"For Heaven's sake, Rae, shut up!" she said. "What in Creation's the
matter with you to-day? I never saw you act so before!" With real
concern she stared into the girl's turbid eyes. "If you feel like that
about it, what in thunder did you go into nursing for?" she demanded not
unkindly.

Very slowly Helene Churchill rose from her lowly seat by her precious
book-case and came round and looked at Rae Malgregor rather oddly.
"Yes," faltered Helene Churchill. "What did you go into nursing for?"
The faintest possible taint of asperity was in her voice.

Quite dumbly for an instant Rae Malgregor's natural timidity stood
battling the almost fanatic professional fervor in Helene Churchill's
frankly open face, the raw, scientific passion, of very different
caliber, but no less intensity, hidden so craftily behind Zillah
Forsyth's plastic features. Then suddenly her own hands went clutching
back at the bureau for support, and all the flaming, raging red went
ebbing out of her cheeks, leaving her lips with hardly blood enough left
to work them.

"I went into nursing," she mumbled, "and it's God's own truth,--I went
into nursing because--because I thought the uniforms were so cute."

Furiously, the instant the words were gone from her mouth, she turned
and snarled at Zillah's hooting laughter.

"Well, I had to do something!" she attested. The defense was like a flat
blade slapping the air.

Desperately she turned to Helene Churchill's goading, faintly