“I shall never marry a doctor!”
“Lucky beggar! He’s had an escape anyway!” growled Miles beneath his breath, quite unable to resist paying Betty back for her attack on him a few moments before, and Betty laughed as merrily as the rest at the joke against herself.
“Well, I shall have an escape too! I don’t like ill people or having anything to do with them; it’s not my vocation!” she announced grandiloquently, and her face fell with dismay when her father said cheerily—
“Oh, come, you don’t do yourself justice, dear. I always find you a very acceptable little nurse. Mrs Ewen was asking for you only to-day. I should be glad if you would make a point of going to see her some afternoon this week, and trying to amuse her for an hour or two. She has had a very sharp attack, poor soul.”
“Yes, father,” assented Betty meekly, but mentally she ground her teeth.
Mrs Ewen was an old patient, a tiresome patient from Betty’s point of view, who never grew better, but was frequently worse, who spent all her life in her bedroom and an upstairs sitting-room, her chief subject of conversation being the misdemeanours of her hardly-worked nurses. She had taken a fancy to the doctor’s young daughter, and liked to be visited by her as often as possible in convalescent periods; but Betty did not return the liking.
“She doesn’t understand girls,” she grumbled to herself. “I don’t believe she ever was a girl herself. She must have been born about forty, with spectacles and a cap. I can’t think why she wants to see me. I do nothing but say ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ while she abuses other people, and yawn my head off in that stifling room. And I did so want to get on with my blouse. Seems as if I could never do as I like, somehow!”
She sat looking such an image of meekness and resignation, with her smoothly-braided locks and downcast lids, that her father’s lips twitched with amusement as he glanced at her, and quickly averted his eyes. He knew just as well as she did how distasteful his request had been, but he was none the less anxious to enforce it. Betty’s horizon was blocked with self at the present moment, and anything and everything was of gain which forced her to think of something besides that all-important personage Miss Elizabeth Trevor.