DOCTOR IN CLOVER

man.'

'It wasn't important. Anything interesting happen in the ward this evening?'

'No. Nothing worth mentioning at all,' said Miles.

13

The next Saturday Miles told Barefoot he was visiting his aunt in Sydenham, and took Nurse Crimpole to the pictures.

'You really mustn't work so hard,' she murmured, as he held her hand afterwards outside the mortuary gate. 'I shouldn't like anything to happen to you.'

'Perhaps I'll cut down in the evenings a bit, Dulcie. The finals aren't for a couple of years yet, anyway.'

'And I'm sure you're not getting nearly enough to eat.'

'Mrs Capper's a bit mean with the first-class proteins, I must say.'

'Do look after yourself, Miles-won't you?' She looked into his eyes and stroked his lapel. Tor my sake.'

Next week Miles told Barefoot he was visiting his uncle in Beckenham, and took Nurse Crimpole to the Palladium.

For once in his life old Miles found he couldn't concentrate. Unlike myself, whose thoughts tend to wander from the books in the direction of Lord's or Epsom, Miles could control his brain like a prize fighter his muscles. But now Nurse Crimpole's smile kept coming between him and such things as the electrocardiographic diagnosis of Fallot's tetrology. No nurse had wasted her time on the poor chap before, with such grand people as housemen and registrars about in the ward. Come to think of it, no woman had wasted her time on him at all. I wish I'd known what was going on. I might have buttonholed the chap and offered some fatherly advice.

Miles decided the next Saturday to tell Barefoot he was visiting his nephew in Croydon, and take Nurse Crimpole to the Corner House.

When he slipped into the ward sluice-room to issue the invitation, he was surprised to discover her chatting to his room-mate.

'Just looking for my diabetic specimens,' Miles said quickly.

'They've been taken down to the path. lab., old man,' Charlie Barefoot told him. 'If you're going that way, I'll come along and collect my own. Bye-bye, Dulcie,' he added to Nurse Crimpole. 'See you on Saturday.'

'Two o'clock outside the Nurses' Home,' she replied, and went on polishing her bedpans.

Miles felt he'd been given the electroconvulsive treatment he'd seen in the psychiatric department. It had never occurred to the idiot that Dulcie Crimpole could have eyes for anyone else-particularly, he felt angrily, a stodgy old bookworm like Charlie Barefoot.

'Known Nurse Crimpole long?' he asked in the pathology laboratory, his hand trembling as he unstoppered a bottle of Benedict's reagent.

'I've seen her about the ward, you know.'

Miles paused.

'I didn't go to my relatives those last weekends,' he scowled.

'So she tells me.'

'I think Dulcie's a very nice girl.'

'So do I,' said Charlie Barefoot.

That evening, Miles glanced up sharply from his Muir's Pathology and said, 'Perhaps, Barefoot, you would have the kindness to return my pencil, when you've finished chewing it.'

'This happens to be my own pencil, Grimsdyke. And I am not chewing it.'

'I distinctly saw you chew it just now. Apart from ruining the pencil-my pencil-you ought to know that chewing pencils is a thoroughly unhygienic habit, leading to the transfer of _Streptococcus viridans_ and large numbers of other oral pathogens.'

'Oh, take the bloody pencil!' said Barefoot, and went up and sat in his bedroom.

It was the old business of sex. Cut-throat rivalry in class had never ruffled the two chaps' friendship. Now they glared at each other all night across the top of their textbooks. The following Saturday evening, Miles sat alone miserably drinking cups of cocoa and wondering blackly how to do Charlie Barefoot down. The Saturday afterwards he told his chum he was taking Dulcie to the Festival Hall, and visited her parents in Guildford. On the Monday morning the whole hospital discovered that he and Nurse Crimpole were engaged.

Barefoot was very decent about it.

'I won't say I am not disappointed,' he confessed in Mrs Capper's parlour.

'Dulcie's a wonderful girl, and I was getting rather fond of her. But…well, there's no one I'd rather lose her to than you, Miles.'

'It's really extremely generous of you, Charlie.'

'And when's the wedding?'

'Not till I've qualified, of course, I've cabled my father out East that my new status certainly won't interfere with my work. You'll be my best man, I hope?'

'That will be my only consolation for the whole affair.'

'You're a brick, Charlie.'

'And you're a real sport, Miles.'

They shook hands across Eden amp; Holland's Obstetrics._

'Now,' began Charlie Barefoot. 'What would you consider the leading features in the management of a case of puerperal paranoia?'

The years which stretch pretty chillingly ahead of you as a junior medical student soon start to melt away. As far as I remember, after that Miles took Dulcie out regularly every Saturday, while Barefoot went by himself for tramps in the country. The rest of the week the pair of them studied as steadily as before.

'You'll collar the Medical and Surgical Prizes in the finals all right,' conceded Barefoot, when the exams were only a few weeks ahead.

Miles smiled across the plush tablecloth, now a little faded.

'It could easily be your turn, Charlie.'

Barefoot shook his head. 'No, Miles. You're streets ahead of me on the practical.

But I suppose we'd both better get on with some work. There's really so much revision to get through. What are the ninety-four causes of haematuria?'

When Miles next met Dulcie, he explained he couldn't spare his Saturday afternoons from studying any longer.

'But you really must get some fresh air,' she insisted. 'After all, now I'm a staff nurse and know all about these things. Lack of sunlight can reduce your vitamin D right down to danger-level.'

'Damn vitamin D!' exclaimed Miles. 'And A, B, and C as well.'

'Miles!' she said, horrified at such blasphemy.

'I'm sorry, dear. I'm a bit irritable these days. It's only the pressure of work.'

'Are you sure that's all? You're looking terribly peaky.'

'Yes, of course that's all.'

Old Miles is fundamentally honest, which has nearly wrecked more careers than his own. He disliked telling Dulcie a lie. But how could he explain that he wished the ruddy woman were dead? A couple of years in the rough- and-tumble of the hospital wards has changed far worldlier young fellows than my cousin. As a junior student he'd been surprised at any girl smiling at him. Now he was almost a doctor and got smiles all round, some of them very pretty ones. And he could no longer dissuade himself that the woman was a shocking bore.

'Are you sure you're getting enough sleep?' Dulcie went on. 'The Professor says seven hours is the normal minimum. And what about your diet? I'm certain you're not taking nearly enough calories. Dr Parsons gave us a smashing lecture about them yesterday.'

'Very interesting, dear. How would you like to pass the afternoon? Shall we go round an art gallery?'

'If you don't think it would tire you too much. From the way you walk about, Miles, I'm not at all sure you haven't got flat feet.'