e
the hospital_"--the tragedy in her tone almost caused her friend to
break into laughter--"and study all sorts of awful Latin things. She
opened a catalogue and read aloud, 'Physiology, bacteriology,
chemistry, dietetics,' and goodness knows what else over at Simmons
College, for _four whole months_. I shall simply die, I just know that I
shall!"

Miss Merriman gently explained the necessity for each of them; but
wisely refrained from further frightening her by adding that a full
year's course was to be crowded into those sixteen weeks.

In due time these, too, were over, the awe-inspiring examination passed,
and Smiles was accepted as worthy of a place among the pupil nurses.
Like an athlete she had finished her preliminary training, and was ready
for the long, gruelling race toward the goal, two and a half years
distant.

Hard work though it was, Rose found all her days sunny ones, and only
one cloud partly obscured their brightness. Donald she saw on rare
occasions only, as the demands upon his time doubled and redoubled, and
of course their brief meetings at the hospital demanded strict formality
of intercourse. Deeply as he felt for her, he was a physician first,
last and all the time, and as uncompromising in his own ethics as he was
in his requirements of the nurses.

Yet, if she saw him seldom, there was another whom she saw increasingly
often. Dr. Bentley's attitude towards Rose was also strictly
professional; but he never failed to bow and speak pleasantly when he
met her in the corridors or wards, and she instinctively felt that in
him she had found another real friend.

Rose was too much a child of nature to be given to thinking much about
men; but there were minutes, just before sleep came at night, when her
mind would visualize Donald's strong, kindly face, which seemed to look
down at her with an expression almost fatherly, and she would whisper a
little prayer that she might help him as she had resolved to, that night
on the mountain top. And at such times another face, light, where his
was dark, came, not to supplant, but to supplement it.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE CALL OF THE RED CROSS

Despite the enthralling interest of her new work and surroundings, it
seemed to Rose, during the year after she gained entrance to the temple
of her desire, that her life was standing still, while all things else
were speeding by her at a breakneck pace.

It had never been so before. Even in the isolation