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properly better, thought Edda, I know it in my bones. So frank about Maude, so aware of the dangers lurking anywhere in Maude’s vicinity. After Maude, West Enders were nothings.
    “I’m long past my grief at not being able to do Medicine,” Edda said now to Kitty, worried that her plight was being exaggerated in Kitty’s mind. “Nursing is more sensible, and our new-style training means we won’t be ignoramuses who know how to bandage, but not why. Think of me as an old war horse — the slightest whiff of ether has me whinnying and stamping the ground. In a hospital I’m alive !”
    “Speaking of whinnying and stamping the ground, does Jack Thurlow know you’re going nursing?” Tufts asked slyly.
    The shaft went wide; Edda grinned. “Of course he does. And his heart isn’t broken any more than mine is. The hardest part will be keeping Fatima exercised up to Jack’s expectations. I daresay I’ll be riding more on my own in future.”
    “If you still had Thumbelina, it would be easier,” said Grace. “Daddy wouldn’t be under an obligation to Jack Thurlow, who doesn’t even come to church.”
    Kitty leaped in ahead of the storm clouds gathering on Edda’s face. “Shut up, Grace, that’s not up for discussion! My perpetual question, Eds, is why you like riding?”
    “When I’m on top of a horse’s back, I’m a minimum of five feet clear of the ground,” Edda said, her voice serious. “To me, that’s all the thrill of riding. Being taller than a man.”
    “I wish I were tall!” Kitty said with a sigh.
    The hall door rattled, flew open. Sister Bainbridge stood and glared at her charges in outrage.
    “What is the meaning of this, nurses? You haven’t even begun to unpack your suitcases!”

C orunda Base Hospital was the largest rural hospital in New South Wales, having 160 beds in its general section, eighty beds in its mental asylum, and thirty beds in a convalescent/aged home out Doobar way, where the air and the elevation were felt more beneficial. Unlike the sandstone magnificence of some other hospitals, its appearance charmed no one, for it looked like army barracks. Built of wood atop limestone piers and foundations, it was a series of long rectangular structures saved from being called sheds by the presence of a broad, covered verandah down either long side. Men’s One and Two were double-length, as were Women’s One and Two; Children’s, Out-patients, X-ray-cum-Pathology, the Operating Theatre, Kitchens and Stores were single in size, while Administration, fronting onto Victoria Street, rejoiced in a building made entirely from limestone blocks. The amount of land was acres in extent, and dotted with out-buildings that ranged from Matron’s storybook cottage to houses put up for the duration of the Great War, when it had also been an army hospital. One overall fact made the site workable: down to thelast square foot of the last acre, it was level. And this in turn had led to the struts and strands that linked the buildings together like the Brooklyn Bridge or a spider’s web — roofed walkways that everybody called ramps. Most ramps held some protection from the elements beyond roofing in the form of four-foot-high sides, though the last two hundred yards to the Latimer house consisted only of a floor and a roof. Where Men’s straddled the ramp to either side, it had been completely enclosed to form a waiting room; Women’s had been similarly dealt with. Those who waited to visit children used Men’s or Women’s. Midwifery was lucky; it was inside the administration building, as were the Casualty station and a small operating theatre.
    The shocks fell thick and fast upon the Latimer girls, though if Matron’s reading of their characters had been aright, not one of them would have lasted longer than that first day at Corunda Base. They had been carefully brought up as ladies and had never wanted for a material thing, but Gertrude Newdigate’s youth had passed beyond her