Hospital in the Highlands Read Online Free

out of you for as long as we could. Meg had to finish her studies, and Fay wanted tuition on the violin: she couldn’t soil her hands: and you were a second mother to Pixie, and as far as I know provided her with school uniform. I know I didn’t. One can’t wonder you made a break for it—and ran.”
    Making a break and running presumably described her entry into the nursing profession, Flo thought ruefully, and Pixie’s first school uniform second-hand and much too large, had come out of the housekeeping money.
    Adrian Lamont had died before he reached his popularity peak, however, and his work, though described by the critics as “pleasant,” was not unduly sensational. The few thousands accumulated from the sale of his pictures was offset by his debts, and the ghastly truth brought home by the family solicitors to the Misses Lamont was that they were not only penniless but homeless. Only Flo had foreseen what would happen with their father’s premature death, and when on occasions she had demurred over this extravagance, or that, she had been either called a spoilsport or accused of morbidity.
    Now that the blow had fallen, however, and her sisters were herded under her roof, still raw and embarrassed by all that had occurred, she found herself tied to the hospital and unable to act as a buffer between them and all that was awaiting at Rowans. She had not yet told them of Janet’s predilection for a “good cry.” The old woman would stop and cry for no reason at all, and more so if she was scolded or criticized. Flo feared that her sisters, somehow bereft of a critical faculty that at times bordered on malice, would not find their new home to their liking.
    “Auld William,” took a bit of understanding too. Tell him to take a box upstairs and he would either pretend he was a deaf mute or make some response in Gaelic when he was sure such would not be understood. He would perform no task in the simple straightforward fashion one might expect of a ser v ant. “Willyum” didn’t look on himself as a servant. He was a tramp by inclination, and had merely looked in on Miss Elspeth fifteen years ago for a bite of bread and cheese, in return for which he had told her of a thing or two that was wrong about her roses. Miss Elspeth was most obliged, but had informed him that there wasn’t much she could do to remedy the matter as, owing to her arthritis, the garden was beyond her. For more bread and cheese —and a bed in the stable—Willyum had worked in the garden all next day and ever since. Whenever he had a “difference” with anybody he packed up his handkerchief bundle and talked about moving on. But Willyum was now eighty-two, so it wasn’t likely he would move very far before the last of all his journeys.
    What would her three sisters have done by now to the old couple, Flo pondered in absolute dread as she prepared to assist at the operation for a perforated appendix on a thirteen-year-old girl. She would have phoned Rowans if she could, but Miss Nightingale had never seen the need for a telephone, and now that it would benefit her and keep her in touch with her work, Flo found there was a considerable waiting list of applicants ahead of her.
    “How’s it going, sweetie?” Keith Bexley suddenly demanded of her in Nurse MacAlister’s hearing.
    Flo frowned at him coldly.
    “How is what going, sir?”
    “Everything. I’ve just been nosing my way around and it’s going to be an absolute pushover here. I never struck it so lucky since I qualified. It appears I’m kingpin on the medical side.”
    “Temporarily. But we’re mainly a surgical team, sir, at The Glen. However, we’ll doubtless find you a few patients from time to time.”
    Nurse MacAlister turned away to chuckle. The Sassenach doctor had been throwing his weight around considerably since he arrived, asking half the nurses to go out with him and so forth.
    “By the way,” Keith went on airily, “there’s been a bit of a sweat on.