Free Rebel Sisters by Marita Conlon-Mckenna

when the official letter arrived from Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital offering her a place as probationer nurse.
    â€˜You will make a wonderful nurse,’ Nellie congratulated her warmly. ‘They are lucky to get you.’
    Mother pursed her lips when Muriel showed her the letter. She and Father both tried to dissuade her from accepting the position, saying that nursing was too onerous a career for a bright, intelligent young woman of means.
    â€˜My three sisters were wedded to their nursing careers and where did it get them?’ Mother proclaimed disapprovingly. ‘Spinsters, with no time for suitors or husbands.’
    â€˜Nursing is important work,’ Father reminded her gently, ‘and Muriel is not like your sisters.’
    â€˜You are over twenty-one, Muriel,’ Mother finally conceded, ‘and if this is what you want there is little your father and I can do to stop you.’
    â€˜Mother, can’t you be happy for me, please?’
    â€˜I am, dear, and naturally very proud that you are accepted by one of Dublin’s foremost hospitals, but—’
    â€˜Please Mother – no buts!’
    Father, despite his reservations, generously agreed to pay the hospital’s £25 enrolment fee and also to provide the money necessary for Muriel’s indoor and outdoor nurse’s uniforms.
    â€˜You’ll probably meet a handsome doctor and fall madly in love,’ Sidney sighed enviously.
    â€˜I will be far too busy working on the wards for something like that to happen,’ she retorted primly. ‘Nursing is very hard work.’
    Her youngest sister could be annoying at times. Set on becoming a journalist, Sidney was already secretly submitting articles to a number of papers, some of which Mother and Father would certainly never approve of, including Mr Griffith’s
Sinn Fein
paper, which Claude called a Fenian rag.
    â€˜Talk about surprising the mater and pater,’ joked Gabriel when he heard Muriel’s news. ‘You’re a beauty and they probably both thought they would have you married off to one of Claude’s boring rich legal friends by now!’
    â€˜Don’t be such a tease,’ Muriel begged her brother. ‘I am doing exactly what I want to do.’
    â€˜I know,’ he said. ‘Poor Mother.’

Chapter 13
Grace
    GRACE COULD HARDLY believe her good fortune. Mother and Father had finally agreed to let her apply to continue her art studies at the Slade School of Art in London and she had succeeded in securing a much-coveted interview there.
    As she began to pack and organize for this great adventure, Mother informed her that she had decided that she herself would chaperone and oversee her journey to London and her enrolment at the Slade that September.
    Despite Grace’s vehement protests that she was well able to cross the Irish Sea unaccompanied, Mother would not change her mind.
    â€˜But I will be safe, and Ernest has promised he will meet me at the station,’ she pleaded, hoping that the fact that she would be in the care of her older brother, who was working in London as an engineer, would satisfy Mother.
    â€˜We will share a cabin, so that will make the crossing easier,’ Mother insisted, determined to travel to London with her daughter and ensure that she found accommodation suitable for a young lady attending college.
    â€˜Oh how I wish she would stay at home!’ Grace whispered to Muriel, who was due shortly to start her training as a nurse.
    As they got ready to leave Dublin, Grace grew nervous. The Slade School of Art was known the world over, and William Orpen had no doubt had a hand in helping her be considered for a place.
    â€˜Lucky you,’ said Sidney enviously as Grace said goodbye. Father hugged her, slipping her some pound notes to hide from her mother.
    A cab collected them to take them to Kingstown, from where they would take the boat to Holyhead and then travel on by train