“Hello, doc. What did you get, Charity or Bellevue? I hear you competed,” called one of the young doctors.
“Neither one,” said Dr. Brookes, with a smile of amusement, “I got a berth in the Penitentiary, Greenaway!”
“Oh, that’s too bad!” said Dr. Fielding, a pleasant-faced gentleman. “You’ll rust in that place—they never have anything interesting! Why, the best you will see will be a few contusions and a case of cholera morbus or eczema of some kind.”
Reginald Brookes still smiled, although he knew his friend was speaking truthfully.
“I’m going to Bellevue, and I’m mighty glad of it,” said Fielding, enthusiastically. “For if there is anything going they get it at Bellevue.”
“Yes, they catch it all, there,” was Dr. Greenaway’s answer, “and it’s not so far from the world as the Island, either.”
“Then there’s any number of pretty nurses to flirt with,” he said, laughing. “No lack of either fun or work in the wards of old Bellevue.”
“I’m sorry for you, Brookes,” exclaimed Dr. Fielding again. “Why, you poor chap, you’ll hardly see a pretty face where you are going, for I understand that the prison women do about all the nursing.”
“Yes, ‘Big Belle, the Confidence Queen,’ is head nurse there now, I believe,” laughed Brookes, “or at least she is guardian of the woman’s ward just at present. I expect I’ll have to leave my watch and money outside when I go on duty. She might try her skill on me, just to keep in practice.”