In the garden the snowballs, guelder-roses, swayed softly among green foliage, there was pink may-blossom, and single scarlet may-blossom, and underneath the young green of the trees, irises rearing purple and moth-white. A young gardener was working—and a convalescent slowly trailed a few paces.
Having ten minutes still, Alvina sat down and wrote to Ciccio: “I am glad I have got this post as nurse here. Everyone is most kind, and I feel at home already. I feel quite happy here. I shall think of my days with the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, and of you, who were such a stranger to me. Goodbye.—A. H.”
This she addressed and posted. No doubt Madame would find occasion to read it. But let her.
Alvina now settled down to her new work. There was of course a great deal to do, for she had work both in the hospital and out in the town, though chiefly out in the town. She went rapidly from case to case, as she was summoned. And she was summoned at all hours. So that it was tiring work, which left her no time to herself, except just in snatches.
She had no serious acquaintance with anybody, she was too busy. The matron and sisters and doctors and patients were all part of her day’s work, and she regarded them as such. The men she chiefly ignored: she felt much more friendly with the matron. She had many a cup of tea and many a chat in the matron’s room, in the quiet, sunny afternoons when the work was not pressing. Alvina took her quiet moments when she could: for she never knew when she would be rung up by one or other of the doctors in the town.
And so, from the matron, she learned to crochet. It was work she had never taken to. But now she had her ball of cotton and her hook, and she worked away as she chatted. She was in good health, and she was getting fatter again. With the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, she had improved a good deal, her colour and her strength had returned. But undoubtedly the nursing life, arduous as it was, suited her best. She became a handsome, reposeful woman, jolly with the other nurses, really happy with her friend the matron, who was well-bred and wise, and never over-intimate.
The doctor with whom Alvina had most to do was a Dr. Mitchell, a Scotchman. He had a large practice among the poor, and was an energetic man. He was about fifty-four years old, tall, largely-built, with a good figure, but with extraordinarily large feet and hands. His face was red and clean-shaven, his eyes blue, his teeth very good. He laughed and talked rather mouthingly. Alvina, who knew what the nurses told her, knew that he had come as a poor boy and bottle-washer to Dr. Robertson, a fellow-Scotchman, and that he had made his way up gradually till he became a doctor himself, and had an independent practice. Now he was quite rich—and a bachelor. But the nurses did not set their bonnets at him very much, because he was rather mouthy and overbearing.
In the houses of the poor he was a great autocrat.
“What is that stuff you’ve got there!” he inquired largely, seeing a bottle of somebody’s Soothing Syrup by a poor woman’s bedside. “Take it and throw it down the sink, and the next time you want a soothing syrup put a little boot-blacking in hot water. It’ll do you just as much good.”
Imagine the slow, pompous, large-mouthed way in which the red-faced, handsomely-built man pronounced these words, and you realize why the poor set such store by him.
He was eagle-eyed. Wherever he went, there was a scuffle directly his foot was heard on the stairs. And he knew they were hiding something. He sniffed the air: he glanced round with a sharp eye: and during the course of his visit picked up a blue mug which was pushed behind the looking-glass. He peered inside—and smelled it.
“Stout?” he said, in a tone of indignant inquiry: God-Almighty would presumably take on just such a tone, finding the core of an apple flung away among the dead-nettle of paradise: “Stout! Have you been drinking stout?” This as he gazed down on the wan mother in the bed.
“They gave me a drop, doctor. I felt that low.”
The doctor marched out of the room, still holding the mug in his hand. The sick woman watched him with haunted eyes. The attendant women threw up their hands and looked at one another. Was he going forever? There came a sudden smash. The doctor had flung the blue mug downstairs. He returned with a solemn stride.
“There!” he said. “And the next person that gives you stout will be thrown down along with the mug.”
“Oh doctor, the bit o’ comfort!” wailed the sick woman. “It ud never do me no harm.”
“Harm! Harm! With a stomach as weak as yours! Harm! Do you know better than I do? What have I come here for? To be told by you what will do you harm and what won’t? It appears to me you need no doctor here, you know everything already—”
“Oh no, doctor. It’s not like that. But when you feel as if you’d sink through the bed, an’ you don’t know what to do with yourself—”
“Take a little beef-tea, or a little rice pudding. Take nourishment, don’t take that muck. Do you hear—” charging upon the attendant women, who shrank against the wall—“she’s to have nothing alcoholic at all, and don’t let me catch you giving it her.”
“They say there’s nobbut fower percent i’ stout,” retorted the
