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Page 7
He hoped she was going to like him, because she was going to see him
a lot. Also, he liked her even better than he had remembered that he
did. She had a sort of thoroughbred look that he liked. And he liked
the way her hair was soft and straight and shiny. And he liked the
way she was all business and no nonsense. And the way she counted
pulses, with her lips moving and a little frown between her
eyebrows. And he liked her for being herself--which is, after all,
the reason why most men like the women they like, and extremely
reasonable.
The First Assistant loaned him Browning that afternoon, and he read
"Pippa Passes." He thought Pippa must have looked like the
Probationer.
The Head was a bit querulous that evening. The Heads of Training
Schools get that way now and then, although they generally reveal it
only to the First Assistant. They have to do so many irreconcilable
things, such as keeping down expenses while keeping up requisitions,
and remembering the different sorts of sutures the Staff likes, and
receiving the Ladies' Committee, and conducting prayers and
lectures, and knowing by a swift survey of a ward that the stands
have been carbolised and all the toe-nails cut. Because it is
amazing the way toe-nails grow in bed.
The Head would probably never have come out flatly, but she had a
wretched cold, and the First Assistant was giving her a mustard
footbath, which was very hot. The Head sat up with a blanket over
her shoulders, and read lists while her feet took on the blush of
ripe apples. And at last she said:
"How is that Probationer with the ridiculous name getting along?"
The First Assistant poured in more hot water.
"N. Jane?" she asked. "Well, she's a nice little thing, and she
seems willing. But, of course----"
The Head groaned.
"Nineteen!" she said. "And no character at all. I detest fluttery
people. She flutters the moment I go into the ward."
The First Assistant sat back and felt of her cap, which was of
starched tulle and was softening a bit from the steam. She felt a
thrill of pity for the Probationer. She, too, had once felt fluttery
when the Head came in.
"She is very anxious to stay," she observed. "She works hard, too.
I----"
"She has no personality, no decision," said the Head, and sneezed
twice. She was really very wretched, and so she was unfair. "She is
pretty and sweet. But I cannot run my training school on prettiness
and sweetness. Has Doctor Harvard come in yet?"
"I--I think not," said the First Assistant. She looked up quickly,
but the Head was squeezing a lemon in a cup of hot water beside her.
Now, while the Head was having a footbath, and Twenty-two was having
a stock-taking, and Augustus Baird was having his symptoms recorded,
Jane Brown was having a shock.
She heard an unmistakable shuffling of feet in the corridor.
Sounds take on much significance in a hospital, and probationers
study them, especially footsteps. It gives them a moment sometimes
to think what to do next.
_Internes_, for instance, frequently wear rubber soles on their
white shoes and have a way of slipping up on one. And the engineer
goes on a half run, generally accompanied by the clanking of a tool
or two. And the elevator man runs, too, because generally the bell
is ringing. And ward patients shuffle about in carpet slippers, and
the pharmacy clerk has a brisk young step, inclined to be jaunty.
But it is the Staff which is always unmistakable. It comes along the
corridor deliberately, inexorably. It plants its feet firmly and
with authority. It moves with the inevitability of fate, with the
pride of royalty, with the ease of the best made-to-order boots. The
ring of a Staff member's heel on a hospital corridor is the most
authoritative sound on earth. He may be the gentlest soul in the
world, but he will tread like royalty.
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