“H’m,” said Nurse Hopkins. “He wouldn’t be my fancy! One of those men who are finicky and a bundle of nerves. Fussy about their food, too, as likely as not. Men aren’t much at the best of times. Don’t be in too much of a hurry, Mary, my dear. With your looks you can afford to pick and choose. Nurse O’Brien passed the remark to me the other day that you ought to go on the films. They like blondes, I’ve always heard.”
Mary said, with a slight frown creasing her forehead:
“Nurse, what do you think I ought to do about Father? He thinks I ought to give some of this money to him.”
“Don’t you do anything of the kind,” said Nurse Hopkins wrathfully. “Mrs. Welman never meant that money for him. It’s my opinion he’d have lost his job years ago if it hadn’t been for you. A lazier man never stepped!”
Mary said:
“It seems funny when she’d all that money that she never made a will to say how it was to go.”
Nurse Hopkins shook her head.
“People are like that. You’d be surprised. Always putting it off.”
Mary said:
“It seems downright silly to me.”
Nurse Hopkins said with a faint twinkle:
“Made a will yourself, Mary?”
Mary stared at her.
“Oh, no.”
“And yet you’re over twenty-one.”
“But I—I haven’t got anything to leave—at least I suppose I have now.”
Nurse Hopkins said sharply:
“Of course you have. And a nice tidy little sum, too.”
Mary said:
“Oh, well, there’s no hurry….”
“There you go,” said Nurse Hopkins drily. “Just like everyone else. Because you’re a healthy young girl isn’t a reason why you shouldn’t be smashed up in a charabanc or a bus, or run over in the street any minute.”
Mary laughed. She said:
“I don’t even know how to make a will.”
“Easy enough. You can get a form at the post office. Let’s go and get one right away.”
In Nurse Hopkins’ cottage, the form was spread out and the important matter discussed. Nurse Hopkins was enjoying herself thoroughly. A will, as she said, was next best to a death, in her opinion.
Mary said:
“Who’d get the money if I didn’t make a will?”
Nurse Hopkins said rather doubtfully:
“Your father, I suppose.”
Mary said sharply: