“Ah, the poor fellow!” said the little nurse, as she recounted the story, “he had a son who was a scapegrace, it seems, off away somewhere, and he wanted to send him a message. I ran and called the wife out of her bed--what do you think? She’d put her hair in crimpers! Upon my word, she had; they were bristling all round the head of her. Well, I didn’t want to have him die on me while I was out of the room, so I rushed back. And he made signs to me. The power of speech was gone from him. He wanted to write. I had a bit of pencil, but there wasn’t a scrap of paper that I could see, so there was nothing I could give him but the fly-leaf of the book I was reading; and ah! the poor fellow, it was only scrawls he could make after all. And sure, he was dead before his wife came in. And she just gave one look at him, and, ‘I’m going back to bed,’ says she, and back to bed she went. But it was the hair-curlers that did for me. I never can forget them.”
She was sitting at the end of the Signora’s bed, and doubled herself up with laughter as she spoke. We have no doubt but that she went back to her novel, scrawled with the dying father’s last futile effort.
We never knew anyone quite so frankly unmoved by the awful scenes it was her trade to witness. She found vast amusement in the wanderings of delirious patients. Whenever she wanted to cheer the other nurses up, she informed us, in the Home where they dwelt together, she could always make them laugh with little anecdotes from the typhoid ward; and the “wanderings” from the different beds.
She tried to cheer the Signora up on these lines; and the Signora, on wakeful nights, has to force her mind away from the “humorous” memories. She infinitely preferred the story of Nurse McDermott’s love affairs. Like many ugly people, the young woman believed herself irresistible, and paid a great deal of attention to the conservation of her charms. Once, having settled her patient for the night, she reappeared unexpectedly _en robe de chambre_.
“I have just come to tell you how many creams I have put on myself,” she cried to the bewildered lady. “I know it will amuse you! There’s the pomade for my hair, and Valaze for my face, and the lanoline for my neck. I do hate the mark of the collar--for evening dress, you know--it gives one away so! And there’s the salve for my lips, and the cold cream for my hands, and the polish for my nails----”