“Oh, yes! I’ve heard about your driving,” I answered drily.
He laughed.
“I am supposed to be reckless, but really I am only unlucky. With luck now....”
“Yes, with luck?”
“You might go on for any time. I shouldn’t worry about that if I were you. You are getting better.”
“I am not worrying, only thinking about Mrs. Lovegrove. She has two children, a large house, literary and other engagements. Will you tell her I am well enough to be left alone?” He answered quickly and surprised:
“She does not want to go, she likes being with you. Not that I wonder at that.”
He was a strange person. Sometimes I had an idea he was not “all there.” He said whatever came into his mind, and had other divergencies from the ordinary type. I had to explain to him my need of solitude. If Ella went back to town, Benham would soon, I hoped, with a little encouragement, fall into the way of ordinary nurses. I had had them in London and knew their habits. Two or three hours in the morning for their so-called “constitutionals,” two or three hours in the afternoon for sleep, whether they had been disturbed in the night or not; in the intervals there were the meals over which they lingered. Solitude would be easily secured if Ella went away and there was no one to watch or comment on the amount of attention purchased or purchasable for two guineas a week. I misread Benham, by the way, but that is a detail. She was not like the average nurse, and never behaved in the same way.
My first objective, once that brown paper parcel lay on the bed, was to persuade Ella to go back to home and children. Without hurting her feelings. She would not have left the house for five minutes before I should be longing for her back again. I knew that, but one cannot work and play. I have never had any other companion but Ella. Still.... Work whilst ye have the light. One more book I must do, and here was one to my hand.
I made Dr. Kennedy put the parcel back in the drawer. Then I lay and made plans. I must talk to Ella of Violet and Tommy, make her homesick for them. Unfortunately Ella knew me so well. I started that very afternoon.