"DISTRICT NURSE"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 January 1939, Page 10

"DISTRICT NURSE"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

FAITH BALDWIN.

CHAPTER VI. —Continued

She fought, or appeared to fight for breath. Then she asked unsteadily, ‘•How long has this been going on? How often have you seen this —” There was no word. She said "man,” weakly; and waited.

“Please don’t upset yourself, Mother,” Ellen said quietly. I haven’t seen Mr Bartlett again. He telephoned, asking me to go to a ball game with him and Bill, or to meet them, later for dinner, on Saturday, that was. I had a date with Jim so he asked me to have dinner with him, this week. I asked him here. I thought you’d rather.

Her mother said, bitterly, “As if either of you girls really care ■” “Pipe down, darling,” said Nancy gently; “we do care. Ellen could have met her new beau outside, couldn’t she? Instead, she bring him home, like a good litle daughter, and sister, for our inspection.” “He’s hardly a beau,” Ellen said, smiling faintly. She rose and went over to her mother and sat down on the hassock by her feet. She put her arms across Mrs Adams’ neat lap and looked up into her face. “He’s nice,” explained Ellen simply, “And I like him. I see no harm in my having friends here, even if,” she smiled again, “even if they weren’t brought up under the El. I’d like you to know him. I —l intend to see him,” Ellen went on clearly, “and if you don’t want want him here, I’ll call his office tomorrow morning, and make some explanation, and meet him outside for dinner —if you’d rather.” “Atta girl,” applauded Nancy—but mutely. Mrs Adams surrendered. “This home,” she said dramatically, “is yours. You girls maintain it. I have nothing to say.” Ellen controlled herself, impatience, anger, pity, love —all these mixed emotions warred within her. None was apparent as she spoke again, touching her lips to her mother’s thin hand.

“But I do want you to say something,” she coaxed, “I want you to say ‘Good evening, Mr Bartlett, we’re very glad to see you.’ ”

“I hope,” said her mother, softened but wounded, “that I have never failed in courtesy toward your friends.” At seven o’clock Tuesday evening the steak waited the trick boiler which one set over the flame and the deep fat sizzled in the frying kettle. The coffee was in the pot ready to be plugged into an electric outlet. Rolls, on the pretty table, fresh and crisp. Radishes. The rose coloured pottery, the tall blue glasses. String beans, cooked and waiting; and the ice box cake from Larsen’s . . .

Ellen, coming home in a rush, had wriggled out of her uniform and into a house dress and set to work, but Nancy had done all the preparation for her. Together they persuaded Mrs Adams into the pretty flowered voile which deepened the faded tone of her eyes and set off her pretty, grey hair. "Must look nice,”, they told her, laughing. “You’re our show piece.” She sniffed a little. “As if it matters!” she said. But she was determined to show the alien young man that he was entering, for the.first, and, she devoutly hoped, the last time, a house of refinement. A genteel house, she called it in her oldfashioned way. At seven promptly Bartlett arrived. He had flowers, a great sheaf of them, spring flowers, like sunshine, like the afterglow of a glorious sunset. He had candy in a big purple box. “This,” he said, beaming upon the three women impartially, “is awfully good for you.” He sniffed, not as Mrs Adams had, previous to his arrival, but with appreciation. “Golly, something smells good. It's pretty darned nice oi you,” he told Ellen, "to take pity on a poor bachelor.” Afterward, Mrs Adams remarked that he had laid far too much emphasis on the important word with which he had ended that sentence. Afterward. Ellen remembered.

He joked with Nancy, who took a fancy to him at once, and was courteous and attentive to Mrs Adams. But his eyes were for Ellen, her house dress changed for a plain little green frock, which turned her grey eyes to emerald and made her look like spring itself with the matchless hair curling about her forehead, caught in a loose, heavy knot at the nape of her very white neck. He insisted on helping with the serving, got in the way, and admitted it ruefully. Over dinner. Mrs Adams managed to find out a. good deal about him. Yes. he was city born and bred. No, his parents were not living. The only relatives he possessed were an aunt “who disapproved of me,” he explained, laughing, and a couple of cousins in Indianapolis. Prep school, college, law school. A usual routine. He’d been with a big down town firm for a couple of years, and had recently gone in for himself. There was no suggestion of struggle in his story. The implication was that he had always been sufficiently affluent to do as he wished. His father, he explained, had been a lawyer before him. One had the impression of an easy road, and aside from the natural sorrow of loss and death, of a happy enough time. He was eloquent on the subject of Bill. He had, he announced, adopted him, more or less. He was trying to persuade him that school was a necessary evil. “Sharp as a knife and quick as lightning.” said Bartlett, with an absurd pride. “If he really wants to ‘loin” to be a lawyer, we’ll have to see him through somehow.” Bartlett had thought that Bill’s grave boy-friendship would be enough reward. But he realised that the reward he sought was facing him across a small, laden table —a smiling look, two eyes that altered in colour from grey to green. “What colour are they, anyway?” demanded without realising that spoke aloud,

Ellen flushed and Mrs Adams looked mildly astonished. The young man, presentable enough, was plainly a lunatic, Nancy giggled. She knew. Bartlett found himself reddening. "I have,” he explained hastily, “an appalling habit of thinking out loud." Nothing to do but carry it off with a high hand, he decided. He grinned engagingly, with the smile, of a good child detected in some minor mischief. "Your eyes,” he told Ellen solemnly, “I thought they were grey. But they’re green.”

“Cat’s eyes.” Ellen informed him, laughing. “It depends upon what I wear. Sometimes I can fool people into thinking they’re blue.” x Well, that had gone over all right, although Bartlett was quite aware that, so far as Ellen’s mother was concerned, he was in her home only on sufferance. She’d been courteous, hospitable even, but she was, he decided, a remote little lady . . CHAPTER VII. Chick Smith came for Nancy by the time dinner was over. The two men met, decided they liked each other. Nancy was gone with a flirt bn her hand at Bartlett and Ellen, and a kiss for her mother. Let’s go for a 'bus ride,” said Nancy. “I’m shut up all day, and I like to get my fresh air, even if it’s only at night.” Ellen cleared the table. She’d let the dishes go, she said. “No,” Bartlett told her, “let’s wash ’em. I’ll help.” He permitted her to tie an apron about his lean waist. They laughed a good deal, the two of them in the tiny kitchen. Mrs Adams, under the reading light, read the same sentence over and over again. “Tell me about your sister,” Bartlett was saying. Ellen told him briefly. “She’s training for a supervisor's job,” she said. “She went to the company nearly three years ago. Likes the work a lot.”

“It sounds awful to me,” Bartlett said frankly, “cooped up all night plugging things and unplugging them.” He had the attitude of the entirely non-mech-anical man, Ellen told him. “She isn’t cooped up at all,” she denied. “Shows all you know about it! I’ve been through' her exchange. Grand place, lots of light and air. The girl like their work. They’ve rest periods, a really lovely recreation room, a kitchen to cook in or from which to buy lunpheons and between-time snacks. They have their days off, you know, like anybody else. Girls who want to work Saturday afternoons, get overtirfie, of course. Nancy gets two week’s vacation, with pay. She's looked after if she’s ill ” I “I’ll bet a cookie,” said Bartlett, polishing a glass and then standing off to regard his handiwork with pride, “that you don’t let any one else take care of her.” “Well, no, I didn’t mean that, exactly.” They were through their work. He said persuasively, drawing her back gently from the doorway, in to the living room, “couldn’t we go ’bus riding, too, I’ve my car outside . . .” “I can’t leave mother.” She explained that, too, lowering her voice. He nodded, disappointed, understanding. But they had not been long in the living room, when Mrs Meader knocked at the door and came in. She was, it appeared, full of news. She hesitated. “I’ll run in another time,” she said, “but the baby’s in bed and Pa’s downstairs and Jimmy’s off to night school so I thought I’d stop in and visit with your mother.”

“That would be awfully nice of you,” Ellen said quickly, before her mother could speak, “as Mr Bartlett has just asked me to go for a ride.” “Run along,” said Mrs Meader beaming. “I’ll sit with mother, while you’re gone.” And that was that.

They drove uptown to Riverside Drive. ,Ellen took off her hat and let the soft spring wind ruffle her hair. "You don’t mind, do you,” asked Bartlett, “if I tell you you have the loveliest hair I ever saw? Don’t ever cut it.”

“It’s my chief vanity,” she admitted laughing. “No, of course, I don’t mind, why should I?” and she looked at him with such friendly directness and sweetness that his heart skipped about six beats.

He lived, he told her vaguely, up town, east side, in an apartment. It was better, he said, than an hotel. He spoke of his work, He was particularly interested in criminal law. She'd like, she told him, to hear him try a case some day. “Would you come, really, if I let you know?” he asked her, eagerly. “I'd love to, but I probably couldn’t. I’m pretty busy,” she reminded him. “Tell me more about your job,” he demanded.

She told him, as they went at a swift, but legal speed, through the exquisite night. And her voice warmed and there was a little catch in her breath. He wondered, aloud, "are they grateful? Is it worth it?" Of course it was worth it, she responded, in some indignation. There wasn’t a sick baby brought back to health, who didn't have some chance, some opportunity. That’s what she was there for, aside from the nursing part of it. to see they got their chance, their opportunity. She and hundreds of women like her, all over the country. “What,” asked Bartlett, in some amusement, "are we arguing for? It’s a grand night. Just the night to swear an eternal friendship. Do let's. Shall we?”

She shook her head. She didn’t, she told him, like to swear. So many things happened. But nothing would happen, he promised. They were at a crossing, waiting for the lights, and he held out his hand. “Come on,” he bade her, smiling, "be

a sport.” After a moment, she laid her strong narrow hand in his. "All right,” agreed Ellen.

There was a gravity about the moment. Perhaps he hadn’t intended it; perhaps he had. They looked at each other gravely, measuring, and smiled. The lights had changed. An indignant honking was going on in back of them; they were oblivious. "Hoy, you,” said a large cop, strolling up, "where do you think you are, at the opera?" (To be Continued.)