Nurse in Waiting Read Free Page B

Miss Merivale wasn’t coming till tomorrow,” he accused.
    “I know. I got muddled. But Justin was over to Tulleen with the eggs, and he brought her back.”
    “Oh, he did? Did he say when he was coming in to see me?”
    “I asked him to dinner tomorrow night—to meet Miss Merivale.”
    Roger Carnehill raised his eyebrows. “I thought he’d met her,” he commented ironically. “Anyway, send him in to see me afterwards, will you? Where’s Shuan?”
    “At Naas, darling. It’s market-day, you know.”
    Joanna stood silently by, using her trained observation to the full. In the sharply put questions she thought she detected the typical invalid’s effort to reach out beyond his bed, to keep a finger, as it were, upon the pulse of events over which he no longer had control.
    She realized that she knew less than she ought about the course of his illness. She would have to ask when she could see their Doctor Beltane, in order to get instructions. She knew only that a riding accident of nearly two years earlier had resulted in spinal trouble from which he ought by now to have recovered, but apparently hadn’t, even to the extent of convalescence. It looked, certainly, as if her own work towards his recovery might be of indefinite duration. Momentarily she believed she would not mind—even if it meant that she would be away from London—and from Dale—for far longer than she had expected.
    Mrs. Carnehill was saying: “Fancy! She didn’t know about my being ‘Luculla’!” She sounded as amused as she had been at luncheon, but Roger frowned slightly as he said to Joanna:
    “Didn’t you? Hadn’t Colonel Kimstone told you?”
    “No. I haven’t seen the Colonel since I nursed him, and that was some time ago. He didn’t mention Carrieghmere then,” she told him.
    “Then you didn’t know that Mother spends her time poking about the markets in the back streets of Dublin and writing about food for people who probably don’t know the difference between a consomm é and a pig’s trotter?” His words might have been humorous if it were not for the bitter, sarcastic ring in his voice.
    Joanna was shocked. She had understood from Mrs. Carnehill at luncheon that she thoroughly enjoyed her work and that her ‘poking about the markets’ was incidental to the number of interesting food finds she made there. But it was clear that there was some conflict between mother and son on the subject, and Joanna was anxious not to be drawn into ‘taking sides.’ But she had begun to admire Mrs. Carnehill tremendously and she resented for her her son’s criticism.
    “It’s the people like that who most need to be told what the difference is —” she began with conviction, but her patient broke in with a sarcastic:
    “And I suppose they have to look to a Carnehill of Carrieghmere to tell them!”
    “If a ‘Carnehill of Carrieghmere’ is willing and knowledgeable enough to tell them—why not?” retorted Joanna.
    He looked at her, not replying, and Mrs. Carnehill, who recognized lowering signs which Joanna did not, put in briskly:
    “Come now, Roger. We’ve been over all this so often before. And I still say I like food; I like discovering odd ways of cooking it and, best of all, I like passing on my tips to other people —”
    She stopped, but not before Joanna had noticed the tightening of the sick man’s grip upon the coverlet. He said irritably:
    “But it’s all so absurd. It was all right when it was merely a hobby with you, but surely there should be plenty for you to attend to here, now that I’m no use? I ought to be able to look to you to be my link with what is going on, on the estate. But as it is, there seems to be a conspiracy lately to keep things back from me. I even have to force a report out of my own agent!”
    “Roger— please !” For the first time Mrs. Carnehill seemed distressed. “You know it isn’t like that at all. It’s simply that neither Justin nor I see the necessity for