Nurse Lang Read Online Free

still at breakfast, and she felt her heart contract with pity at the thought of this sensitive boy eager to feel the tropic sun on his body yet unable to face the stares of the curious or the deliberately averted eyes of the understanding few.
    Philip Melmore had his eyes closed, but she was quite sure that he was not asleep. The hard line of his jaw and the tensed young mouth denied relaxation and the strong brown hand that lay on the open book on his knees was clenched as if in an effort to restrain some agonizing outburst of emotion.
    “You’ve stolen my favourite view-point!” she said, coming round to stand by his side. “I found this hide-away as soon as I first came on board. One feels more free out here—closer to the sea itself.”
    Philip Melmore met her smile with sullen disregard.
    “Grant has apparently got his own way again,” he observed ungraciously. “I told him in Cape Town that I wouldn't have a nurse travelling back with me. I made it a condition of my going to England, and now he has produced you!”
    “Your brother hasn’t exactly engaged me to nurse you," she explained carefully. “I’m employed by the shipping company to look after any passengers who may be unlucky enough to have to go into the sick-bay during the voyage. All sorts of accidents happen, and people can come on board with a fever without really knowing they have it.”
    “I don’t need a nurse," he said, disregarding her explanation.
    “I wasn't thinking about that when I came up here," she said. “I wondered if we had passed one ship all the way from Cape Town.”
    “How should I know? I'm not interested in passing ships.”
    “You can miss them down below,” she ran on. “The cabins and saloons always seem such a distance from the sea and a passing ship does become an event on a long voyage, especially after the second day out.”
    “The second day,” he repeated. “We’re not through with that yet and there will be twelve more to go at midnight to-night!”
    “Is it wise to count time like that?” she asked.
    “Why not? One day looks pretty much the same as the next when you are forced to view them from a cane chair on the broad of your back. There’s the rim of the sea to look at, and the ship’s rail, and the bridge and the masts and the sky!”
    Bitterness lay buried in that last word, the thought of the vast blue canopy of space arched above him which had once been his paradise.
    “When I came out here,” he continued in a tense, choked undertone, “I flew a plane over. That's what I intended to do for a living.” Once again the brief laugh grated against the silence of their isolated retreat. “Nothing could have been freer than that, and I wanted to escape. But the harsh gods laughed and sent me crashing down to earth again!”
    Moira did not answer him for a moment. It was easy to understand all that he felt, but she sensed that pity was the last of his needs. She dared not show him pity, although her heart was full of it.
    “Nothing is really final,” she said at last. “Your brother is taking you home to England in the hope of a cure.”
    “Grant?” He smiled. “Yes, he likes his resident guinea-pig, and I suppose they always have some hope of a recovery.”
    “Haven’t you?” she challenged, a first spark of anger stirring in her heart at this unfair criticism of his brother.
    “Not much,” he returned laconically. “I’ve cashed my chips, I guess.”
    “That’s no way to talk!” The anger was real now, very near the surface. “If you are going to accept defeat in the beginning we can do nothing for you.”
    “Who wants to live—crippled?” he demanded sullenly.
    “Is that the alternative?” she asked more gently.
    “What else could it be?”
    “However wrong I may be,” she said, “I’ve got to say this. You’re not being entirely fair to your brother. Without faith even the most brilliant surgeon can find himself handicapped. You’re—giving in before the fight