"Thank you, awfully," said Miss Dickenson slowly. "I get a sort of devastating feeling, sometimes, you know."
"Tell me what you mean," Nicholas sympathetically invited her.
"Oh well, things are a bit difficult all round, you know. I can't live at home, I simply can't. It's too devastating. That's what really made me take up nursing—to get away from home."
"But your father is so proud of you—you should have heard him speaking of you, as I did the other day. I can assure you he quite appreciates your pluck and—and spirit."
"Oh, I daresay. It really isn't so much Father as my aunts and people, and my married sister, and even the two girls. They're always sort of talking at me."
Her voice grew angry.
"I can't have a friend, or go anywhere, or do anything, without them interfering. My aunts are always hinting that I don't know how to take care of myself."
"But I'm sure you do," Nicholas said gently.
"Of course! It's all old-fashioned, devastating nonsense, that's what it is. Because men like talking to me. There isn't anything in it—I'm not even pretty."
She scarcely made a pause, but it was not in Nicholas to refrain from a meditative interpolation: "I don't know so much about that!"