ange is
good for you too. How can you be so cross?"

"No," said Annie with unbending decision, "it shall not be said of me
that I went and struck up a friendship, apart from our intercourse in
the wards, with any doctor at St. Ebbe's--one of the medical students,
the other day! I am not going to make his sister's acquaintance and get
up an intimacy with her, because you have chosen to introduce them to
Mrs. Jennings. A fine story to be circulated, and tittered over, about a
girl; a fine example to the working nurses, who are always seeking to
evade the rules, to become on familiar terms with their patients and to
gossip and philander with them, when they ought to have a great deal
more to do. I call it disgusting trifling, and it was not for that I
came up to London to be trained as a nurse."

Annie kept her word to Rose's and other people's deep chagrin. She made
no further ferment about what had happened. She did not write home and
complain of Rose's thoughtlessness, or take a single step to prevent
Mrs. Jennings securing a profitable pair of boarders--as a matter of
fact, she dropped the subject, perhaps she felt a little ashamed of the
animus she had shown. But for nearly three months, if Rose wished to see
her sister, the only plan was for her to go to St. Ebbe's, or to make an
appointment with Annie at the Academy or the British Museum, or to eat
their lunch together at some convenient restaurant.

In whatever manner Annie disposed of her few spare moments, not one of
them was now spent in Welby Square--just at the time, too, when the
boarding-house was particularly social and cheerful (for the new-comers
found special favour with the old, and promoted much good fellowship).
At least Dr. Harry Ironside did. He was a young fellow born to be
popular whether he would or not; handsome, with pleasant manners,
kind-hearted, possessed of a respectable competence independent of his
profession, to which he brought considerable abilities and great
singleness of purpose. Everybody "took" to him, from crusty Mr. Foljambe
to jaunty Mr. Lyle; from Miss Perkins, whose ear-trumpet he improved
upon, to old Susan, into whose gold-rimmed spectacles he put new glasses
which made her see like a girl again. The one drawback to his success in
everything he aimed at was, that he was always tremendously in earnest,
so that his very earnestness overweighted him, rendering him incapable
of measuring obstacles, and marshalling his forces,