Nurse Trent's Children Read Free Page B

that brothers and sisters were ever separated. Of course, as David said, it still existed in England today, in the mid-fifties, but never in English Little Families. They , she thought proudly, were more enlightened. A pity the enlightenment had not reached these shores. She sighed, then brightened determinedly. It appeared there was nothing at present she could do about it, and since the children’s hosts seemed so kind and genuinely interested in their new wards, she decided to look at things in the same light that David Kennedy did—that child study was still comparatively in its infancy here—that there was time and space to expand.
    “Where are the girls going?” she asked him.
    “Place called Redgates, subrural, about twelve miles north. Quite charming. You’ll like it.”
    “And you?”
    “Temporarily in the midsuburbs. The boys’ wing at Redgates is being renovated.”
    Cathy felt suddenly lonely. She wished David was coming, too. “I don’t like it,” she sighed. “It’s too bad the children are not being kept together.”
    “You must try to keep in mind that most of these kind people don’t like it either. It just happens to be an Australian law. Give Australia time, Miss Trent. It’s very young, remember.”
    “Shouldn’t it have a wider outlook then?”
    “When it gets around to matters like this I believe it will have, it’s the getting around that takes time. There’s so much more to be done in a young country.”
    A VIP came up to Kennedy and Cathy edged away, suddenly concerned because she had lost Christabel.
    She found her, as she had found her on the ship, in the company of Dr. Malcolm. She looked at the ship’s surgeon i n surprise. The rest of the passengers had quickly dispersed in waiting cars and taxis. “Still here,” she said.
    “Just as well for Christabel,” he returned coolly. “Small girls do fall over edges of wharves or run into busy streets, even if housemothers are ‘never long absent.’ ”
    Cathy flushed. His would be an unforgiving nature, she thought. “I was tied up with the welcome,” she said unwillingly.
    “And the future housefather?” he insinuated; then, before she could answer him, “How was the welcome? Sufficient iced cakes and soothing syrup? I must say the natives don’t stint on that .”
    She regarded him speculatively.
    ‘You must be a native yourself by now. When were you brought here?”
    “At the lowest age Little Families transport their experimental young.”
    “Five,” murmured Cathy, ignoring his sarcasm. “Then you are an Australian. This country must have made you what you are.”
    “You praise the result?” One eyebrow had tilted upward. It gave him an almost sardonic look.
    Cathy flushed. “I think it unfair to deride a place that at least has afforded you success in life.”
    “Am I a success?”
    She shrugged. “The Winona is a considerable ship. I should scarcely say ship’s doctor was a pauper’s position.”
    “Couldn’t I have the credit?”
    She stuck her lower lip out obstinately. Hers was a full mouth, he thought detachedly, the fluted, bee-stung shape that had given way nowadays to wide toothpaste smiles.
    “Not entirely,” she argued, “someone—some institution—must have stuck by you.”
    “ Quite right. Little Families did.”
    “The Australian branch of Little Families?”
    “Quite right again.”
    “Then ... ”
    “I know what you are going to say. You are going to ask why I dislike them then? I don’t. Not entirely. I just can’t stomach some of their outmoded rules.”
    “A country must grow to a certain stage, not arrive there.” Cathy was echoing David Kennedy’s tolerant words.
    “You sound like a very tolerant person, Aunty Cathy.”
    “I hope I am, with twenty girls in my charge.”
    “There will be ten more when you get to Redgates.”
    She looked at him in astonishment. “How do you know that?” She had believed by the way he spoke that he had washed his hands of any