Nurse Lang Read Online Free Page B

afternoon sunshine, glad of the shade of the bridge awning as she reached the sheltered corner where Philip Melmore still lay. He was alone for the moment, but she knew that his brother had been with him for most of the day.
    “I’ve brought you some French rolls, a piece of Madeira cake, and some Russian tea!” she announced. “What could be fairer than that?”
    “Some more French rolls and a Vienna sausage!”
    “Then, you are hungry?”
    “It would seem so.”
    “I’ll go and enquire about the sausage,” she offered.
    “No—stay where you are. We can call a steward if we see one, and you can talk while I eat what’s here.” He surveyed the tray she set before him with evident relief. “Not invalid diet, anyway, thank heaven! There appears to be plenty of fruit.”
    “We’re sailing past where it comes from!”
    “Away from Africa,” he mused. “Do you regret that? My brother told me this is your last voyage.”
    “I shall miss the sunshine and the warmth,” Moira confessed, “and I have to find a job once I get back to England.”
    “Nursing?”
    “There's nothing else I know about.”
    “Grant says you’re a natural for this sort of work,” he mused, leaving her to wonder what else his brother had said about her while he finished his rolls and cherry jam, and Moira could not truthfully say that she got much further with him during the hour which followed.
    “Thanks for bringing the tray. Though perhaps I should say thanks for bearing with me for so long!”
    “I don’t think I’ve borne very much,” she answered lightly. “Except the heat of the sun on my poor nose! It’s sure to skin now. It’s my Equator penalty!”
    “Is there always one—a penalty, I mean?” He reached suddenly and grasped her hand. “You look as if there shouldn’t be any penalties where you are concerned,” he added unexpectedly.
    Before she could answer him, before she could draw her hand away, there was a firm step on the deck behind them and Grant Melmore appeared.
    “So you’ve found your way back?” he said, smiling a little as he lifted the tray for her. “I see that Philip has eaten a reasonable meal under your influence.” Curiously disturbed by look and words alike, Moira rescued the tray and beat a hasty retreat as the first dressing gong sounded in a distant part of the great ship.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    ASCENSION was behind them, a tall, dark rock on the broad Atlantic waste, when Grant finally came in search of her.
    “I’ve been wondering how busy you were,” he said, hesitating at the surgery door as if he had expected to find Greg with her.
    “I’m almost through.” She kept her back to him, stacking new dressings into their sterile jars so that he would not see the swift, tell-tale flush which she had not been able to control at the sound of his awaited voice. “I go off duty at four.”
    “Oh! Then, it’s hardly fair of me to come at ten to four with a request,” he said.
    She turned slowly.
    “Is it about Philip?”
    “Yes.” He came into the surgery and stood looking about him. “He’s not weathering this heat very well, I’m afraid, which is not surprising. It’s enough to try any normal human being’s patience, and we haven’t had a breath of wind all day to help matters. Don’t think I’m complaining about the ship’s excellent ventilation system,” he added with a slow smile. “It’s just tropic depression and the fact that there’s nothing Phil can do about breaking the monotony. He has asked to see you,” he added briefly.
    “Of course I’ll come,” Moira said. “Would you like me to have tea with him?”
    “With us both,” he suggested. “Unless you are otherwise engaged?”
    “I meant to read and drink endless cups of Russian tea on the shady side of the sun lounge,” she said, “but I suppose dozens of other people will have thought of that by now.”
    “Philip and I have been lucky,” he said, standing aside so that she could precede him