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that Treadby is such a good nurse I can’t afford to lose her,” Matron said to Liam Finucan, “and I can’t say she’s stuck-up or conscious of her looks, because she’s not. But she makes men as silly as wheels, and women patients hate her as much for the sweetness of her nature as they do for her face.”
    “Luckily,” said Liam with a grin, “Corunda Base has no Paris to tempt our Helen of Troy.”
    “Why are you impervious to her, Liam?”
    He shoved at his hair, which had a tendency to fall over his brow and part-blind him. “I have no idea. Perhaps I dislike bottle blondes?”
    “That hair is not out of a bottle! I wish it were — a black root might disillusion some of our junior doctors.”
    “Children’s will suffice for Treadby,” he soothed.
    “Yes, but she can’t stay on Children’s forever.”
    “True. Just keep her adult nursing down to the minimum.”
    “Meg Moulton adores the girl — that’s a relief! I’m told that Treadby is a perfect children’s nurse. The ward’s a happier place on her shifts, and she works like a navvy.”
    “No human being is perfect, Gertie.”
    Bouncing through the ward with smiles, dances and skips that had the children in giggles, Kitty continued on her voyage of discovery, wondering at her own blindness. Until she started nursing, but especially children’s nursing, everyone except her sisters and her father had discounted her as a productive member of society. Now, she had a purpose.
    Not that Children’s permitted time for internal reflections. If Jimmy Collins hadn’t picked the top off an unready scab or Ginny Giacometti fallen out of bed trying to play a joke, then Alf Smithers had eaten a whole packet of pastel chalks because the meals never filled his bottomless belly.
    “The effect of his multihued smile might have been quite charming,” Kitty said to Sister Moulton, “except that he ate the black pair last — revolting!”
    Came a wail from Barry Simpson that made them spin around.
    “Nursie, nursie! I done poohs in me bed!”
    “And bang goes Frank Campbell’s bottom sheet,” Kitty said. “Barry’s poohs are formidable.”
    Though even on Children’s there were men to bother Kitty. The most persistent nuisance was the resident, Dr. NeilCranshaw; he had the weight of medical authority to bolster his pursuit. Kitty loathed him, but his rank insisted that he be treated with fawning respect.
    “Dinner at the Parthenon?” he asked, supervising Nurse Treadby as she dealt with Jimmy’s scab.
    “Sorry, sir, I’m busy.”
    “You can’t possibly be busy every night, Nurse.”
    “I am until June of 1929.”
    “What happens then?” he asked, wondering which of several expressions would work best on her — what a little beauty she was! He assumed a look of admiration quite spoiled by the lust seething inside his brain.
    “I graduate as a registered nurse,” she said demurely, “and will be free to accept dinner invitations. Until then, I’m forced to study in all my free time.”
    He might have argued, but Sister Moulton was bearing down on them with her fifteen-inch guns loaded. Dr. Cranshaw vanished.
    “Ta, Sister,” said Kitty.
    “Unmarried doctors,” she said later to the other three, “are a pain in the bum.”
    “Tell me something I haven’t learned for myself,” said Edda.
    “Neil Cranshaw bothering you?” Tufts asked, and doubled up with laughter. “He asked me to dinner at the Parthenon the other day — caught me on the ramps doing a message for Sister Smith. So I stood there and stared at him, slowly sucked my lips together like a fish, and crossed my eyes. He ran away.”
    “Mind you,” Edda said, “Corunda Base doesn’t get the cream of the Sydney Med School crop. They go to Vinnie’s andRPA and North Shore in Sydney. We don’t get the worst, but they’re pretty awful.”
    “Where else would a Stan Laurel like Cranshaw be called the hospital heart-throb?” Tufts asked.
    “He does have that