just in snatches.
She had no serious acquaintance with anybody, she was too busy. The
matron and sisters and doctors and patients were all part of her
day's work, and she regarded them as such. The men she chiefly
ignored: she felt much more friendly with the matron. She had many a
cup of tea and many a chat in the matron's room, in the quiet, sunny
afternoons when the work was not pressing. Alvina took her quiet
moments when she could: for she never knew when she would be rung up
by one or other of the doctors in the town.
And so, from the matron, she learned to crochet. It was work she had
never taken to. But now she had her ball of cotton and her hook, and
she worked away as she chatted. She was in good health, and she was
getting fatter again. With the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, she had improved
a good deal, her colour and her strength had returned. But
undoubtedly the nursing life, arduous as it was, suited her best.
She became a handsome, reposeful woman, jolly with the other nurses,
really happy with her friend the matron, who was well-bred and wise,
and never over-intimate.
The doctor with whom Alvina had most to do was a Dr. Mitchell, a
Scotchman. He had a large practice among the poor, and was an
energetic man. He was about fifty-four years old, tall,
largely-built, with a good figure, but with extraordinarily large
feet and hands. His face was red and clean-shaven, his eyes blue,
his teeth very good. He laughed and talked rather mouthingly.
Alvina, who knew what the nurses told her, knew that he had come as
a poor boy and bottle-washer to Dr. Robertson, a fellow-Scotchman,
and that he had made his way up gradually till he became a doctor
himself, and had an independent practice. Now he was quite rich--and
a bachelor. But the nurses did not set their bonnets at him very
much, because he was rather mouthy and overbearing.
In the houses of the poor he was a great autocrat.
"What is that stuff you've got there!" he inquired largely, seeing a
bottle of somebody's Soothing Syrup by a poor woman's bedside. "Take
it and throw it down the sink, and the next time you want a soothing
syrup put a little boot-blacking in hot water. It'll do you just as
much good."
Imagine the slow, pompous, large-mouthed way in which the red-faced,
handsomely-built man pronounced these words, and you realize why the
poor set such store by him.
He was eagle-eyed. Wherever he went, there was a scuffle directly
his foot was heard on the stairs. And he knew they were hiding
something. He sniffed the air: he glanced round with a sharp eye:
and during the course of his visit picked up a blue mug which was
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