2:13 a.m. —The Thin Steel Blade
Miss Murrow began to feel fidgety.
Even after the many, many years she had spent in nursing she had never accustomed herself to spending a night quite comfortably in a chair. She had always had her attacks of the fidgets, and would probably continue to have them until she arrived at the port of destination for all good nurses and married one of her patients or a doctor. Of the two she really preferred a patient.
She trained a speculative eye on her present one over there on the bed. Not really speculative, as—she told herself firmly—he was already married. Although heaven knew that that never mattered. Take the case of that redheaded Gilford girl who had snapped old man Tomlinson right up from under his wife’s nose—probably, at that, because of his wife’s nose, which had been an unusually large one. Miss Murrow giggled. That was almost witty enough to tell to Mr. Hollander.
He must have felt that she was thinking about him. What a curious expression that was in his eyes. He had just turned them toward her, and they seemed to glitter. Yes, that was the word exactly—“glitter.”
It was a fancy of Miss Murrow’s to be meticulous in the matter of words. “Really,” she thought, “I don’t see why I couldn’t be an author.” She felt sure she had ever so much more knowledge of life than one encountered in the average run of books. Tripe. Yes, “tripe” was indeed the word. Of course, her books wouldn’t be average. Now that little story of Delia Hackenpoole and the intern with those shifty eyes …
Eyes …