-long-journey type of face,--this was Helene 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 women who had bred Helene 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 parleying 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. Helene
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 an
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, drolly exaggerated expression of
complacency that characterizes the faces of all people who, in a distinctive uniform, for a

reasonably 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 Zillah Forsyth into the semblance of a lady, snubbed Helene
Churchill into the substance of plain womanhood, and, still uncertain just what to do with
Rae 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 fair.
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, Rae Malgregor now with
quickly readjusted cap and collar began to hurl herself into the task of her own packing.
From her open bureau drawer, with a sudden impish impulse towards worldly wisdom,
she extracted first of all the photograph of the young brakeman.
"See, Helene! My new beau!" she giggled experimentally.
In mild-eyed surprise Helene Churchill glanced up from her work. "Your beau?" she
corrected. "Why, that's Zillah's picture."
"Well, it's mine now!" snapped Rae Malgregor with unexpected edginess. "It's mine now
all right. Zillah said I could have him! Zillah said I could--write to him--if I wanted to!"
she finished a bit breathlessly.
Wider and wider Helene Churchill's eyes dilated. "Write to a man--whom you don't
know?" she gasped. "Why, Rae! 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 Rae Malgregor's tongue crept out in pink
derision. "Bah!" she taunted. "What's 'nice'? That's the whole matter with you, Helene
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 Zillah's
sainted eyes. "Bah!