"DISTRICT NURSE"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 January 1939, Page 10

"DISTRICT NURSE"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

FAITH BALDWIN.

CHAPTER I.—(Continued)

“Take it easy, old boy,” he said. I m sorry. Here, let me see the pup.” And before Bill could speak or demur his slightly mangy burden had been transferred to other arms. “Looks as if I'd knocked him out for a bit,” diagnosed the driver ruefully. “I'm darned sorry, old man.” “Don’t old man me,” said Bill. Here gimme my dog, an’ scram,”he growled, adding another emphatic oath. “Bill!” expostulated Ellen, trying very hard not to laugh. “That’s all right with me,” said the culprit. “Look here,” and he turned to Ellen in something resembling real dismay, “can’t I square myself somehow?”

“Well,” she hesitated :. “there’s a veterinary over on the avenue,” she suggested. This was a very personable young man. A tall young man in a top coat, hatless, the sun shining on brown hair with a tendency to curl. Very fine hazel eyes smiling into her own. A square chin, stubborn. A nice mouth. CHAPTER 11. Bill was muttering to himself, hugging the dog which he had. again managed to recover from the stranger. “See here, Bill,” said the man, “I’m a lawyer. Suppose we settle this affair out of court.” He gravely produced and presented a card to Bill, a card which Bill after reading—perhapsflicked over to Ellen with an expression of doubt. “Francis Bartlett,” read Ellen, and underneath was a downtown office address.

“It’s all right, mister,” said Bill, a little shamed of his outburst and living up to his code, which was to distrust everybody until they acted human, then meet ’em half way. “On your way. Me an’ the lady can take care of Old Timer. She’s a nois,” Bill explained. “So I gathered,” Bartlett said, grinning, “but can she nurse dogs?”

Ellen laughingly disclaimed all veterinary knowledge. Bartlett put his hand on Bill’s shoulder.

“Hop in the bus,” he invited, “and we’ll see a vet. I’ll settle the damages.” Every freckle of Bill’s was grinning now. “Swell dog,” commented Bartlett, blandly, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. “Got a license for him? No? Then we’ll see about that, too. “He’s a good guy,” said Bill gravely to Ellen, after a long pause.

Privately Ellen agreed with him. Bill was only eight, but Bill had good judgment. He had to have, as a means of self-defence.

She couldn’t do anything more. She smiled at young Bartlett, who was staring at her as if she were a visitor from Mars. She became oppressed suddenly with the sense of being in uniform. Hadn’t he ever seen a visiting nurse before? She had started to admonish Bill in farewell, when “Joes’s” said Bill with explosiveness and dived into the waiting car. “Come along, Mister,” shrilled Bill with Old Timer clutched to his chest, “and step on it!”

“Why?—how? —” began the bewildered young man, and the shrugging followed Bill’s example and a moment or so later stepped on it. Ellen walked on, smiling, hastening her steps. A sandwich somewhere and a glass of milk and she’d get her afternoon calls. She was late. That Bill! The car had shot away. Across the street Ellen saw a tall, rather stooped figure. She laughed aloud. The truant officer! Trust Bill and his sharp little eyes.

In the car Bill was explaining. “The truant ossifer, see?” he was saying.

“Don’t like school much, do you, Bill?” Bartlett wanted to know. “Jees, no,” replied Bill simply.

Driving to the veterinary, who said Bill’s beloved pup had suffered no injury, and later on the way to get that necessary license Bartlett learned a good deal about Bill, and "me old man." Bill, it appeared, would like to “go to work." "Strong as any other guy," said Bill, doubling up a skinnly little arm in order that his new friend might admire the stringly muscles. "Jees, a feller wastes a helluva lotta time in school!” mourned Bill. “How tought was it loining to be a lawyer?” he demanded. “Pretty tough,” replied Bartlett gravely, explaining that considerable school was indicated. He agreed with Bill that schooling was the catch in a great many professions. “That’s right,” said Bill, sunk in sober thought. "There’s Pete —Pete McGregor. He was hangin’ ’round pool rooms, see, and there wuz a guy from up town gets into a knifing scrap. His old man’s a doctor, see? Pete, he gets the guy out of the scrap and the doctor sends him to school or sumpin. Since then he’s been loining to be a doctor himself,” said Bill, “rides the ambulance from the City hospital, he does. I axed him once, does it take a long time? "Hell." says Pete to me. "it takes pretty damned near forever!”

Bartlett chuckled. This was a great little kid. But there were other things on his mind. Honey-coloured hair and grey eyes and a lovely red mouth, curved to smiling. He asked, idly. "That nurse —she's a friend of yours?" “Who? Oh, her," said Bill, “sure she’s everybody’s friend. She lives down here,” said Bill, "and woiks at noising . . . see?”

"What did you say her name was?” pursued the wily Bartlett. "I didn’t say,” Bill answered forthright. “Nois, we call her.” His accent was indescrible, and he spat with accuracy into a pushcart creaking past. “Adams, though, that’s her moniker. Mis’ Adams explained Bill severely.

A little later Bartlett let Bill out at his own corner. "You’re pretty white,” said Bill. He shook his red head fiercely at the tender of money. "Ain’t you’se done enough?” he wanted to know.

"For Old Timer,” suggested Bartlett, persuasively, "he’ll need a—a nourish-

ing diet after his accident.” He was solemn. Bill stared at him "Well,” said Bill doubtfully.

A negotiable bit of paper exchanged hands. “If me old man sees it," mused Bill aloud, “he'll be knocking on Fontana’s door for a quart of the best. Right off the boat,” grinned Bill. “I don’t fink. The ferry boat!”

A moment later and the' car had departed. Bill stood on the curb, unconscious wistfully, hugging the now somnolent dog, “Jees, a white guy,” Bill’s chest swelled. A friend of his. •Jees, he’d like to do sompin’ for him . . Not long afterwards Bartlett, back at his office high up in a down town skyscraper, was engaged in obtaining information on fair-haired girls in dark gray uniforms. “What’s the matter with you?” growled the doctor on the other end of the wire?” You’ve heard of the NVA before? Need a nurse, is that it, some one to hold your hand and can’t afford the registry during the depression . . . ?” Bill was profane, but earnest, quite profane; Bill had taught him a couple of new ones. , Later he hung up the received and smiled fatuously at his secretary, a plain, but susceptible woman. What, she wondered, had come over him? A pleasant boss, even a charming one, but not given to fatuous smiles . . . Ellen, coming out of the sub station with a sheaf of afternoon calls, looked with something like amazement at the curb. A perfectly familiar car, somehow. A perfectly familiar young man, at least his face, if not his manners. He said, smiling, “You’ll think I’m crazy, Miss Adams, but ” Bill had been talking, thought Ellen. She said, “Yes?” with a rising inflection, a little remotely. He came nearer to her, looked down, spoke with that engaging smile. “I took a fancy to Bill,” said Bartlett. “I mean it. I’m not trying to use him as an excuse to see you again although I am perfectly willing to admit that I wanted to see you again as much as I ever wanted anything. But Bill and that darned little pup of his, they got’ under my skin, somehow. I —isn’t there anything I could do for the kid?” She answered doubtfully, her heart beating a little faster “as much as I ever wanted anything,” he had said in a perfectly matter of fact voice —“I —I don’t know,” she answered. “If” — she tried not to laugh; somehow she wanted to laugh, somehow the world was very bright, very gay; she felt light-hearted, a little giddy—“if you could influence him—as far as going to school is concerned?” she said. “But, Miss Adams, said Bartlett in consternation. “That’s a good one. !

rather sympathise with him, you see. Look here, this work of yours, honest to gosh, it interests me. There must b'e lots of bills mixed up in it. Have you had lunch?” he asked abruptly. Thanks, she had had lunch. Then he demanded where she was going. On her next call, she told him; it was quite far away, she would have to go along now to get the trolley. “Your carriage waits,” he said, and opened the door, and then as she hesitated, he urged her, and, laughing, said: “I’m not a bad guy, honestly. Even Bill agrees. Can’t I drive you there? It —l’m going that way,” he said, lying and lunchless. Ellen looked up at him. ■ After all, it was spring . . and . . there wasn’t any harm in driving with him that far. It would save time. She said sedately, “It’s very good of you, Mr Bartlett.”

As she got in the car a young man passed by, idled by. A dark man, a young man very much better looking than Frank Bartlett, lounging past, his eyes on the door of the sub station his hands in his pockets. A car started. The young man turned at the sound of the engine.

"Hey, Ellen,” said the young man, waving . . .

“Hello, Jim,” said Ellen

The car drove off. Jim O’Connor stood there on the curb very thoughtfully. Somehow, evenings, the Adams flat was pleasantest. Ellen, walking homeward through the cool, blue dusk of spring looked forward to supper, to a brief lazy time afterwards, and to bed. She was both hungry and tired. On the way up the steps she remembered that Jim was coming. Well, she’d send him home early, she thought. She stumbled over her handlord's small girl sitting on the steps sucking a lollipop, a roly poly child, very solemn, with a genius for getting under foot. The landlord's wife, Mrs Meade, was .leaning across her brownstone balustrade in conversation with Mrs Lenz who also rented separate rooms and small apartments in the identical house next door.

"Evening, Ellen,” said Mrs Meader, fatter than her child, a placid and helpful woman in whom Ellen had great reliance.

Ellen stopped a moment and Mrs Lenz, harried and shrill, continued her dissertation.

"And I says to Jim O'Conner, that girl, Dot Mather, in my house!” Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “Give her a break,” he tells me, "she's married now, and going straight. Her husband’s a fine young man.” “What does he do for a living?” inquired Mrs Meader with interest. What people did for a living, if anything, was alwhys of major importance. “He’s with the telephone company. He's—he’s a troublemaker, Jim said," Mrs Lenz offered. "A trouble-maker!” Mrs Meader's round blue eyes were like saucers. “Jim,” said Ellen, taking off her hat and leaning against the balustrade, “Jim means trouble shooter,” she explained tactfully. “Gott behute!” cried Mrs Lenz agitated. “trouble shooter! As if I should have a gunman in my house. That Jim, he's crazy, ganz verrucht!” "No, no.” Ellen was laughing through Mrs Meader’s clucks and exclamations,

“that’s not what it means at all.” She elucidated earnest and both women nodded.

"That’s right,” agreed Mrs Lenz, her face clearing. "Jim did tell me something. Maybe I didn't listen', nicht? So much to do,'and my Heinie not so good.” “What's wrong with him?” asked Ellen.

“Something with his stummick,” replied Mrs Lenz. “Nothing he keeps down. Not even the good coffee with milk, or the beer.” “I’ll come over and look at him after supper,” Ellen promised, and Mrs Lenz smiled at her wanly, in gratitude. “About that girl now,” she was beginning again, “Jim says her husband —and what a Dumkopf he is—makes fifty-eight dollars a week. That’s good money, but I kon't know. He said to me you can’t be too choosey in hard times. As far as I’m concerned,” said Mrs Lenz sighing, “times is always hard; but anyway, I said I'd take them. Next week they're coming. I don't know what Heinrich would have said. Henrich was the late lamented Herr Lenz—“but I've got myself and the Bube to think of, ain’t?” Mrs Meader nodded in agreement. Ellen on her way to the hall heard her

say soothing, through the open door—“and don’t be too hard on the girl. We all make mistakes, don't we?” (To be Continued.)