"Oh well, if she _does_--" said Miss Pinnegar cryptically.
Miss Frost said very little. But she had serious confidential talks
with Dr. Fordham. Dr. Fordham didn't approve, certainly he
didn't--but neither did he see any great harm in it. At that time it
was rather the thing for young ladies to enter the nursing
profession, if their hopes had been blighted or checked in another
direction! And so, enquiries were made. Enquiries were made.
The upshot was, that Alvina was to go to Islington for her six
months' training. There was a great bustle, preparing her nursing
outfit. Instead of a trousseau, nurse's uniforms in fine
blue-and-white stripe, with great white aprons. Instead of a wreath
of orange blossom, a rather chic nurse's bonnet of blue silk, and
for a trailing veil, a blue silk fall.
Well and good! Alvina expected to become frightened, as the time
drew near. But no, she wasn't a bit frightened. Miss Frost watched
her narrowly. Would there not be a return of the old, tender,
sensitive, shrinking Vina--the exquisitely sensitive and nervous,
loving girl? No, astounding as it may seem, there was no return of
such a creature. Alvina remained bright and ready, the half-hilarious
clang remained in her voice, taunting. She kissed them all good-bye,
brightly and sprightlily, and off she set. She wasn't nervous.
She came to St. Pancras, she got her cab, she drove off to her
destination--and as she drove, she looked out of the window. Horrid,
vast, stony, dilapidated, crumbly-stuccoed streets and squares of
Islington, grey, grey, greyer by far than Woodhouse, and
interminable. How exceedingly sordid and disgusting! But instead of
being repelled and heartbroken, Alvina enjoyed it. She felt her
trunk rumble on the top of the cab, and still she looked out on the
ghastly dilapidated flat facades of Islington, and still she smiled
brightly, as if there were some charm in it all. Perhaps for her
there was a charm in it all. Perhaps it acted like a tonic on the
little devil in her breast. Perhaps if she had seen tufts of
snowdrops--it was February--and yew-hedges and cottage windows, she
would have broken down. As it was, she just enjoyed it. She enjoyed
glimpsing in through uncurtained windows, into sordid rooms where
human beings moved as if sordidly unaware. She enjoyed the smell of
a toasted bloater, rather burnt. So common! so indescribably common!
And she detested bloaters, because of the hairy feel of the spines
in her mouth. But to smell them like this, to know that she was in
the region of "penny beef-steaks," gave her a perverse pleasure.
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