at all. What else is there to say?”
He made no answer but just kept staring at her in his bloated drunken way with nothing but the numb swelter of that irremediable anguish in his heart. In a moment, her voice hardening imperceptibly, the nurse spoke quietly again:
“Oh, yes—and I forgot to tell you—you had another call tonight.”
He moistened his thick lips, and mumbled:
“Who was it?”
“It was that woman of yours.”
There was no sound save the stertorous labour of his breath; he stared at her with his veined and yellowed eyes, and grunted stolidly:
“What did she want?”
“She wanted to know if the doc-taw was theah,” Creasman said in a coarse and throaty parody of refinement. “And is he coming in tonight? Really, I should like to know…. Ooh, yaas,” Creasman went on throatily, adding a broad stroke or two on her own account. “I simply must find out! I cawn’t get my sleep in until I do…. Well,” she demanded harshly, “what am I going to tell her if she calls again?”
“What did she say to tell me?”
“She said”—the nurse’s tone again was lewdly tinged with parody—“to tell you that she is having guests for dinner tomorrow night—this evening—and that you simply got to be thöh, you, and your wife, too—ooh, Gawd, yes!—the Reids are comin’, don’t-cherknow—and if you are not thöh Gawd only knows what will happen!”
He glowered at her drunkenly for a moment, and then, waving thick fingers at her in disgust, he mumbled:
“You got a dirty mouth… don’t become you…. Unlady-like…. Don’t like a dirty-talkin’woman…. Never did…. Unbecomin’…. Unlady-like…. Nurses all alike… all dirty talkers… don’t like’em.”
“Oh, dirty talkers, your granny!” she said coarsely. “Now you leave the nurses alone…. They’re decent enough girls, most of’em, until they come here and listen to you for a month or two…. You listen to me, Hugh McGuire; don’t blame the nurses. When it comes to dirty talking, you can walk off with the medals any day in the week…. Even if I am your cousin, I had a good Christian raising out in the country before I came here. So don’t talk to me about nurses’dirty talk: after a few sessions with you in the operating room even the Virgin Mary could use language fit to make a monkey blush. So don’t blame it
