Promise the Doctor Read Online Free Page B

‘but I feel just the same way ... only I keep remembering how annoyed Matron would be if she walked in and found me reading a private letter on duty.’
    ‘I shouldn’t worry about it, anyway.’ Marcia gave the toss of her auburn curls which she invariably did when any discussion of restrictions of any kind arose. ‘There are nurses wanted everywhere, and I’m sure every hospital hasn’t got someone at its head who swears by the rules laid down in the early days of nursing! Some Matrons nowadays are really quite human. Where my sister’s doing her training, up in the West Riding of Yorkshire, they have a youngish Matron and she’s absolutely marvellous at understanding how different things are today.’
    ‘The basic rules remain the same,’ Joy said firmly, although secretly she had to admit that their Matron was a bit of a martinet she would say nothing against her, whatever her private thoughts might be! ‘I shall just have to contain my soul in patience until I’m in Mr. Belding’s car and on my way home. I wonder,’ she mused aloud, ‘if he’ll mind stopping at the supermarket in Wigmore Street. I wanted some mushrooms in the first place. Now I think I’d better get some cooked chicken as well...’
    ‘If he’s going to help to eat it, then he ought not to mind stopping to collect it!’ Marcia observed reasonably enough. ‘But I shouldn’t splash too much, not until you know what your inheritance consists of. Somehow Miss Barnes doesn’t remain in my memory as the sort of person to have won the pools and hoarded her ill-gotten gains for years without spending any of it!’
    ‘No, she wasn’t like that,’ Joy agreed, a mental picture of the late Miss Muriel Barnes clearly before her.
    ‘She’s more likely to have left me a whole load of responsibility of some sort or another. Somehow, since I’ve chatted with Miss Paling I’m beginning to worry as to exactly what she did mean when she referred to her “dearest possession”. Could be any one of a thousand things.’
    ‘Sister! Would you please come and take a look at Mrs. Bredon?’
    Nurse Bagshaw looked a little frightened and distressed and Joy rose at once.
    ‘I’ll be back in a moment, Staff,’ she spoke over her shoulder, ‘then we can finish going through those lists.’
    There wasn’t much time to spare, after all, during the afternoon. What had promised to be a fairly peaceful day was shattered by one event after another, and when at long last young Cadet Nurse Lenton brought in Joy’s afternoon tea, she was only too happy to sit back and relax for those few minutes it would take to drink the welcome brew.
    ‘I should open it now.’ Marcia lifted her own cup and fixed an interested gaze on the bulge of the letter Joy still carried unopened. ‘I honestly don’t know how you can sit there so calmly, when for all you know you might have in your pocket the key to a lifetime of ease and leisure!’
    ‘I hardly think so,’ Joy laughed, but the temptation was great, there was no denying the truth of that statement. ‘Well,’ she said reluctantly, ‘just a peep I By the look of the envelope it’ll take me hours to get through all this. I ought to save it until this evening.’
    ‘I’d be consumed with curiosity,’ was Marcia’s only comment, and with a half-stifled laugh at her own feelings of guilt, Joy took the letter into her hands and began to tear the thick, heavily gummed flap.
    She was quite right in her assumption that there would be a great deal to read through, but as she scanned the first of the pages she gave a startled little gasp.
    ‘What is it?’ Marcia was agog with curiosity. ‘Anything good?’
    ‘Just a large house,’ Joy said faintly, ‘with, it seems, an equally large garden, with a view of the sea and the shore which, so Miss Barnes had written, can’t be beaten anywhere along the coast. She’s left me the house and grounds, the contents and sufficient money to attend to the upkeep, the