“Hire me?” gasped the White Linen Nurse. “Why! Why!”
Adroitly she slipped both hands under the sleeping child and delivered the little frail-fleshed, heavily ironed body into the Senior Surgeon’s astonished arms.
“I—I don’t want to hold her,” he protested.
“She—isn’t mine,” argued the White Linen Nurse.
“But I can’t talk while I’m holding her,” insisted the Senior Surgeon.
“I can’t listen while I’m holding her,” persisted the White Linen Nurse.
Freely now, though cross-legged like a Turk, she jerked herself forward on the grass and sat probing up into the Senior Surgeon’s face like an excited puppy trying to solve whether the gift in your upraised hand is a lump of sugar or a live coal.
“You’re trying to hire me?” she prompted him nudgingly with her voice. “Hire me for money?”
“Oh, my Lord, no!” said the Senior Surgeon. “There are plenty of people I can hire for money; but they won’t stay,” he explained ruefully. “Hang it all!—they won’t stay!” Above his little girl’s white, pinched face his own ruddy countenance furrowed suddenly with unspeakable anxiety. “Why, just this last year,” he complained, “we’ve had nine different housekeepers and thirteen nursery governesses.” Skilfully as a surgeon, but awkwardly as a father, he bent to readjust the weight of the little iron leg-braces. “But, I tell you, no one will stay with us,” he finished hotly. “There’s something the matter with us. I don’t seem to have money enough in the world to make anybody stay with us.” Very wryly, very reluctantly, at one corner of his mouth his sense of humor ignited in a feeble grin. “So, you see, what I’m trying to do to you, Miss Malgregor, is to—hire you with something that will just naturally compel you to stay.” If the grin round his mouth strengthened a trifle, so also did the anxiety in his eyes. “For Heaven’s sake, Miss Malgregor,” he pleaded, “here’s a man and a house and a child all going to—hell! If you’re really and truly tired of nursing, and are looking for a new job, what’s the matter with tackling us?”
“It would be a job,” admitted the White Linen Nurse, demurely.