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Page 6
The lame girl sat down in the centre of the ward, and the buzz died
away. She was not pretty, and she was very nervous. Twenty-two
frowned a trifle.
"Poor devils," he said to himself. But Jane Brown put away her
hunting-case watch, and the lame girl swept the ward with soft eyes
that had in them a pity that was almost a benediction.
Then she sang. Her voice was like her eyes, very sweet and rather
frightened, but tender. And suddenly something a little hard and
selfish in Twenty-two began to be horribly ashamed of itself. And,
for no earthly reason in the world, he began to feel like a cumberer
of the earth. Before she had finished the first song, he was
thinking that perhaps when he was getting about again, he might run
over to France for a few months in the ambulance service. A fellow
really ought to do his bit.
At just about that point Jane Brown turned and saw him. And although
he had run all these risks to get to her, and even then had an
extremely cold tin sign lying on his knee under the blanket, at
first she did not know him. The shock of this was almost too much
for him. In all sorts of places people were glad to see him,
especially women. He was astonished, but it was good for him.
She recognised him almost immediately, however, and flushed a
little, because she knew he had no business there. She was awfully
bound up with rules.
"I came back on purpose to see you," said Twenty-two, when at last
the lame girl had limped away. "Because, that day I came in and you
looked after me, you know, I--must have talked a lot of nonsense."
"Morphia makes some people talk," she said. It was said in an exact
copy of the ward nurse's voice, a frightfully professional and
impersonal tone.
"But," said Twenty-two, stirring uneasily, "I said a lot that wasn't
true. You may have forgotten, but I haven't. Now that about a girl
named Mabel, for instance----"
He stirred again, because, after all, what did it matter what he had
said? She was gazing over the ward. She was not interested in him.
She had almost forgotten him. And as he stirred Mr. Simond's cane
fell out. It was immediately followed by the tin sign, which only
gradually subsided, face up, on the bare floor, in a slowly
diminishing series 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?
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