Read Nurse Trent's Children for Free Online Page B

scene she saw was imminent by the threatening light in Elvira’s black eyes.
    Elvira snorted and went out, and Mrs. Jessopp said ungraciously. “So you’re the next victim, are you?”
    “Oh, really, Mrs. Jessopp ... ”
    “I meant what I said. Fair horrors, these girls are. You’ll find out. Can’t think what they’re doing, either, sending a young housemother like you. How old are you? Twenty?”
    Cathy remembered in time there was no need for her to tell this woman anything. “I’ll manage,” she said a little stiffly, adding hurriedly as she glimpsed battle in Mrs. Jessopp’s eyes, as she had glimpsed it in Elvira’s, “Have you everything now?”
    “No, there’s a bottle of strawberry conserve, then there’s my little bag as well—I couldn’t find it yesterday.”
    Cathy ran upstairs and brought the bag down. “It was there all the time,” she lied blandly.
    “Humph,” was all Mrs. Jessopp said.
    “About the strawberry ... I’m afraid the girls used it when you went away so hurriedly yesterday.”
    That gave Mrs. Jessopp her opening and immediately she took it. “ I should think I would go away in a hurry. Twenty more loaded on me on top of the other ten. I would be a fool. Anyway, apart from that, I wasn’t going to stay and pity the poor fool who stays. It’s not a well-run place. There’s no discipline. Those girls get away with anything. It’s a crying disgrace. Lazy little beggars they are, too, and all that crazy Elvira does is smile and bleat. ‘Poor innocent children .’ Innocent, is it? You should see the notes they get from the boys. Disgusting, I call it. ”
    Cathy asked, “What sort of notes?”
    “Oh ... notes.” Mrs. Jessopp was intentionally vague.
    “What is in them?”
    “What shouldn’t be in them, that’s what.”
    “Tell me, Mrs. Jessopp.”
    Mrs. Jessopp had the grace to blush guiltily. She also lacked the imagination to concoct at once a sufficiently “disgusting” note. “Oh, just ‘I love you’ and all that stuff. Some might say it’s only childish scrawl, but I maintain it’s downright suggestive. I don’t think it should be allowed.”
    To Mrs. Jessopp’s surprise Cathy said, “I think you have something there. It is early to start writing notes. But that’s the trouble with segregation.”
    “With what?”
    “Keeping them apart. They’re not growing up normally. They are not accepting each other normally. If they were under the same roof in small units they would be one family, not two sections of a foundation.”
    S he was suddenly aware of Mrs. Jessopp’s wide and disapproving stare. “Now I know I did right in getting away,” that woman gasped in outrage. “Under the same roof indeed. I never heard of such a thing. Never mind about the strawberry conserve. I’m going this instant,” and with that Mrs. Jessopp swept indignantly out.
    Cathy watched her, feeling as genuinely shocked as Mrs. Jessopp was doing her best to evince she was herself.
    She heard the taxi depart and went kitchenward in search of Elvira.
    “Is she gone?”
    “Yes.”
    “A good job, too.” The black eyes looked at Cathy shrewdly. “Upset you, didn’t she? She’s always doing that. Sit down and have a drop of tea.”
    Tea fixed everything, according to Elvira. It did not fix Cathy, however. She looked down at her steaming cup with troubled eyes. When Mrs. Ferguson, the temporary cook, went down to the kitchen garden for vegetables for dinner, she unburdened herself to the hovering Elvira.
    “I didn’t think people could have such mean little minds, Elvira.”
    “You find mean little minds wherever you go. Who was it? Jessy?”
    “Yes. She didn’t agree with me that whole families, both boys and girls, should be housed together. I can’t blame her for differing. Opinions are everyone’s privilege. But it was the way she looked at it. So mean, narrow, cramped and suspicious.”
    Cathy stirred her tea in agitation. “I didn’t want to tread on her