Then Sallie surprised even her mother by suddenly inquiring of the nurse, “How is Mr. Harter?”
One rather wonders if it wasn’t the first time that anyone had thought of asking that, since the accident.
Even the nurse, Mary said, seemed a little bit startled.
“Oh, he wasn’t hurt, you know,” she began.
“I know,” said Sallie—“but I suppose it’s been a shock for him, too—worse, in fact, for him.”
“Of course, of course,” the little nurse agreed. “He’s—he’s a very quiet man, isn’t he? Kept his nerve well, and all that—which makes it all the more strange he should have had such an accident. But there’s no accounting. He’s been up here a good deal, of course—hoping his wife would come to reason, I dare say. I told him that in his place, I’d simply go up, and walk in on her. It’s all nerves, that makes her say she won’t see him. ‘If I were you,’ I told him straight—”
She began the typical hospital nurse’s monologue. Sallie, the medical student, quite ruthlessly interrupted her by saying good morning, and walking out of the room.
“I had to ask about Harter,” she explained afterwards to Mary. “Can you imagine what it must be like, to feel responsible for the death of two people? Especially if one hated one of them.”
“Do you suppose that he hated Bill?”
“I know he did. I saw him watching Bill and Mrs. Harter, on the night of ‘The Bulbul Ameer’—Oh, doesn’t all that seem ages ago?—And, honestly, they did try him pretty high.”