Slowly with a soft-snuggling sigh of contentment she raised her slim
white fingers to coax her dusky hair a little looser, a little farther
down, a little more madonna-like across her sweet, mild forehead, then
snatching out abruptly at a convenient shirt-waist began with
extraordinary skill to apply its dangly lace sleeves as a protective
bandage for the delicate glass-faced motto still in her lap, placed the
completed parcel with inordinate scientific precision in the exact
corner of her packing-box, and then went on very diligently, very
zealously, to strip the men's photographs from the mirror on her bureau.
There were twenty-seven photographs in all, and for each one she had
already cut and prepared a small square of perfectly fresh, perfectly
immaculate white tissue wrapping-paper. No one so transcendently
fastidious, so exquisitely neat, in all her personal habits had ever
trained in that particular hospital before.
Very soberly the doll-faced girl stood watching the men's pleasant
paper countenances smooth away one by one into their chaste white
veilings, until at last quite without warning she poked an accusing,
inquisitive finger directly across Zillah Forsyth's shoulder.
"Zillah!" she demanded peremptorily. "All the year I've wanted to know!
All the year every other girl in our class has wanted to know! Where did
you ever get that picture of the Senior Surgeon? He never gave it to you
in the world! He didn't! He didn't! He's not that kind!"
Deeply into Zillah Forsyth's pale, ascetic cheek dawned a most amazing
dimple. "Sort of jarred you girls some, didn't it," she queried, "to see
me strutting round with a photo of the Senior Surgeon?" The little cleft
in her chin showed suddenly with almost startling distinctness. "Well,
seeing it's you," she grinned, "and the year's all over, and there's
nobody left that I can worry about it any more, I don't mind telling you
in the least that I--bought it out of a photographer's show-case!
There! Are you satisfied now?"
With easy nonchalance she picked up the picture in question and
scrutinized it shrewdly.
"Lord! What a face!" she attested. "Nothing but granite! Hack him with a
knife and he wouldn't bleed but just chip off into pebbles!" With
exaggerated contempt she shrugged her supple shoulders. "Bah! How I hate
a man like that! There's no fun in him!" A little abruptly she turned
and thrust the photograph into Rae Malgregor's hand. "You can have it if
you want to," she said. "I'll trade it to you for that lace corset-cover
of yours!"
Like water dripping through a sieve the photograph slid through Rae
Malgregor's frightened fingers. With nervous apology she stooped and
picked it up again and held it gingerly by one remotest corner. Her eyes
were quite wide with horror.
"Oh, of course I'd like the--picture, well enough," she stammered. "But
it wouldn't seem--exactly respectful to--to trade it for a
corset-cover."
"Oh, very well," drawled Zillah Forsyth. "Tear it up then!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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