But woman roused without consent of will is always woman who will not keep still.
“But to humiliate me before Dr. Paton ... he’s always been against me ... and dear Dr. Hoffbein and even in front of Dr. Peters ... without allowing me to utter one single word in my defense....”
“My dear Miss Kerr, will you never realize that you haven’t been, as you call it, ‘humiliated’? As your line of duty in a crisis, your service ... like ours ... is suspected of a failure ... somewhere.”
He rose and turned.
She towered from her chair with the determination of a mule.
“The idea! After all of these years! I can answer now ... and later, Doctor, for my staff ... and myself.”
The last word came in two ascending notes of inquiry.
“I trust you are correct, Miss Kerr. Good evening.”
The water-off-a-duck’s-back nonchalance with which he quitted her office left Miss Roenna Kerr, Class of ’90 M. G. and head nurse in Medicine Clinic Elijah Wilson Hospital since 1900, with a sensation of standing with her feet in a puddle.
As the elevator girl respectfully bore him to the top floor where his early rounds began, Dr. Ethridge Sterling, Junior, slouched with his tongue in the corner of his mouth. He was thinking: