“Never mind,” I said as she hung up the receiver and Corole’s warm, husky tones ceased. “Never mind. It may be quite diverting. And this is cold roast beef night here at St. Ann’s.”
Maida laughed.
“Corole’s dinners often are—diverting,” she said rather cruelly. “I shouldn’t have gone but she really is in a mess. The man just arrived this afternoon and he is leaving in the morning. Corole knew, too, that we both had second watch this two weeks and that we could be away from the hospital until twelve.”
“I think,” I said reflectively as we strolled from the office, whither we had been called to the telephone, back along the narrow corridor that leads to the south wing, “I think I shall wear my silver tissue.”
Maida nodded, giving me the straight look from her intensely blue eyes that I had so grown to like in the three years that she had been a graduate nurse at St. Ann’s.
“Do so, by all means,” she agreed. “And put your hair up high on your head.”
Maida professes to a great admiration for my hair, and I daresay it is well enough in its way; that is, if you like red hair and plenty of it. I have never cut it; no woman of my years, especially one with a high-bridged nose and inclined to embonpoint, freckles, and ground-grippers, should cut her hair.
Later, gowned in the silver tissue, and with a dark silk coat over my finery, for the June night had turned cloudy, I slipped into the south wing for a last look to be sure that everything was going well. Having been superintendent of the wing for more years than I care to mention, I feel a natural sense of responsibility. Dinner I found to be well over, seven o’clock temperatures taken, the typhoid convalescent in Eleven a bit less feverish, and the new cast on Six a little more comfortable.
Six caught at a fold of my dress admiringly.
“All dressed up?” he said. He was a nice boy, who had a tubercular hip bone and had spent the last six months in a cast.
“Isn’t she fine?” said Maida from the doorway. I saw the boy’s eyes widen before I turned toward her.
I had grown accustomed to Maida in her stern white uniform. Now her black hair and the sword-blue of her eyes and the vivid pink that flared into her cheeks and lips at the least touch of excitement—all this, above a wispy, clinging dinner gown of midnight-blue that was somehow barely frosted in crystal beads, affected me much as it did the boy.
“Gee!” he breathed finally.
Maida laughed a little tremulously; the compliment in his eyes was pathetically genuine.
“Don’t be silly, Sonny,” she said, but her blue eyes shone. “How is the new cast?”
“Oh—all right,” said Sonny gamely.
“I’ll come in and tell you about the party when we get back,” promised Maida (knowing that in the agony of a ten-hour-old cast he would still be awake).
“Gee,” said Sonny again, “will you, Miss Day?”
“Yes,” said Maida with that grave sincerity that was one of her charms. “Ready, Sarah?”
I followed Maida from the room and along the corridor south to the end of the wing. Once through the door and across the small porch we reached the path that wound through the orchard, over a small bridge, and across a field of sweet-smelling alfalfa to the Letheny cottage.
The path is not wide enough for two abreast, so Maida preceded me and I found myself studying her slim shoulders and gracefully alert carriage. Maida always seemed to me to be poised on the crest of a wave; as if she were continually victorious and yet not arrogant. She is that rare thing, a born nurse. She can deal successfully with the most difficult hypochondriacs and yet I have seen her in furious, desperate tears over a case like Sonny’s. It is not my intention to rhapsodize over Maida. I suppose I admired her because she was so gloriously what I might have been in my younger days had things been a little different. Though, of course, I am not and never was the beauty that Maida was.
Well, we found Corole waiting for us and the other guests already having cocktails. Dr. Letheny greeted me as meticulously as if we had not operated together that very morning. He was a tall man, dark and thin, with an extraordinarily precise manner, and was almost too correct as to dress. He lingered a little over taking Maida’s wrap and said something in a low voice that I did not understand, though Maida replied briefly and turned away, her slim black eyebrows registering annoyance.
Dr. Balman, Dr. Letheny’s assistant, was there; a lanky man of medium height, with a thin, pale face, a high benevolent forehead, thoughtful eyes that were usually detached and rather dreamy, and a thin pointed beard that was awry now, as always, owing to a habit he had of worrying it with his slender, acid-stained fingers. His scant, light hair was ruffled and needed to be trimmed, his cravat uneven, and his dress clothes formal and old-fashioned.
There was Dr. Fred Hajek, too, pronounced “Hiyek” and referred to flippantly among the student nurses as “Hijack.” He was the interne who lived at the hospital, answered the telephone nights, took care of
