He was not, perhaps, sorry to miss in that handsome woman the show of extreme deference with which it was usual for the nurses to treat the doctors, but her brusqueness a little surprised him. Imagining that she resented the personal note, he turned, after a minute's quiet perusal of her face, to the patient.
Having given briefly his directions for his treatment and moved away, he stopped, looking at him for a minute still.
"His friends been communicated with?" he asked.
She shook her head. "By the look of him should you think he has got any friends who would care to hear?" she enquired.
Pityingly the doctor threw up his head. "Poor wretch!" he sighed. "What is his history, I wonder!"
To which Sister Marion made no reply. For she knew.
For the rest of the day she would be off duty. As a rule she took a brisk walk through the suburban town, passed the rows upon rows of neat little one-patterned houses, the fine, scattered villa-residences, with their spotless gardens, reached the common where the goats and the donkeys were tethered, the geese screamed with stretched necks, the children rolled and played. Plenty of good air there to fill lungs atrophied by long night hours in the sick atmosphere of the wards. Then, at a swinging pace home again to her welcome bed and a few hours' well-earned sleep.
To-day, beyond the white walls of the hospital, the sun danced invitingly, the spring breezes were astir. Sister Marion heeded them not at all. Having left the patient in the private ward to the nurse who succeeded her, she lingered listlessly in the wide, white corridor upon which all the wards opened, too preoccupied to remember that she was doing anything unusual.
There the doctor, having made the round of the wards, found her lingering still.