ON the day of her graduation from the training-school, the White Linen Nurse was overcome by hysteria. For weeks she had been working too hard, and two or three cases with which she had been connected having gone wrong, she had racked herself with an absurd sense of responsibility. Now, in her distracted state, the visible sign of her self-contempt was the perfectly controlled expression of her trained-nurse face.
From a scene in her room with her two room-mates, in which confidences are exchanged, she rushed to the office of the Superintendent of Nurses, and hysterically demanded her own face. The Senior Surgeon was sent for, and after tartly telling the girl she was a fool, finally took her with him and his little crippled daughter for a thirty-mile trip into the country, where he had been summoned on a difficult case.
On their return, the Senior Surgeon lost control of the machine on a steep hill, and the three were thrown out.
WHEN the White Linen Nurse found anything again, she found herself lying perfectly flat on her back in a reasonably comfortable nest of grass and leaves. Staring inquisitively up into the sky she thought she noticed a slight black-and-blue discoloration toward the west, but more than that, much to her relief, the firmament did not seem to be seriously injured. The earth, she feared, had not escaped so easily. Even away off somewhere near the tip of her fingers the ground was as sore, as sore as could be, under her touch. Impulsively to her dizzy eyes the hot tears started, to think that now, tired as she was, she would have to jump right up in another minute or two and attend to the poor earth. Fortunately for any really strenuous emergency that might arise, there seemed to be nothing about her own body that hurt at all except a queer, persistent little pain in her cheek.
Not until the Little Crippled Girl’s dirt-smouched face intervened between her own staring eyes and the sky did she realize that the pain in her cheek was a pinch.
“Wake up! wake up!” scolded the Little Crippled Girl, shrilly. “Naughty—pink-and-white Nursie! I wanted to hear the bump! You screamed so loud I couldn’t hear the bump.”
With excessive caution the White Linen Nurse struggled up at last to a sitting posture, and gazed perplexedly about her.
It seemed to be a perfectly pleasant field—acres and acres of mild old grass tottering palsiedly down to watch some skittish young violets and bluets frolic in and out of a giggling brook. Up the field? Up the field? Hazily the White Linen Nurse ground her knuckles into her incredulous eyes. Up the field, just beyond them, the great empty automobile stood amiably at rest. From the general appearance of the stone wall at the top of the little grassy slope it was palpably evident that the car had attempted certain vain acrobatic feats before its failing momentum had forced it into the humiliating ranks of the backsliders.
Still grinding her knuckles into her eyes, the White Linen Nurse turned back to the Little Girl. Under the torn, twisted sable cap one little eye was hidden completely, but the other eye loomed up as rakish and bruised as a prize-fighter’s. One sable sleeve was wrenched disastrously from its armhole, and along the edge of the vivid, purple little skirt the ill-favored white ruffles seemed to have raveled out into hopeless yards and yards and yards of Hamburg embroidery.
The Little Girl began to gather herself together a trifle self-consciously.