Abruptly the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair from the desk and stood up. The important decision once made, no further finessing of words seemed either necessary or dignified to him.
“Go and pack your suitcase quickly, then,” he ordered. “I want to get away from here within half an hour.”
But before the girl had half crossed the room he called to her suddenly. And his face in that moment was as haggard as though a whole lifetime’s struggle was packed into it.
“Rae Malgregor,” he drawled mockingly, “this thing shall be—barter ’way through to the end, with the credit always on your side of the account. In exchange for the gift of yourself—your wonderful self, and the trust that goes with it, I will give you,—God help me!—the ugliest thing in my life. And God knows I have broken faith with myself once or twice, but never have I broken my word to another. From now on, in token of your trust in me, for whatever the bitter gift is worth to you, as long as you stay with me, my Junes shall be yours, to do with as you please.”
“What, sir?” gasped the White Linen Nurse. “What, sir?”
Softly, almost stealthily, she was half-way back across the room to him, when she stopped suddenly and threw out her arms with a gesture of appeal and defiance.
“All the same, sir,” she cried passionately—“all the same, sir, the place is too hard for the small pay I get. Oh, I will do what I promised,” she declared with increasing passion; “I will never leave you; and I will mother your little girl; and I will servant your big house; and I will go with you wherever you say! And I will be to you whatever you wish; and I will never flinch from any hardship you impose on me, nor whine over any pain, on and on and on, all my days, all my years, till I drop in my tracks again, and die, as you say, ‘still smiling’: all the same,” she reiterated wildly, “the place is too hard! It always was too hard, it always will be too hard, for such small pay!”
“For such small pay?” gasped the Senior Surgeon.
About his heart a horrid, clammy chill began to settle. Sickeningly through his brain a dozen recent financial transactions began to rehearse themselves.
“You mean, Miss Malgregor,” he said a bit brokenly—“you mean that I haven’t been generous enough with you?”