FullReads

On Sundays he put on his one white shirt and a frayed collar two sizes too large and went to chapel. At those times he sat with his prayer book upside down and watched the Probationer who cared for his lady and who had no cap to hide her shining hair, and the interne, who was glad there was no cap because of the hair. God’s fool he was, indeed, for he liked to look in the interne’s eyes, and did not know an interne cannot marry for years and years, and that a probationer must not upset discipline by being engaged. God’s fool, indeed, who could see into the hearts of men, but not into their thoughts or their lives; and who, seeing only thus, on two dimensions of life and not the third, found the Avenue Girl holy and worthy of all worship!

* * * * *

The Probationer worried a great deal.

“It must hurt her so!” she said to the Senior. “Did you see them call that baby away on visiting day for fear she would touch it?”

“None are so good as the untempted,” explained the Senior, who had been beautiful and was now placid and full of good works. “You cannot remake the world, child. Bodies are our business here–not souls.” But the next moment she called Old Maggie to her.

“I’ve been pretty patient, Maggie,” she said. “You know what I mean. You’re the ringleader. Now things are going to change, or–you’ll go back on codliver oil to-night.”

“Yes’m,” said Old Maggie meekly, with hate in her heart. She loathed the codliver oil.

“Go back and straighten her bed!” commanded the Senior sternly.

“Now?”

“Now!”

“It hurts my back to stoop over,” whined Old Maggie, with the ward watching. “The doctor said that I—-“

The Senior made a move for the medicine closet and the bottles labelled C.

“I’m going,” whimpered Old Maggie. “Can’t you give a body time?”

And she went down to defeat, with the laughter of the ward in her ears–down to defeat, for the Avenue Girl would have none of her.

“You get out of here!” she said fiercely as Old Maggie set to work at the draw sheet. “Get out quick–or I’ll throw this cup in your face!”

The Senior was watching. Old Maggie put on an air of benevolence and called the Avenue Girl an unlovely name under her breath while she smoothed her pillow. She did not get the cup, but the water out of it, in her hard old face, and matters were as they had been.

The Girl did not improve as she should. The interne did the dressing day after day, while the Probationer helped him–the Senior disliked burned cases–and talked of skin grafting if a new powder he had discovered did no good. Internes are always trying out new things, looking for the great discovery.

The powder did no good. The day came when, the dressing over and the white coverings drawn up smoothly again over her slender body, the Avenue Girl voiced the question that her eyes had asked each time.

“Am I going to lie in this hole all my life?” she demanded.

The interne considered.

“It isn’t healing–not very fast anyhow,” he said. “If we could get a little skin to graft on you’d be all right in a jiffy. Can’t you get some friends to come in? It isn’t painful and it’s over in a minute.”

“Friends? Where would I get friends of that sort?”

“Well, relatives then–some of your own people?”

The Avenue Girl shut her eyes as she did when the dressing hurt her.

“None that I’d care to see,” she said. And the Probationer knew she lied. The interne shrugged his shoulders.

“If you think of any let me know. We’ll get them here,” he said briskly, and turned to see the Probationer rolling up her sleeve.