Hennessy, however, shook a positive head. “That’s no kid. Can’t ye see for yourself it’s noways human? Accordin’ to the Sunday papers it’s all the style for blond dancers an’ society belles to be fetchin’ one o’ them little apes about. They’re thinkin’ if they hang a bit o’ live ugliness furninst, their beauty will look all the more ravishin’.”
“Live ugliness,” repeated Flanders; then he laughed. “You’ve struck it, Hennessy.”
Meanwhile Francisco Enrique Manuel Machado y Rodriguez—Pancho, for short—and his mother had passed into the hands of the sanitarium porter. He had handed them on to the business office, which in turn had handed them over to the superintendent. The superintendent had shared the pleasure with the house staff, the staff had retired in favor of the baby specialist, and at half past seven o’clock that night neither he nor the superintendent of nurses had been able to coax, argue, command, or threaten a nurse into taking the case.
“I’m afraid you will have to do with an undergraduate and make the best of it.” Miss Maxwell acknowledged her helplessness with a faint smile.
But Doctor Fuller shook his head. “Won’t do. It means skilled care and watching for days. A nurse without experience would be about as much good as an incubator. Think if you dismissed the four who’ve refused, you could frighten a fifth into taking it?”
This time the superintendent of nurses shook her head. “Not this case. They all feel about it the same way. Miss Jacobs tells me she didn’t take her training to nurse monkeys.”
The old doctor chuckled. “Don’t know as I blame her; thought it was a new species myself when I first clapped eyes on it. But shucks! I’ve seen some of our North American babies look like Lincoln Imps when they were down with marasmus. Give me a few weeks and a good nurse and his own mother wouldn’t recognize—” He interrupted himself with a pounding fist on the desk. “Where’s Leerie?”
“You can’t have her—not this time.” Miss Maxwell’s lips became a fraction more firm, while her eyes sharpened into what her training girls had come to call her “forceps expression.”
“Why not?”
“The girl’s just off that case for Doctor Fritz; she’s tired out. Remember she’s been through three unbroken years of hospitals, and we’ve worked her on every hard case we’ve had since she came back. I’m going to see that she gets forty-eight hours of rest now.”