Nurse in Waiting by Jane Arbor Read Free Book Online Page B

itself. Perhaps one ought to remember that —al l the while!”
    Mrs. Carnehill smiled. “You talk as if your own youth weren’t still in a cloud about you, my dear!” she chided. “And you at the very age to be my own daughter, if I had one!”
    Then, tacitly, the subject was dismissed. From then on, until Mrs. Carnehill’s final departure by car for Tulleen station, the preparations for the journey took on a kind of crescendo of flurry, shared by every active member of the household, including Joanna.
    As the car disappeared down the weedy drive Shuan turned away, saying ungraciously: “I’m going to exercise the dogs.”
    Joanna watched her go, thinking that she must take her own advice by being as tolerant as possible of the girl’s gaucherie. She remembered Shuan’s passionate exclamation of last night. What was it, Joanna wondered, that she did not ‘understand’?
    At about noon Dr. Beltane arrived. He drove a battered-looking car up the drive and walked without ceremony into the house and into his patient’s room.
    Joanna’s first impression of him was one of r oundness — a sort of Picwickian ro u ndness of face and body and legs. His bedside manner was of a hearty variety, and she thought that Roger Carnehill did not respond very graciously to it. But she herself liked him and felt reassured that she would be able to work under his authority.
    He examined and questioned Roger and said at last:
    “Well, I saw your surgeon the other day, and we shall be trying the light treatment again soon.”
    “That means Dublin again, I suppose?” asked Roger wearily. “It didn’t do any good last time.”
    “Well, last time isn’t this time,” retorted Dr. Beltane rather obviously. “Why approach it in that spirit? You try a bit of co-operation for a change, Roger me lad. You’d be surprised at the good it’d do you . You surely don’t want Nurse Merivale here to go back to England, saying that we have no surgery that’s worth the blade of a scalpel in Eire? You’d not put us to that shame!”
    Roger shrugged indifferently. He watched the doctor pack his instruments and then asked: “How’s the car?”
    Dr. Beltane gave a start of feigned surprise. “Well, now isn’t it the odd thing that you should ask! It went fine after your Michael passed his hand over it, the last time I was out. But it’s not running so well now— ”
    Roger regarded the ceiling.
    “You mean—you might bring yourself to stay to lunch while Michael had another look at it?”
    Dr. Beltane beamed rosily. “That’d b e putting Mrs. Carnehill to too much trouble —” he began.
    But Roger interposed:
    “You old wretch, you know you hoped to be asked! Besides, Mother is in Dublin. You’ll lunch with Shuan and — Joanna.”
    The doctor glanced quickly in Joanna’s direction as he beckoned to her to leave the room with him.
    Outside he said conversationally: “Michael is a stable lad here—with his heart in mechanics, though his job is with horses. He understands my car far better than my own man does. Now, Nurse, I’d like a word with you.”
    “Yes, Doctor.” Joanna hesitated. “Perhaps I ought to explain about Mr. Carnehill’s using my Christian name. If you don’t approve —”
    “Ah, think nothing of it. The lad won’t respond to starchiness. There’s no reason why he should, in his own home. You’ve got to get his confidence — that’s main thing. I’ll leave you free to use your own methods. We’ve got to cut across this barrier of apathy that he is setting up increasingly as we don’t see much progress in the lifting of this partial paralysis of his lower spine. We’ll get at it yet. But he won’t believe that. He needs a bit of jollying out of the moods—the self-pity—that he gets into.”
    Joanna smiled demurely. “Do you recommend that I try ‘jollying’?”
    “ Well, you saw me, Nurse. A bit o f healthy ridicule will do no harm. Part of his trouble is that he is fairly cluttered by