come back and see the empty slate, and frown and shake his head. He might have Nurse Spiller with him. ''Ain''t you wrote a word?'' she''d say. And here''s the doctors spending all their time to make you well. Ungrateful, I call that.''
When he''d gone, she''d shake me. And when I''d cry and swear, she''d shake me harder. She could shake you so, you thought your teeth were being rattled out of your head. She could shake you until you were sick.—''Got the grips,'' she''d tell the other nurses then, with a wink; and the nurses would laugh. They hated the ladies. They hated me. They thought that when I spoke in the way that was natural to me, I did it to tease them. I know they put it out that I got special attentions from Dr Christie, through pretending to be low. That made the ladies hate me, too. Only mad Miss Wilson was now and then kind to me. Once she saw me weeping over my slate and, when Nurse Bacon''s back was turned, came over and wrote me out my name—Maud''s name, I mean. But, though she meant it well, I wished she hadn''t done it; for when Dr Christie came and saw it, he smiled and cried, ''Well done, Mrs Rivers! Now we are half-way there!'' And when, next day, I again could make nothing but scribbles, of course he thought me shamming.
''Keep her from her dinner, Nurse Bacon,'' he said sternly, ''until she writes again.''