Free Kissing Kin by Elswyth Thane Page B

him.”
    Camilla stared at her with reviving hope.
    “ Could you do that?”
    “Well, I have heard of such things,” said Jenny. “We can try, anyway. You know what a wizard Bracken is. Just like him to take it up with the Prime Minister!”
    Archie stood up, and Sally told him that it had been arranged for him to have dinner upstairs in Virginia’s room, and he said How marvellous, and was gone. Virginia’s shriek of joyful surprise as he appeared in the doorway of her room was audible all the way down the stairs as the rest of them went in to dinner.
    Jenny was a big help during the meal, and the three of them kept a rambling conversation going on around Camilla, creating an atmosphere of usualness and calm which was very bracing, while she assimilated the shock of Archie’s news and even found things to say herself. And meanwhile a corner ofher brain was thinking. I don’t really feel anything yet—it’s like hitting your head very hard—it will begin to hurt later—I’m really doing pretty well, so far—I’m not crying, am I—I’m able to eat—why don’t I feel more?—is it the wine they made me drink….
    After dinner, having coffee in the drawing-room, she found herself talking in a normal sort of way to Jenny about the work in St. James’s Square as compared to Jenny’s job at the Hall—and Jenny was saying she wanted to take regular training so as to go out to France as a nursing Sister but everyone was dead against it, she couldn’t see why, as in some ways the work was actually easier than the sordid drudgery the VAD’s got, and it was certainly more interesting. Sally at once said No, Jenny was much too young to nurse great hulking men with dreadful wounds, that was for married women—or spinsters who had lost hope. Jenny laughed, and said, “How old-fashioned of you, darling!” and Sally said that anyway the Duke was quite right not to permit it.
    “Besides, I am a spinster,” said Jenny then, and her lips closed defiantly on the word, not smiling any more, and she looked back at Sally with her blue eyes very bright and dark as though the pupils had expanded, and her chin very high.
    “Nonsense, you are jeune f ille,” said Sally flatly. “And the world is still full of men who have eyes to see and hearts to give.”
    “But I don’t want a man,” said Jenny wilfully, and the words came out very clean-cut and bitten off one by one. “I just want to be a nurse.”
    “All men are not alike,” said Sally. “You may as well say you do not want a new hat. Sooner or later there is one which becomes you and you cannot resist.”
    “And so you wear it for the rest of your life?” flashed Jenny, and shook her head. “That’s a rotten simile, darling—isn’t it, Sosthène?” There were queer, angry sparks in her eyes, and Camilla, watching her from across the hearthrug, recalledVirginia’s reference to Gerald Campion, who had jilted Jenny for Fabrice and was now in France.
    “Well, yes, perhaps it was,” Sally admitted easily before Sosthène could speak. “But it was to say that there are always more fish in the sea.”
    “All rather scaly, I’m afraid,” said Jenny, still in that clipped-off way, not bitter, not flippant, but—disinterested.
    “Oh, come, come! ” Sosthène objected with affection, and “You have hurt his feelings!” cried Sally with mock concern.
    “I’m sorry, just show me another Sosthène and I shall revise my opinions!” Jenny reached to pat him lightly on the sleeve. “But there is only one of these, and it is not for me!”
    “Perhaps I can show you Calvert soon,” said Camilla generously, for she liked Jenny for trying to jest about her hurt, and she knew already what it was to covet Sosthène, and he was not for her either.
    “I hope you can darling. And don’t think I’m sour about men because I’m not. Some of them are lambs.” Her lips were softer now, and her eyes smiled again. “I just want to be a nurse,” she repeated,