with the blade up, to check a haemorrhage! If they were Zulus," she
added, flashing, "some one might do something for them."

[Illustration: HER WEEKLY CHECK, PLUS A DRAFT FOR A HUNDRED POUNDS]

I could not keep myself from staring at her: with that flush, those
kindling brown eyes and that heaving bosom, my nurse was near to being
a handsome woman! And all because the natives of North Carolina had no
adequate hospital service. Can you imagine anything more
extraordinary? I opened the book curiously; not, of course, that I
cared tuppence for the natives, but that I had actually begun to feel
interested in Harriet Buxton.

I should never have thought of it again, probably, but for Harriet
herself, for now that the magic string had been touched, her heart
overflowed to its echoes, and my waking hours were filled with
anecdotes touching, brutal or humourous, of her years of joy and
labour. Her cottage rent had cost her forty dollars, her clothes
nothing, her food had come largely from the grateful people. Over and
over again she returned to her ridiculously pitiful calculations. She
could live for one hundred dollars a year. She could have the use of a
deserted schoolhouse, free. Two hundred dollars would fit up a tiny
hospital and lending-closet, with linen, rubber articles, simple
sick-room conveniences. If she had five hundred, she would start on
that and trust to getting help to go on with. She could stay there a
year, then nurse for a year, and go back with the money she had saved.

And so on, and so on, and so on! The floods of North Carolina needs
that swept over my helpless head would have drowned a stronger brain
than mine. In vain I tried to dam this tide of confidences and hopes
and ha'penny economies: it was useless. After a week, during which
actual photographs, hideous blue prints, the first advance guard of
that flood of amateur photography destined to wash over the world,
were brought out for my edification, I rebelled and declared myself
cured.

"And to get rid of you," I added crossly, "I am going to give you
this," and I handed her her weekly cheque, plus a draft for a hundred
pounds. "Take it, and get off to those benighted natives, for heaven's
sake!"

She stared at it, at me, at it again, then choked and fled to her
room. I felt like a fool.

Later, when I saw what it really meant to the absurd creature, I
surreptitiously copied bits of the sordid little diary, and sent them
to Roger with a s