"Now, Little One," she mocked, "tell us the story of your lovely life.
Having heard me coyly confess that I went into nursing because I had
such a crush on this world,--and Helene here brazenly affirm that she
went into nursing because she had such a crush on the world to
come,--it's up to you now to confide to us just how you happened to take
up so noble an endeavor! Had you seen some of the young house doctors'
beautiful, smiling faces depicted in the hospital catalogue? Or was it
for the sake of the Senior Surgeon's grim, gray mug that you jilted your
poor plow-boy lover way up in the Annapolis Valley?"

"Why, Zillah!" gasped the country girl. "Why, I think you 're perfectly
awful! Why, Zillah Forsyth! Don't you ever say a thing like that again!
You can joke all you want to about the flirty young Internes. They're
nothing but fellows. But it isn't--it isn't respectful--for you to talk
like that about the Senior Surgeon. He's too--too terrifying!" she
finished in an utter panic of consternation.

"Oh, now I know it was the Senior Surgeon that made you jilt your
country beau!" taunted Zillah Forsyth with soft alto sarcasm.

"I didn't, either, jilt Joe Hazeltine!" stormed Rae Malgregor
explosively. Backed up against her bureau, eyes flaming, breast heaving,
little candy-box cap all tossed askew over her left ear, she stood
defying her tormentor. "I didn't, either, jilt Joe Hazeltine!" she
reasserted passionately. "It was Joe Hazeltine that jilted me! And we
'd been going together since we were kids! And now he's married the
dominie's daughter and they've got a kid of their own most as old as he
and I were when we first began courting each other. And it's all because
I insisted on being a trained nurse," she finished shrilly.