“Oh yes,” cried the little old lady, delighted, “that’s it.”
“Well, now you know it, don’t you,” said the nurse brightly, wrote “Passed” in her notebook, and turned to the next.
“How much liquid nourishment would you give a typhoid patient at a time?”
This to a village girl, who looked blank, not to say terrified, and wrung her hands in her lap.
“I mean,” helped the questioner, “if the patient were put on milk—a milk diet, very usual in typhoid cases—how much milk would you give at a time?”
The girl’s face lit up.
“Two quarts, miss,” she said with alacrity.
“Not at a time, I think,” corrected the examiner, quite unruffled. “Two quarts, perhaps, in the twenty-four hours, if you could get the patient to take it—that would be splendid. Typhoid is a very weakening malady. It’s a good thing to keep the strength up—if you can, you know.”
The Signorina heard this optimist make her report a little later to the charming daughter of the charming family, who had herself studied to good purpose, but was too modest to undertake the instructions.