“Nobody wants you to. The boys who are coming this evening are awfully nice boys. If you’d just come in and speak to them—”
Miss Pembroke closed her book sharply.
“Nickie,” she said, “I’m very fond of you; but I don’t like your friends—not any of them—and I wish you’d let me alone.”
“Certainly,” replied Nickie, in a haughty and offended tone.
She turned all her attention upon the process of manicuring, but neither the haughtiness nor the silence reassured Miss Pembroke, who knew that they wouldn’t last. It was hardly worth while to open her book again, for Nickie would be sure to interrupt.
“It’s getting to be too much of a good thing,” she reflected. “I needed a good rest after that last case, but I’ll never get it while Nickie’s here. This whole thing was a mistake. I ought to have taken a room somewhere by myself, where I couldn’t be bothered.”
This was by no means the first time she had regretted her present domestic arrangements. It was all Nickie’s fault, of course. Nickie had told her what a fine thing it would be to join with three other graduate nurses in taking a flat.
“A nice little home of our own,” Nickie had said, “where we can rest when we want to, and entertain our friends, and keep all our things. The other girls are simply great. You’ll like them.”
Miss Pembroke had said that five girls were too many.
“But we’ll never all be home at the same time,” Nickie had assured her. “Lots of times you and I will have the place to ourselves.”