Nurse in Waiting Read Free

needs nursing.”
    Mrs. Carnehill looked relieved at her reply. “That’s all right then. It was the surgeon who suggested having a nurse for Roger, and then Colonel Kimstone told us about you and promised to speak to your matron for me. I’m afraid you will be here for longer than a week or two, so I hope you’ll be happy with us. There now! The steak is just about done. I’ll call someone to show you to your room and we’ll meet in the dining-room.” She bustled out and came back bringing a fat Irishwoman with her.
    “This is Cook,” she announced. “Roseen—the housemaid—has a day off, so Cook will show you to your room before she helps me to dish up.”
    Cook clutched the handle of Joanna’s suitcase in a brawny fist. “This way, will ye?” she demanded, and marched ahead of Joanna up the broad oak staircase.
    It was with pleased surprise that the girl saw the bedroom which had been allotted to her. It was not too large, the two broad windows would face south, she thought, and there was a pleasant pale green carpet on the floor, a colouring which was taken up by the curtains and the cushions in an easy chair by the fireplace. About it there was none of the rather austere chill of such of the ground floor as she had seen. It looked as if it had been furnished by someone with modern, ‘young’ tastes. Somehow Joanna could not see Mrs. Carnehill as having planned it, and wondered who had.
    Downstairs, in the dining-room, she was to be surprised again. The room itself was big, not too warm and its furnishings were heavy and near-Victorian. But the appointments of the table—the silver, the glass, the linen—were exquisite. The steak which had been cooked in such an unorthodox fashion lay in a silver chafing-dish, and the sight told Joanna’s young, healthy appetite that waiting for it had been worth it.
    Mrs. Carnehill intercepted her glance at the big clock on the mantel-shelf.
    “You’ll get used to this,” she said comfortably. “Over here we frequently don’t lunch till half-past two or three. Now Justin—Mr. Mc Kiley, you know—he comes from the North and is half Scottish into the bargain—thinks it gastronomically criminal to eat after half-past one. I can’t agree with him, of course,” she added as if that settled the matter. She went on: “Shuan isn’t here today. She has gone to Naas market to sell some of her rabbits and bring back the horsemeat for the dogs. So I couldn’t really have met you myself off the 12.4 today, because she has got the car. It was indeed fortunate that it happened to be Wednesday and that Justin —”
    Her voice trailed off vaguely and Joanna ventured to ask:
    “Who is Shuan?”
    “Shuan? Oh, she is my ward. Her parents died when she was twelve, and she has lived with us ever since. She’s seventeen—no, eighteen—now. She makes her own pocket-money with her rabbits and her dog-breeding, and sometimes she has given riding lessons to visitors to Tulleen, if they want them. She helps me too. Between us, we have managed all the winter, but I have to be away a lot—to Dublin and sometimes over to England—and I couldn’t leave her entirely responsible for Roger. So that is why we needed you.”
    “You have to go to England on business?” asked Joanna politely.
    Her hostess looked a little surprised. “Oh—didn’t Colonel Kimstone tell you about me?”
    “No, I don’t think so,” smiled Joanna.
    Mrs. Carnehill threw back her head and laughed. “Then how you must have wondered whether I was to be trusted with the steak!” she gurgled. “Why, I’m ‘Luculla’! My job is food! You must have heard of me!”
    Joanna had. She had had her mouth made to water by articles on cookery, signed “Luculla,” in innumerable magazines in England. She told her companion so, and looked at her with fresh interest, though at the back of her mind hovered the question which had been troubling her for some time. Where was the wealth and luxury which she had