Stellan hung up the receiver.
“Yes, she will go to Percy as soon as her present patient has had time to die. And it is Hedvig who is leading such a life! Really I can’t understand it....”
Laura pursed up her lips whilst she pulled on her glove. She looked unusually free from any sentimentality at that moment.
“Hedvig is frightened,” she said.
Stellan felt nervous.
“Frightened? Damned funny way of being frightened. What do you really mean?”
Laura’s answer came short, sharp and pleased. One could see how she had worried about this matter and at last found a satisfactory explanation:
“Who is it that runs about in the cemeteries at midnight?” she said. “Precisely those who are afraid of ghosts. Others have no business there.”
And then Mrs. Laura went to the theatre.
It was a fact that for a year and a half past Hedvig had been a trained Red Cross nurse and that she was already one of those who was sent to the more difficult cases and that she herself desired it so.