He glanced at his watch and walked to the door. My list is starting early,"

he told her, and went, leaving her feeling mildly frustrated, for she had been on the point of framing a discreet question or two about Toukje.

She didn't see him again until she walked into the smaller of the two theatres with Monique, to be helped on to the table, told to make herself comfortable and keep still.

"This won't hurt," Mr. Bamstra rea.s.sured her, although it may feel a little uncomfortable. Octavius, be good enough to hold the leg steady, and Monique, will you put a dressing towel just here? ". Esmeralda had no view at all.

Octavius, his back towards her, blocked it most effectively, although she could see the top of Mr. Bamstra's handsome head as he bent forward to select the forceps he required. The powerful theatre lamp showed up the silver in his fair hair. He would look very distinguished when he was older, she decided, he did in fact look very distinguished now.

"Ready?" he asked casually, and gave her a lightning glance, and when she nodded, whisked out the lengths of steel with the ease of a firstcla.s.s dressmaker removing pins from the finest silk, cast down his forceps, and stood aside for Monique to dab on the collodion. He did no more than nod to Esmeralda as he left the theatre, and she hadn't expected more than that. He had a list starting at nine o'clock and it was already ten minutes past that hour; she could hear the subdued, busy hum of preparation going on in the large theatre across the landing.

Octavius went too, with a smile and a nod and another, quite different smile for Monique; Esmeralda, seeing it, wondered how long it would be before their affair blossomed into an engagement. The thought brought her up sharply against her own difficult future, so that to dispel the wave of unhappiness which threatened to engulf her; she wriggled off the table and plunged into bright conversation with Monique.

She had begun, during her weeks of enforced idleness, to pick up a little Dutch. She had a dictionary and a phrase book which she tried out on the nurses whenever they had the leisure to listen to her, and although she hadn't progressed, very much, she had at least lea mt a smattering of words and sentences. She had a try now; perhaps Monique would be more forthcoming if she were addressed in her own tongue.

"You and Octavius," began Esmeralda in her ramshackle Dutch, 'you're going to marry? "

She had wanted to say engaged, but she didn't know what the word was.

Monique understood though, for she laughed a little and went a pretty pink as she nodded.

"When?" asked Esmeralda, carried away by her success.

The other girl shrugged, and because Esmeralda had spoken Dutch, however badly, quite forgot that she hardly understood a word of that language, and embarked on a long explanation, which meant that she had to repeat it all over again in her careful, correct English. But the conversational ice had been broken. Esmeralda, fighting loneliness, knew that she would be regarded as a friend as well as a patient from now on; it gave her a nice sense of belonging. She left the Dutch girl in her office and stumped along to her room and did her nails with great care even though there was no one to admire them; she did her face again too, then washed her hair and wrapped a towel turban-wise round her head, pleased that she had filled in her morning so successfully that it was already time for the patients' midday meal.

Only she wasn't hungry. She did her best, spreading the food round her plate and arranging the rest of it on the balcony ledge for the birds; there was plenty of time for them to eat it, for a case had gone to theatre that morning and had only just come back, so that Monique and another nurse had had to attend to him, leaving only two nurses to serve the meal.

Esmeralda put her tray down on the side table and went to the window to watch the sparrows and starlings already busy on her potatoes and chop. Her room was the last along the corridor, there was ample time before a nurse would come with her pudding and the chop was already half finished. "How fortunate that it is I and not the nurse with your pudding," remarked Mr. Bamstra soft into her ear, so that she jumped guiltily and screeched, causing the birds to retreat to the gutter above the balcony.

"Now look what you've done," she pointed out sharply, 'and fancy frightening me like that! I might have fallen over. " She remembered then that she was addressing an important consultant of the hospital and added hastily: " Oh, I'm sorry--I mustn't talk to you like that, must I? I forget who you are. "

"Now, that is just about the nicest thing you have ever said to me," observed her companion surprisingly. He eyed her turbanned head.

"Why are you wearing that thing?"

"I washed my hair."

"Ah, yes--of course. How are the toes? Gentle movements, I hope, as I told you to do."

She held her foot out for his inspection; it really looked quite normal again as she moved her toes carefully to and fro.

"How long before I can have the plaster off?" she wanted to know.

He looked vague and his answer was vague as well.

"Not so very long now. Hankering to go back to Trent's?"

They were leaning side by side on the little balcony's rail, and he didn't look at her.

"No!" the word exploded from her.

"I won't go back--ever." She drew a heaving breath.

"How can I? I'd have to meet...1 couldn't bear it."

"Now, that was thoughtless of me." Considering that thoughtlessness wasn't one of his failings, Mr. Bamstra sounded very convincing.

"Of course you can't. Fortunately there is time enough to make other plans."

He turned as the door opened, took the plate of pudding from the nurse and set it down on the table with the remark: "Nourishing, digestible, but not exciting--you will oblige me by eating it, nonetheless."

Esmeralda found herself spooning up the blancmange obediently, sitting in her chair again while Mr. Bamstra took up his usual position on the bed.

When she had almost finished, he said quietly: "Would it help you if I were to write to your Miss Burden and suggest that as hospital work might be too heavy for you for the next few months, 1 have recommended that you should look for something less strenuous?"

Esmeralda swallowed the last of her blancmange.

"Do you mean that I shan't be able to dance after all?" she demanded.

The corners of his mouth twitched, but he answered her gravely.

"Nothing of the sort. Do you really think that I would have--er--led you up the garden path, Esmeralda? I said that you would dance, and you are going to dance."

"Oh--but where shall I...?" She paused, for really she could hardly burden Mr. Bamstra with the arranging of her future.

"As I have already said, that is something which we have plenty of time to discuss." He got up.

"Here is your tea tray, and I must go to a particularly dull luncheon--and unfortunately there will be no birds to help me out!"

Just for a little while Esmeralda wasn't unhappy, in fact she was quite enjoying herself.

"Not the feathered kind," she said pertly, 'but there'll be no shortage of birds, I'll be bound-you'll have a lovely time. "

He grinned.

"I'll tell you tomorrow. We're leaving at ten o'clock."

She drank her tea in an afterglow of gentle contentment, and then set about the business of packing her things, and every time her thoughts switched to Leslie, she resolutely made herself think about something else.

Later, when Anna came along to see how she was getting on, she asked if she was supposed to take everything with her, and was agreeably surprised when she was told that anything she didn't want could be left behind.

"For you will be coming back," said Anna.

"The plaster has to be removed and you will stay for two days perhaps--your things will be quite safe here."

"Yes, but suppose it isn't necessary for me to stay in?" persisted Esmeralda.

"It's only a question of the plaster coming off, after all."

"That is so, but Mr. Bamstra has said that it will be easier for you if your clothes and the things you do not wish to have with you are left here." Anna smiled.

"And so that is what will be done."

"Well, yes, all right." Esmeralda sat down after Anna had gone and tried to puzzle it out; she had never asked what was to happen to her after she had spent the few days with Loveday and Adam--she must have been wool-gathering not to have thought of that before. She mentioned it to her mother when she telephoned her later and was vexed when her parent told her soothingly to leave everything to Thimo.

She waited until she was in the car beside him as he drove northwards before she broached the subject.

"How long am I to stay?" she asked, not beating about the bush.

Her companion kept his eyes on the road before him.

"Loveday said something about a week or ten days--as long as you like, in fact, as long as you won't feel bored."

"Bored? Of course not, and that's awfully kind--but suppose they get fed up with me? And where do I go after that? Home?"

"If you wish to, although you would have to come back again. But I have a suggestion to make which you might like to consider. I have a private practice in Leiden--my consulting rooms are near the hospital.

I employ two nurses to help me run it; one looks after the patients, does dressings and so on, the other sits at a desk and makes appointments and answers the telephone. Willi, who has been doing that for years, is going to Australia to see her brother. She will be away for a month or six weeks and I wondered if you would care to take over her job for that time. You would be helping me if you did and it would give you something to do until the plaster is due to come off. It's not full time, of course--when I have morning lists at the hospital--I don't have patients to see, but on the other days they come between nine and twelve o'clock and if I'm over booked for a couple of hours in the evening. "

"I can't speak Dutch..."

"I daresay Loveday will help you there; you won't need more than a few routine phrases, you know, and the other nurse will be there to help you. Do you care to have a try?"

Her impulse was to say yes at once, for it was true, it would be just the thing to fill her days usefully until she could shed her plaster, but she was a practical girl and she could see several snags.

"I've no uniform."

"I daresay Willi will let you borrow hers, though you will have to take tucks in it."

"Where will I live?" she asked.

"Willi has a very small house near my rooms, she shares it with an old aunt--if you would consider moving in with Aunty?"

"It all fits in very neatly," declared Esmeralda suspiciously.

He slowed the car and turned off the main road just south of Alkmaar.

"Yes, doesn't it? He sounded very matter-of-fact.

"I did tell you that I was a believer in miracles?"

"Yes, but you arranged..."

He cut her short.

"If you have any doubts," he told her smoothly, 'you can always check with Willi. "

She said contritely: "I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm so horrid to you, Mr.

Bamstra, and you've been so kind." She looked down at her plastered leg with the cotton sock pulled over the toes to keep them clean. It looked quite grotesque sticking out from under her pretty pink and white striped cotton dress.

"Call me Thimo."

"Thimo, then, though I don't think I should."

"You find me too elderly?" His voice was bland.

"Don't be silly, of course you're not elderly, but you are a senior consultant at the hospital and I'm your patient--besides, if I took that job..."

"Then let us compromise; call me Thimo when we are out of hospital and away from the consulting rooms."

"Very well." She peeped at him and found his face as placid as usual.

The job wasn't mentioned again; they stopped at a small road-side cafe for coffee and presently roared over the Afsluitdijk to Friesland, and Mr.

Bamstra talked about any thing and everything under the sun without mentioning Trent's or Leslie or what she intended to do with herself in the months ahead. Despite herself Esmeralda found herself listening to his easy talk and presently taking quite a lively part in it, too so that there was no chance of gloomy thoughts.

They were welcomed with-heartwarming pleasure by Loveday and Adam, and taken inside the lovely old house to drink coffee, admire the baby and finally to cl.u.s.ter round Esmeralda's foot, admiring, discussing and speculating.

"Very neat," declared the Baron, looking at her with kindly eyes.

"Only another few weeks to go before you're free of this thing." He flicked the plaster with a fingernail.

"Thimo does a nice line in these, doesn't he?"

There was a good deal of laughing and kindly joking, and a great deal of talk. They had almost finished lunch when Loveday asked casually: "Has anyone any plans for this afternoon?"

Thimo finished the last of the delicate chocolate souffle which she had offered her guests.

"If no one objects," he remarked mildly, "I thought it might be a good opportunity to run over to my place--Esmeralda could meet Toukje, you know."

They all looked at Esmeralda, who murmured politely, wondering why it was that, on the point of having her curiosity satisfied at last, she should feel so reluctant to meet the lady. It seemed a good moment to mention the job Mr. Bamstra had offered her. She had only just realized at that moment why he hadn't said anything about it himself; it would have forced her into the awkward position of refusing or accepting then and there, and he was too kind a man to do that. She told Loveday and Adam about it, flashing him a grateful look as she did so, and ended, rather to her own surprise: "I'm going to have a stab at it, too."

Loveday's charming features arranged themselves into a most convincing look of surprise.

"What a super idea," she declared.

"It'll help pa.s.s the time and save Thimo no end of bother-but you'll stay here for at least a week, won't you?" She threw Thimo an enquiring glance and avoided her husband's eye.

"What do you say, Thimo?"

Mr. Bamstra blinked rapidly.

"Er--Willi is going on Sunday week, and as I almost never see patients on a Sat.u.r.day or Sunday unless it is something dire, there should be no need for Esmeralda to start until Monday week. Today is Sat.u.r.day," he added gravely.

Loveday counted up on her fingers.

"Eight days," she declared with satisfaction.