"You may have Miss Gemmell to-morrow afternoon, and two hours on
Sunday."

"That will not suit me at all! Now, please forget all that has been
said, and I will tell you that I Mrs. David Gemmell of Lake City,
Michigan, am a poor tired woman, threatened with nervous prostration,
have already chills of apprehension running down my back, coupled with
flushes of expectation to my head." By this time Mary, the Lady
Superintendent, and two other nurses present were all attention, and
Belle added gravely:

"I want one of your best private rooms on Corridor B, where Miss Gemmell
is on duty, and I should like to see the House Surgeon at once."

So Belle was comfortably and luxuriously established in the hospital,
and the only drawback was that she had to be served with her meals in
her room.

"What feasts we had--Mary and I," she said. "What fun! Before I left I
had demoralized that whole hospital staff, and broken every rule in the
institution. It did them all good."

"I hope you haven't been indiscreet," said I.

"Indiscreet?"

"You must remember that Mary braced herself up to go to the hospital
when she was 'out' with you. Now you've gone and made so much of her
that she'll think, whenever things become too hot for her, she has only
to march straight back here again."

"She assures me she _will_ graduate."

"There should never be any question of that."

"David, I've only told you the one side. If that girl were my very own I
should pluck her out of that particular fire. I'd get down on my knees
and beg her pardon for having thrown her into it. It burns up their
youth, their bloom, their originality, their modesty. It thrusts the
girls into a charnel house of sin, sickness, and death. It shatters the
nervous system of nine out of ten, or it leaves them calm, steady,
burnt-out women, who have been behind the scenes of life and are
disillusioned. When that little pink and white thing sat there and told
me of some of the awful situations that she'd been placed in, and over
which she was made responsible, the tears rolled down my face. I forgave
her lots of things."

"Plenty of refined, educated women with a very different bringing up
from Mary's go through the same."

"Well, I advised her to go on and finish the course, if only to show her
friends, and enemies, the stuff she's made of. When I think of those
free wards, and the menial, disgusting offices that frail little girl
has to perform! What did she sow th