The nurse with the halo of golden-brown hair got interested in her American patient, and would sit and talk with him every chance she got. She learned about Eleeza Betooser and the babies who had been blown to pieces in the explosion. Also she learned about Jimmie's being a Socialist, and asked him questions about it. Wasn't he just a little hard on the leisure classes? Might it not be that some of the capitalists would be as glad as he to know about a better social system? The young lady pronounced the word “capitalists” with the accent on the “it”, which puzzled Jimmie for a time; also she assured him that “wage schedules” would never go back to what they were before the war, and Jimmie had to ask what a “schedule” might be. He did not have to ask what she meant by a “tart”, because there it was on his tray--a delicious little strawberry pie. II This meant that the destroyer had come to an English port; the nurse was a Britisher. If Jimmie had had tact, he would have remembered that Britishers have an outfit of earls and dukes and lords and things, to which they are sentimentally attached. But tact is not the leading virtue of Socialists; in fact, Jimmie made a boast of scorning it--if people asked his opinion, he “gave it to 'em straight”. So now he caused this white angel to understand that he regarded the effete aristocracies of the old world with abysmal contempt; he meant to put them out of business right off the bat. In vain the white angel pleaded that some of them might be useful people, or at any rate well-meaning: Jimmie pronounced them a bunch of parasites and grafters; the thing to do was to make a clean sweep of them. “You won't cut off their heads?” pleaded the nurse. “Surely they ought to have a chance to reform!” “Oh, sure!” answered Jimmie. “All I mean is, everybody's got to go to work--the dooks an' aristercrats like the rest.” The nurse went off, carrying Jimmie's chamber to be emptied; and while she was gone, the man in the next bed, a gun-pointer from an American destroyer with his head bandaged up so that he looked like a Hindu swami, turned his tired eyes upon Jimmie and drawled: “Say, you guy, you better can that line o' talk!” “Whaddyer mean?” demanded Jimmie, scenting controversy with some militarist. “I mean that there young lady belongs to the nobility herself.” “Go on!” said Jimmie. “Straight!” said the other. “Her father's the earl of Skye-terrier, or some such damn place.” “Aw, cut it out!” growled the little machinist--for you never knew in dealing with these soldier-boys whether you were being “kidded” or not. “Did you ask her name?” “She told me it was Miss Clendenning.” “Well, you ask her if she ain't the Honourable Beatrice Clendenning, and see what she says.”