Nurse Trent's Children by Joyce Dingwell Page A

morning. The quarters were finished; the staff, who had been placed in other branches while the renovations were attended to, were contacted to start duty again at Redgates, and now it needed only the bus to pull onto the driveway and disgorge its noisy occupants and Little Families would be together again. Not together as Cathy—and Jeremy Malcolm—wanted them, but as close as the next building, and that at least, was something. In a little while, thought Cathy, climbing the stairs to acquaint the young Bannermans and Curtises that tomorrow they would have their brothers to play with, in a little while, please Heaven, they’ll be nearer than the next building. They'll be as near as one roof can bring them, and that, surely, was what God intended when He made that structure we call a family. She recalled Jerry Malcolm’s fierce words and paused a moment, her hand on the banister that was well polished by years of trailing little fingers. “I believe the family is a structure,” he had said. “I believe that you can’t take away from a family without destruction.”
    With a sudden warm flush she remembered he had said something else. He had said after he had spoken of the family structure. “That is what I shall expect my family to be.” All at once she was running up the rest of the stairs.
    The Bannerman twins and Brenda and Shirley Curtis were disappointingly phlegmatic over the impending family reunion.
    “Pooh,” was Anne Bannerman’s brief but enlightening comment when Cathy announced, “Guess who’s coming tomorrow? Brother George!” She added, “And Tony will be here, too, Brenda and Shirley.”
    “He’s not having a loan of my book,” declared Brenda.
    “I’m going to pinch him,” said Shirley.
    Cathy went out, wondering for a deflated moment if the Australian separation was unwise after all, if the original policy of Little Families had been unrealistic, as some people thought. She recalled how David Kennedy had warned her of this lackluster response in certain of the brothers and sisters. He, too, had felt that a family should be kept together irrespective of sex, but he had assured her that separation in some instances was no hardship. It seemed he was right with the Curtises and the Bannermans.
    She made her way downstairs, feeling all at once lighter and brighter because David would be back tomorrow. Now that he was coming she realized how much she had missed him—his unfailing cheerfulness, his fund of resource, his charm with the children, his patient way of looking at things—yes, and she had missed him, too, simply for himself.
    Now she would have someone to run to for advice; if she wanted to go out she could ask David to lend an eye to the girls; he could help organize the basketball, the swimming, do a dozen things she had found strenuous. On an impulse she ran outside and picked a large armful of dark blue delphiniums. These handsome soaring spires, she felt , were suitable for a man. It was dark, but the darker crowns of the flowers showed clearly in the moonlight. She borrowed some tall vases from the girls’ building and went across to the boys’ section, pushed the door open and pulled on the light.
    Everything was in apple-pie order. She smiled ruefully, wondering how long it would stay like that. David would see it was kept neat and clean and masculinely shipshape, but he would see, too, it was a haven, not a lodging. He was that kind of a man.
    She set some of the delphiniums in the hall, then filled the other vase and climbed the stairs, meaning to put them on the landing.
    She switched on the upper light to assure herself that everything was as it should be, just as the lower door opened and someone came into the lobby.
    Instead of stepping forward, momentarily startled, she stepped back. There was a door behind her, and impulsively she opened it and entered, still holding the vase in her hands. It was then she realized she was acting quite foolishly and decided to put