“You bet I will—if I can do it explosively enough. I’d do anything on earth for a little chap like that.” He indicated a wistful Belgian baby at the edge of a group of children. “Here are our youngsters, fed up within an inch of their lives, and these poor little duffers living on scraps, and too few of those. Oh, what a contrast! As for ourselves—we come around and buy antiques to make our homes more stunning!”
He looked her in the eye, and she looked steadily back. Then she went over to an impressive Georgian desk, opened a drawer and took out a black-bound book. Returning, she silently held it out to him. It was a text book on nursing, one of those required in a regulation hospital course.
“Eh? What?” he ejaculated, taking the book. “Studying, are you—all by yourself? How far are you?” He flipped the pages. “I see. Are you serious?—You, a successful business woman? What do you want to do it for?”
“Absolutely serious. This country will go into the war some day—it must, or I can’t respect it any more. And when it does—well, keeping an antique shop will be the deadest thing there is. I’ll nail up the door and go ‘over there.’”
“And not to collect curios this time?” His bright hazel eyes were studying her intently.
“Hardly. To be of use, if I can. I thought the more I knew of nursing——”
“You can’t get very far alone, you know.”
“I can get far enough so that when I do manage to take a course I can rush it—can’t I?”
“Don’t know—hard to cut any red tape. But all preparation counts, of course. Well—I’ll give you a question to answer that’ll show up what you do know.”
He proceeded to do this, considering for a minute, and then firing at her not one but a series of interrogations. These were not unkindly technical, but designed to test her practical knowledge of the pages—which according to the marker he had found—she had evidently lately finished. The answers she gave him appeared to satisfy him, though he did not say so. Instead, closing the book with a snap, he said: