"And then, you see, she gets thinking--"

"Thinking! Reading doesn't make _me_ think."

"With much regret," wrote the matron to Aunt Alice, "I am obliged to
dismiss your younger niece, Nurse Twinkler II. She has no vocation for
nursing. On the other hand, your elder niece is shaping well and I shall
be pleased to keep her on."

"But I can't stop on," Anna-Rose said to the matron when she announced
these decisions to her. "I can't be separated from my sister. I'd like
very much to know what would become of that poor child without me to
look after her. You forget I'm the eldest."

The matron put down her pen,--she was a woman who made many notes--and
stared at Nurse Twinkler. Not in this fashion did her nurses speak to
her. But Anna-Rose, having been brought up in a spot remote from
everything except love and laughter, had all the fearlessness of
ignorance; and in her extreme youth and smallness, with her eyes shining
and her face heated she appeared to the matron rather like an indignant
kitten.

"Very well," said the matron gravely, suppressing a smile. "One should
always do what one considers one's first duty."

So the Twinklers went back to Uncle Arthur, and the matron was greatly
relieved, for she certainly didn't want them, and Uncle Arthur said
Damn.

"Arthur," gently reproved his wife.