III
When Nurse Hopkins, pleasantly stimulated¹ by tea and romantic speculation², finally left the house,Mary Gerrard ran out of the door to overtake her.
“Oh, Nurse, may I walk down to the village with you?”
“Of course you can, Mary, my dear.”
Mary Gerrard said breathlessly:
“I must talk to you. I’m so worried about everything.”
The older woman looked at her kindly³.
At twenty-one, Mary Gerrard was a lovely creature with a kind of wild-rose unreality about her:
a long delicate neck, pale golden hair lying close to her exquisitely⁴ shaped head in soft naturalwaves, and eyes of a deep vivid blue.
Nurse Hopkins said:
“What’s the trouble?”
“The trouble is that the time is going on and on and I’m not doing anything!”
Nurse Hopkins said drily:
“Time enough for that.”
“No, but it is so—so unsettling. Mrs. Welman has been wonderfully kind, giving me all thatexpensive schooling⁵. I do feel now that I ought to be starting to earn my own living. I ought to betraining for something.”
Nurse Hopkins nodded sympathetically.
“It’s such a waste of everything if I don’t. I’ve tried to—to explain what I feel to Mrs. Welman,but—it’s difficult—she doesn’t seem to understand. She keeps saying there’s plenty of time.”
Nurse Hopkins said:
“She’s a sick woman, remember.”
Mary flushed a contrite⁶ flush.
“Oh, I know. I suppose I oughtn’t to bother her. But it is worrying—and Father’s so—so beastlyabout it! Keeps jibing⁷ at me for being a fine lady! But indeed I don’t want to sit about doingnothing!”
“I know you don’t.”
“The trouble is that training of any kind is nearly always expensive. I know German pretty wellnow, and I might do something with that. But I think really I want to be a hospital nurse. I do likenursing and sick people.”

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