on the nurses. Most of them are white as snow compared to you.”
“You’re dirty talkers—all of you,” he muttered, waving his thick fingers in her direction. “Don’t like it…. Unbecomin’in a lady.”
For a moment she did not answer, but stood looking at him, arms akimbo on her starched white hips, a glance that was bold, hard, sardonic, but somehow tinged with a deep and broad affection.
Then, taking her hands off her hips, she bent swiftly over him, reached down between his legs, and got the jug and lifting it up to the light in order to make her cynical inspection of its depleted contents more accurate, she remarked with ironic approbation:
“My, my! You’re doing pretty well, aren’t you?… Well, it won’t be long now, will it?” she said cheerfully, and then turning to him abruptly and accusingly, demanded:
“Do you realize that you were supposed to call Helen Gant at twelve o’clock?” She glanced swiftly at the clock. “Just three and a half hours ago. Or did you forget it?”
He passed his thick hand across the reddish unshaved stubble of his beard.
“Who?” he said stupidly. “Where? What is it?”
“Oh, nothing to worry about,” she said with a light hard humour. “Just a little case of carcinoma of the prostate. He’s going to die anyway, so you’ve got nothing to worry about at all.”
“Who?” he said stupidly again. “Who is it?”
“Oh, just a man,” she said gaily. “An old, old man name Mr. Gant.—You’ve been his physician for twenty years, but maybe you’ve forgotten him. You know—they come and go; some live and others die—it’s all right, —this one’s going to die. They’ll bury him—it’ll all come out right one way or the other—so you’ve nothing to worry about at all…. Even if you kill him,” she said cheerfully. “He’s just an old, old man with cancer, and bound to die anyway, so promise me you won’t worry about it too much, will you?”
She looked at him a moment longer; then, putting her hand under his fat chin, she jerked his head up sharply. He stared at her stupidly with his yellowed drunken eyes, and in them she saw the mute anguish of a tortured animal, and suddenly her heart was twisted with pity for him.
“Look here,” she said, in a hard and quiet voice, “what’s wrong with you?”
In a moment he mumbled thickly:
