Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/342

 rustling softness of a bocage that masks a machine-gun. "Then switch on that wall light beside the dresser there!" was the invalid's petulant concession.

Miss Poole switched on the wall light. Her mind, as she did so, promptly reverted to restraining-sheets, for she was possessed of the dampening suspicion that she was straddled with a road actress in the twilight zone of delirium tremens. But this was only the girl's second case: and she was anxious not to fail on it.

"Did Doctor Wilson leave any instructions?" she asked, as a matter of form. For she was disagreeably conscious that the patient's head, raised from the pillow, had been studiously regarding her from the dim light of the bed-corner. The invalid, Miss Poole observed, was a somewhat younger woman than she had expected.

"I guess any instructions yuh get will be comin' from me!" was the patient's announcement. A mordant sense of humor seemed to relieve her words of their possible bruskness.

"Then supposing we see if we can't make you more comfortable," suggested the young nurse, remembering her training-school procedure.