"That's just it! You have hit it! How clever you are! I want all that. I
suppose, Miss Wade, YOU never go out for private nursing?"
"Never," Hilda answered. "You see, Lady Meadowcroft, I don't nurse for a
livelihood. I have means of my own; I took up this work as an occupation
and a sphere in life. I haven't done anything yet but hospital nursing."
Lady Meadowcroft drew a slight sigh. "What a pity!" she murmured,
slowly. "It does seem hard that your sympathies should all be thrown
away, so to speak, on a horrid lot of wretched poor people, instead of
being spent on your own equals--who would so greatly appreciate them."
"I think I can venture to say the poor appreciate them, too," Hilda
answered, bridling up a little--for there was nothing she hated so much
as class-prejudices. "Besides, they need sympathy more; they have fewer
comforts. I should not care to give up attending my poor people for the
sake of the idle rich."
The set phraseology of the country rectory recurred to Lady
Meadowcroft--"our poorer brethren," and so forth. "Oh, of course," she
answered, with the mechanical acquiescence such women always give to
moral platitudes.
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