A few minutes after she had completed dressing and was standing before the glass, smoothing the dark, silky masses of her hair, Dr. Benton arrived, absent-eyed, preoccupied at first, then in a fidgety humour which indicated something was about to happen. It happened.
"Could any lady get ready in time to take the noon train for
Washington?" he asked abruptly.
There was a startled silence; the call had come at last.
Mrs. Rutherford said quietly: "I will go. But I must see my husband and children first. I could be ready by to-morrow, if that will do."
Another—a young girl—said: "I could not leave my mother at an hour's notice. She is ill. Would tomorrow do, Dr. Benton?"
"I—think I can go to-day," said Ailsa in a low voice.
"Our quota is to be two nurses," said the doctor. But no other lady could possibly leave before the morrow; and it was, after all, scarcely fair to expect it of women with families to be provided for and home responsibilities to be arranged.
"I could go to-day—if I may be permitted," said the doctor's young assistant, timidly.
He swung around and scowled at her, lips compressed, eyes gleaming through his spectacles:
"You are not asked to go, Miss Lynden."