wo people asked if they might come in. There
are some anxious things going on."

He leant his head on his hand for a moment with a sigh, then forcibly
wrenched himself from what were evidently recurrent thoughts.

"Do tell me some more of what you are doing!" he said, bending forward
to her. "You don't know how much I have thought of what you have told me
already."

"I'm doing just the same," she said, laughing. "Don't take so much
interest in it. It's the fashion just now to admire nurses; but it's
ridiculous. We do our work like other people--sometimes badly, sometimes
well. And some of us wouldn't do it if we could help it."

She threw out the last words with a certain vehemence, as though eager
to get away from any sentimentalism about herself. Hallin studied her
kindly.

"Is this miscellaneous work a relief to you after hospital?" he asked.

"For the present. It is more exciting, and one sees more character. But
there are drawbacks. In hospital everything was settled for you--every
hour was full, and there were always orders to follow. And the 'off'
times were no trouble--I never did anything else but walk up and down
the Embankment if it was fine, or go to the National Gallery if it was
wet."

"And it was the monotony you liked?"

She made a sign of assent.

"Strange!" said Hallin, "who could ever have foreseen it?"

She flushed.

"You might have foreseen it, I think," she said, not without a little
impatience. "But I didn't like it all at once. I hated a great deal of
it. If they had let me alone all the time to scrub and polish and
wash--the things they set me to at first--I thought I should have been
quite happy. To see my table full of glasses without a spot, and my
brass-taps shining, made me as proud as a peacock! But then of course I
had to learn the real work, and that was very odd at first."

"How? Morally?"

She nodded, laughing at her own remembrances. "Yes--it seemed to me all
topsy-turvy. I thought the Sister at the head of the ward rather a
stupid person. If I had seen her at Mellor I shouldn't have spoken two
words to her. And here she was ordering me about--rating me as I had
never rated a house-maid--laughing at me for not knowing this or that,
and generally making me feel that a raw probationer was one of the
things of least account in the whole universe. I knew perfectly well
that she had said to herself, 'Now then I must take that proud girl down
a peg, or she will be no use to