"As a gentleman's companion I am all right," and the girl showed her perfect teeth in a smile.
"It's no joking matter, Mary. You're not very happy in our house, and things will be worse for you next winter, with no Will Axworthy coming to see you, and no engagement to him in prospect. What do you think yourself that you're fit for—putting reciting and cornet playing out of the question?"
The young lady rested her chin on the palm of her hand and composed her face into a bewitching expression of profound meditation.
"I can't teach, and I can't sew, and I can't cook. I couldn't bear sitting still all day at a typewriter, and there's no room in the telephone office. You know quite well that there aint a thing for girls like me to do but to get married. That's why God made us pretty, so's we'd have a good chance."
"Don't be flippant, miss. How do you think you'd like to be an hospital nurse?"
"I dunno; I wouldn't mind trying. I'm generally good to folks—when they're sick—and I aint a bit scared of dirty nor of dead ones. I laid out an old woman that died in the Refuge."
"You're not particularly thin-skinned, that's a fact; but it's the educational qualification I'd be afraid of. There's some sort of an examination to be passed before you can get into any of these Training Schools nowadays. I'll write for some forms of application, and we'll see. If once you were able to support yourself, you'd think very differently about marrying anybody that turned up, just for the sake of a home. Ours mayn't be much of a one for you, but marry to get out of it, and you'll perhaps find yourself out of the frying-pan into the fire."
"I think it would be just lovely to be a nurse! There was one came down from Chicago when Mrs. Wade was sick, and the uniform was awfully pretty. I'm sure it would suit me."
"It would be very becoming, I haven't any doubt of that; and when it's all settled that you are going to an hospital you can write in reply to Will Axworthy's last letter."
"He wanted me to keep on writing to him just the same; said he'd like always to be good friends with me."