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homes? They aren’t orphans?’
She racked her brains for the information she had primed herself with before she had started on the ill-fated trip. ‘No, they come from good homes, I believe, but poor, though. I’m sure their mothers and fathers came to see them off.’
‘I’ll see if we can arrange something.’ He sounded vague. ‘You don’t mind staying?’
It wouldn’t be much use saying that she did, she concluded ruefully.
‘Not at all,’ she spoke with such politeness that he shot her a keen glance before going on to say:
‘Good—if you would be kind enough to look after the two of them—day duty, of course, and the usual off-duty hours. I think it might be best if we paid you as though you were a member of our own nursing staff, and any adjustments can be made when you get back. Have you sufficient money for the moment?’
‘Yes, thank you—the police gave me my handbag and case.’
He stood up. ‘I won’t keep you any longer.’ He went to the door to open it for her. ‘I am grateful to you for your help.’
She paused by him, looking up into his face; he wasn’t only a very handsome man, he was kind too, even though she perceived that he was in the habit of getting his own way. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
A little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘I have a practice in the town,’ he told her, ‘and I am Medical Director of this hospital.’
‘How fortunate it was that you should have come along.’
‘A happy accident, shall we say, Arabella, if one might use the term without giving offence. You don’t mind if I call you Arabella?’
The stammer, which had been happily absent, came back with a rush.
‘N-no, n-not in the l-least.’ In fact she liked to be called Arabella by him, but it would never do to say so; she liked him very much, but he was still the Medical Director, being kind to a strange nurse who had been forced, willy-nilly through circumstances, to join his staff. To be on the safe side, she added ‘sir.’
CHAPTER THREE
ARABELLA found that she slipped into the Dutch hospital’s routine easily enough. True, there were difficulties with the language, which she considered quite outlandish and impossible to pronounce, but a great number of the staff spoke a little English; the house doctors spoke it fluently, so, more or less, did the Directrice, a large, bony woman with the face of a good-tempered horse and the disposition of an angel. It was she who explained to Arabella about her off-duty and her days off, and what would be expected of her when she was on duty; mostly the care of the two spastic children who were injured, she discovered, and when they didn’t need her attention, help with the routine ward duties.
For the first two days she was kept busy, for Sister Brewster, although feeling better, seemed to think that it was beneath her dignity to come on to the wards and help with her little charges. She contented herself with twice-daily consultations with Arabella, during which she uttered a great many statements, each one contradicting the last; never ceased to lament their misfortunes, and shook her head doubtfully over Doctor van der Vorst’s decision to keep Arabella at the hospital to look after Billy and Sally. But she was far too anxious to get home to trouble overmuch about this, beyond warning Arabella to remember that she was still only a student nurse even if she had her Children’s training. Arabella listened meekly, for there was nothing much she could do about it, although she felt ashamed of Sister Brewster with her whining voice, looking on the black side of everything.
It could have been so much worse; the children could have been seriously injured, even killed. Doctor van der Vorst might never have come along that particular road at that particular time. Arabella considered that they had a great deal to be thankful for, but it would have been useless to say so; she could see that Sister Brewster, now that she was on the point of departure, was about to shed her role of a woman battered by cruel fate and a number of children who could do nothing much for themselves, and assume a quite different part in their adventure. Arabella guessed that she would have a quite different tale to tell by the time she reached Wickham’s.
In this she was quite correct, but she was unaware that Doctor van der Vorst had already told the authorities at Wickham’s his version of the whole affair, both by telephone and also in a remarkably concise letter, written in beautiful English. Not that Arabella minded overmuch what Sister Brewster might fabricate when she returned; her own friends wouldn’t believe a word of it, and old Brewster was noted for evading responsibility and laying the blame on other shoulders when anything went wrong.
So it was with faintly guilty pleasure that Arabella waved goodbye to the home-going party, setting off in their convoy of ambulances; it would be super not to have Sister Brewster’s disapproving lectures twice a day; super to see something of the town and perhaps, if she were lucky, the surrounding countryside, super too, to accept the invitations extended to her by various members of the hospital staff to go to the local cinema with them, or shopping. She skipped happily up the staircase leading to the ward where Sally and Billy were being nursed. There was a cheerful hubbub of sound coming from behind its closed doors and no one to be seen, Arabella, feeling for some reason she didn’t bother to question, delighted with life and the immediate future, started to whistle the first tune which came into her head: ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind…’ She rendered it happily if inappropriately, and then quite carried away, started to sing: ‘Thou art not so unkind…’ slightly off key and regrettably loud. ‘As man’s ingratitude…’ She reached the top of the staircase and became aware all of a sudden that Doctor van der Vorst was beside her; he must have followed her silently up the stairs and what with the cheerful din from the ward and her noisy singing… She frowned fiercely, went a faint pink and said reprovingly:
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