Read Online Nurse in Waiting by Jane Arbor - Free Book Online

doctor’s suggestion that she should say a word to Mrs. Carnehill, said: “No, he’s in no pain and, so far as I can gather, is sleeping fairly well. But—do you think his mind is occupied enough?”
    Roger’s mother looked vaguely disturbed. “I don’t know. He reads and—normally—he doesn’t complain of being bored —”
    “But wouldn’t you say that these moods which beset him every so often are the very accumulation of boredom? He stands it as long as he can and then gives way to — this sort of thing.”
    Mrs. Carnehill looked at her doubtfully. “D’you think so now? But why would he be bored? Haven’t we all got our brains fairly wracked out, thinking of diversions for him? And nearly always he has someone with him!”
    Joanna felt she began to understand what the doctor had meant when he said Roger was being ‘smothered’ by devotion. She said carefully: “I didn’t mean amusements or company, so much as exercise for his mind. Wouldn’t it be possible for him to take some share in the running of the estate? I understand he used to do it all, with Mr. McKiley’s help. Mustn’t he feel completely at a loss, without some responsibility for it?”
    It was as if a curtain had been drawn guardedly across her companion’s face. She spoke more shortly than she had yet done to Joanna . “He’s not fit for it. I told you—he and Justin don’t care for each other. And Roger won’t understand that J ustin’s methods are different. There’s no point in setting them at loggerheads. While Roger is ill we can’t do without Justin.
    “But seeing J ustin always makes him like this. That’s why I try to keep them apart as much as possible. It only proves my point—that having to concern himself with the estate only worries him.”
    Joanna gave it up. But she could not agree with her employer. She felt sure that Roger’s irritation arose from atrophy of the powers he had had before his illness, perhaps even from a jealously of the virile Mr. McKinley. Lying there helplessly, he felt himself to be less than the man he had once been. And until he lost that idea Joanna felt sure they would so no improvement in him.
    She was wondering how she could help him when he suddenly broached the subject himself.
    “I wish you’d get home figures out of somebody,” he growled. “I’ve struggled long enough against this conspiracy of silence Mother has set up. Ask René Menden—he ought to have some idea by now of what goes on.”
    “But —”
    He looked at her with a kind of cold contempt.
    “So you’re a party to it too? Or else you’re going to say primly ‘How can I go behind Mr. McKiley’s back?’ All right. Don’t bother.”
    “I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort,” retorted Joanna. “I was merely going to point out that I’ve met your student only once, that I don’t know where to find him during his working-day and that I’ve no idea what you want to know.”
    “Well—I want to know the real figures of the stock that went to the market last month, for instance. And what price it fetched. I can get from the papers what the market price was, but did we get it? That’s what I can’t get out of that evasive fool, McKiley. And I want the milking figures and the egg returns —”
    “But is René Menden likely to know all that?” asked Joanna dubiously.
    Roger gestured helplessly. “No, probably not. Perhaps I have never expected that he would.”
    “Well, I could ask him,” said Joanna quickly.
    “M’m. I suppose you couldn’t get less than McKiley’s ‘satisfactory’ and ‘measuring up pretty well by last year’s standard!’ As for Menden—he’s at the Dower House. But I suppose you knew that?”
    “Yes. But I couldn’t go there to see him. It’s Mr. McKiley’s house.”
    “It isn’t. It’s ours,” commented Roger aloofly.
    It was the sort of childish quibble which she would have expected from Shuan. In their inability to see anybody’s point but their