"Where is the young rascal?" said Doctor Willie. "Up to his old tricks, Nellie, and struck by a train." He put a hand under her chin, which is never done to the members of the training school in a hospital, and searched her face with his kind old eyes. "Well, how does it go, Nellie?"
Jane Brown swallowed hard.
"All right," she managed. "They want to operate, Doctor Willie."
"Tut!" he said. "Always in a hurry, these hospitals. We'll wait a while, I think."
"Is everybody well at home?"
It had come to her, you see, what comes to every nurse once in her training—the thinness of the veil, the terror of calamity, the fear of death.
"All well. And——" he glanced around. Only the Senior Surgical Interne was in sight, and he was out of hearing. "Look here, Nellie," he said, "I've got a dozen fresh eggs for you in my satchel. Your mother sent them."
She nearly lost her professional manner again then. But she only asked him to warn the boys about automobiles and riding on the backs of wagons.
Had any one said Twenty-two to her, she would not have known what was meant. Not just then, anyhow.
In the doctors' room that night the Senior Surgical Interne lighted a cigarette and telephoned to the operating room.