Precipitously Rae Malgregor collapsed into the breach.
“Oh, there’s nothing at all the matter, sir,” she stammered. “It’s only—it’s only that I’ve just decided that I don’t want to be a trained nurse.”
With a gesture of ill-concealed impatience the Superintendent shrugged the absurd speech aside.
“Dr. Faber,” she said, “won’t you just please assure Miss Malgregor once more that the little Italian boy’s death last week was in no conceivable way her fault—that nobody blames her in the slightest, or holds her in any possible way responsible?”
“Why, what nonsense!” snapped the Senior Surgeon. “What—”
“And the Portuguese woman the week before that,” interrupted Rae Malgregor, dully.
“Stuff and nonsense!” said the Senior Surgeon. “It’s nothing but coincidence, pure coincidence. It might have happened to anybody.”
“And she hasn’t slept for almost a fortnight,” the Superintendent confided, “nor touched a drop of food or drink, as far as I can make out, except just black coffee. I’ve been expecting this breakdown for some days.”
“And—the—young—drug-store—clerk—the—week—before—that,” Rae Malgregor resumed with singsong monotony.
Bruskly the Senior Surgeon stepped forward and, taking the girl by her shoulders, jerked her sharply round to the light, and, with firm, authoritative fingers, rolled one of her eyelids deftly back from its inordinately dilated pupil. Equally bruskly he turned away again.