Meant to Meet [antikvár]

when Sara-Anne had accosted me, the child held awkwardly in her arms. "Are you a nurse.5' she had demanded breathlessly "Then please take her! She's sick.55 She had thrust her burden at me, and the child had been sick . . . very sick ... all down my new suit. My momentary vexation, because I had already been late for my date with Pelham and now I should have to go back to the hostel to change, had been swept away by an instant professional concern for the child. "I just haven't known what to do for her. She's been retching and crying and shaking all day. She wouldn't eat a thing," SaraAnne had rushed on in her light soprano. "So I thought I'd better stop off somewhere and get an expert opinion. It's a headache, trying to drive with a sick kid distracting you . . ." It had seemed incredible to me then-and still did-that Sara-Anne could be the child's mother. When I had elicited the information from her that she had driven for six hours with that poor baby in a high fever beside her, I had been seized with a fever, too, a fever of indignation. I had recognised the pneumonia symptoms . . . and for the next half-hour I had virtually forgotten Pelham. It wouldn't have made any difference ultimately. I had realised that later, when in wakeful, wretched nights I had relived our whole unsatisfactory romance. It never could have worked. He couldn't reconcile himself to the fact that I was a nurse by vocation as well as by training. To him nursing was just a job; a dead-end job with sno serious money' in it. That afternoon, when I had seen Doll admitted, examined and warded, and had hurriedly changed out of my soiled suit, I hadn't really expected to find Pelham still kicking his heels at our rendezvous. The sight of him, so tall and dark and handsome, had sent a thrill of pride and relief through me. I had never been in love before. I suppose that was why I had succumbed so swiftly to Pelham's first flicker of interest in me; why I had surrendered my heart into his hands as soon as he had asked for it. To play hard to get simply hadn't occurred to me. I had no money, social prestige or influential friends to match his. My overworked, underpaid doctor father had died in his forties in a 'flu epidemic, and my mother, who had lived for and in him, had survived him by less than two years. I was virtually alone in the world and had been ever since I had started my training. I couldn't see that as any grave disadvantage from Pelham's point of view, but his widowed mother didn't like it at all. I hadn't let it worry me unduly. Mothers of only sons were usually possessive over them, and Mrs. Cheslehurst was not likely to consider any girl good enough for Pelham. When it dawned on her that he was as emotionally involved as I was, she would no doubt resign herself to the inevitable. Pelham wasn't a raw boy. He was over thirty, quite old enough and experienced enough to pick his own wife. He wasn't likely to be influenced by his mother-or so I had thought in my blissful ignorance. Later, during those agonised nights, I had realised belatedly that