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The White Linen Nurse
By Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
Author of "Molly Make-Believe," "The Sick-a-Bed Lady," etc., etc.
1913
The White Linen Nurse was so tired that her noble expression ached.
Incidentally her head ached and her shoulders ached and her lungs achedand the ankle-bones of both feet ached quite excruciatingly. But nothingof her felt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression. Likea strip of lip-colored lead suspended from her poor little nose by twotugging wire-gray wrinkles her persistently conscientious sickroom smileseemed to be whanging aimlessly against her front teeth. The sensationcertainly was very unpleasant.
Looking back thus on the three spine-curving, chest-cramping,foot-twinging, ether-scented years of her hospital training, it dawnedon the White Linen Nurse very suddenly that nothing of her ever hadfelt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression!
Impulsively she sprang for the prim white mirror that capped her primwhite bureau and stood staring up into her own entrancing,bright-colored Novia Scotian reflection with tense and unwontedinterest.
Except for the unmistakable smirk which fatigue had clawed into herplastic young mouth-lines there was certainly nothing special the matterwith what she saw.
"Perfectly good face!" she attested judicially with no more than commoncourtesy to her progenitors. "Perfectly good and tidy looking face! Ifonly—if only—" her breath caught a trifle. "If only—it didn't look sodisgustingly noble and—hygienic—and dollish!"
All along the back of her neck little sharp prickly pains began suddenlyto sting and burn.
"Silly—simpering—pink and white puppet!" she scolded squintingly,
"I'll teach you how to look like a real girl!"
Very threateningly she raised herself to her tiptoes and thrust herglowing, corporeal face right up into the moulten, elusive,quick-silver face in the mirror. Pink for pink, blue for blue, gold forgold, dollish smirk for dollish smirk, the mirror mocked her seethinginner fretfulness.
"Why—darn you!" she gasped. "Why—darn you! Why, you looked more humanthan that when you left the Annapolis Valley three years ago! There wereat least—tears in your face then, and—cinders, and—your mother's bestadvice, and the worry about the mortgage, and—and—the blush of JoeHazeltine's kiss!"
Furtively with the tip of her index-finger she started to search herimperturbable pink cheek for the spot where Joe Hazeltine's kiss hadformerly flamed.
"My hands are all right, anyway!" she acknowledged with infinite relief.Triumphantly she raised both strong, stub-fingered, exaggeratedlyexecutive hands to the level of her childish blue eyes and stoodsurveying the mirrored effect with ineffable satisfaction. "Why my handsare—dandy!" she gloated. "Why they're perfectly—dandy! Why they'rewonderful! Why they're—." Then suddenly and fearfully she gave ashrill little scream. "But they