Miss Trivett was a good nurse, but she was brusque. The patients never made love to her.
"I often wonder," she scoffed on this occasion, "if all the soft-headed men are brought to this hospital. Or does bringing them here make them soft-headed?"
"Why for the slam?" Sanderson asked chuckling. The night nurse and her caustic speeches amused him.
"Oh, I see you making sheep's-eyes," she declared. "You fall for a pretty face like the rest of them."
"Oh! Miss Melnotte? But she possesses more attractions than a pretty face," corrected the young man coolly.
"True. And do you suppose you are the first man to find it out?"
The thought had not before impressed him.
"I suppose if she is attractive in my sight, she must be in the sight of others," he said slowly.
"I should say! She's probably made desperate love to by an average of a patient a week. That's the meaning of my 'slam,' as you call it. It's just a bit of a warning, my boy," went on Miss Trivett cheerfully. "Beauty is more of a liability than an asset to a nurse—a nurse who is really in earnest, I mean. And Miss Melnotte does not scamp her work. Why, she is the most popular of us all with the surgical staff!"
Sanderson was quick to seize the opportunity to ask a question that had long been trembling on his lips. Yet he put it carelessly.