ject to a few
simple household rules. There was no unyielding iron discipline at
Redcross. There was no hard and fast routine entering through the flesh
and penetrating into the very soul. It was just, dear, deliberate,
mannerly, yet comfortable and kindly Redcross. The writer was Thirza
Dyer, and the reason why one of the Dyers, who had hesitated about
shaking hands with one of the Millars after she was guilty of proposing
to earn her livelihood, wrote a letter to a nurse probationer and
addressed it to a public hospital, calls for an explanation. The Dyers,
in their unceasing efforts to gain by their wealth and its liberal
expenditure a footing in the county circle, had got one foot within the
coveted precincts, and there Thirza found to her own and her sisters'
amazement that nursing, not the rich and great, but common poor people,
was a curious fashion of the day. Lady Luxmore had a cousin who was a
nurse. General Wentworth's wife had a friend professionally engaged in a
London hospital for nine months out of the twelve, who was visiting the
Wentworths this winter. Of course it had begun with the Crimean War, and
the _eclat_ with which lady nurses went out to attend on the wounded
soldiers in the exceptional hospital at Scutari. But whatever was its
origin, the rule was established that nursing even day-labourers and
mechanics with their wives and children, was something very different
from being a drudging governess or broken-down companion. It was like
being a member of the Kyrle Society, with which one of the princes had
to do, or like singing in an East of London concert-room, quite _chic_,
perfectly good form, anybody might take it up and gain rather than lose
caste by the act.

Accordingly, it became an obvious obligation on the Dyers to cultivate
and not to cut the only nurse on their visiting list. With unblushing,
well-nigh naive suddenness, Thirza Dyer, to Annie Millar's bewildered
astonishment, proceeded to start and maintain a correspondence with her.
Two are required for a bargain-making, and Annie was not altogether
disinterested in scribbling the few lines occasionally which warranted
the continuance of the correspondence on Thirza's part. For if Thirza
had lived anywhere else than where she did live, near Redcross, the
answer to her first letter might have been different. Therefore Annie
did not perhaps deserve much solace from these letters, and certainly
this one did not contribute to her exaltatio