Kind Are Her Answers Read Online Free PDF

moment between Kit’s hand and the book. He had forgotten about her when he entered the sick-room, and found himself caught back into a confusion of impressions, sharp, but too rapid for definition; a light warm scent of bath powder just too complex to be the scent of a flower; a smooth wrist, the bones scarcely traceable; the texture of the blue satin slipping against his sleeve. He relieved her of the book with the slight brusqueness he would have used to a probationer who had done something clumsy.
    Miss Heath had clutched feebly at the thing as it fell; her breathing made a little fluttering sound in her throat.
    “This is really too heavy for you, you know,” Kit said; and, over his shoulder to the girl, “Surely there must be a lighter one somewhere in the house?”
    “You mustn’t take that away from me,” said Miss Heath. “That was my mother’s Bible.” For the first time Kit saw in her wide placid face a contraction of fear. “All her marks are in it; and all mine since I was confirmed. Yes, my dear mother gave me this Bible for my confirmation. I could never get used to another one. It wouldn’t read the same; though perhaps it’s wrong of me to say that.” Her lips were bluish grey and shrunken, crossed by fine deep furrows; her voice had the shake of old age. Kit reassured her, and took his stethoscope out.
    The girl had walked away to the other end of the room, where she was almost drowned in the shadows. There was a faint clinking as she put something away, the medicine and glass perhaps, in a cupboard. Kit fumbled perfunctorily with the ribbon of Miss Heath’s bed-jacket and said, “Now we’ll just have this back,” in the manner accepted for recalling a nurse to the sense of her duties. The girl came back unhurriedly and bent over the bed. The stooping loosened the edges of her gown a little. He widened the gap in Miss Heath’s pale-blue crochet with a half-jerk of impatience, and laid the rim of the stethoscope against the limp old body underneath.
    What he heard was very much what he had expected. The acute phase of the attack was over; the murmur of the regurgitating valves was a little, but not very much, more audible than before. Kit was interested in hearts, and even played sometimes with a secret ambition to specialize. He moved the stethoscope about, unconsciously happy in a single-minded concentration.
    “Now the back, please,” he said crisply. The girl took the weight of Miss Heath’s body, raising it forward from the pillows against her shoulder. She was close to Kit as he leaned forward to listen. The light warm scent of the powder reached him again; her hair too had a delicate aura, of itself or of some wash that she used, different but having somehow the same personality.
    Miss Heath began to say something. Her shaking voice boomed and rumbled at him through the tube. “Do you know, Dr. Anderson—” Kit was filled with a violent unreasonable irritation.
    “Just a moment, please,” he said sharply.
    Miss Heath’s voice trailed away: magnified in his ears Kit could hear the startled acceleration of the labouring heart. He felt, without seeing, the quick movement of the girl’s head as she turned to look at him. He took the instrument away and pulled down the garments he had displaced.
    “I’m so sorry, I was rather—” he began, just as Miss Heath said, “I beg your pardon, doctor.” When he smiled, Miss Heath always noticed his hair; her wandering memory supplied to it a background of flags, cheers and naval uniform. She forgave him, although she had been quite shocked at his speaking to her in that tone. He was always so courteous, so unlike the young people of to-day.
    “Now there’s no occasion to worry,” he told her as he always told her at these times. “Everything’s settling down very nicely. Just try to get off to sleep, and send for me at once whenever you need me. But mind, no lifting heavy books about by yourself, or anything of that kind. Will