Australian Hospital by Joyce Dingwell Page A

lips against hers making a travesty of the most precious of all human emotions went through her again and again in a hot, hurtling wave.
    Why had Stephen been so cruel? She knew now that he had been feeding himself on her humiliation, and she dreaded the next meeting.
    Then she heard that she would not be seeing him for a while, and that, in its way, was even worse.
    How perverse were women, she thought drearily, that they said one thing with their minds and meant another in their hearts.
    Barbara Breen, who was always abreast of things, informed Candace that Doctor Halliday had gone to Bibaringa to visit the Tilburns.
    “Anything doing there, do you think? I know they have a charming daughter.”
    “I couldn’t say, Barbara, but it’s true that she’s charming.”
    “Well, it certainly looks like it. Bibaringa is three hundred miles west, and I hardly think that Ash would be going all that distance just to look at sheep. I wonder how our Sister Trisby will take it.”
    Eve took it badly. Her temper, always sharp, became razor-edged. She vented her anger on the aides, who went in fear and trembling every time she came on duty.
    Candace was seeing more of the secretary, Mr. Laurence, who was out quite often now to confer about the approaching Fete.
    He would wave cheerily to her, then disappear into Matron’s office. Matron was back now, and waging fresh battle on the grocery accounts.
    The Fete was the only topic of conversation among the patients. “Fete-fever,” Barbara called it, but she was the worst offender.
    “I want to make the stalls a bigger success than ever before,” she declared. “I want to ram down the throats of those doddering disbelievers that therapists are not hocus-pocuses, but essential people doing an essential job.”
    Both the women and the men patients threw themselves into the spirit of the Fete with enthusiasm. Half-completed baskets, trays, dolls, felt animals met Candace at every turn. Eve complained acidly, but the Fete was something that even she could not compete against, and the preparations went blithely on.
    Only Miss Walsh remained aloof. “Silly nonsense. I won’t sew a stitch for it.”
    “We’re putting you on the Lucky Dip so you won’t have to, dear,” assured Barbara.
    “I won’t go there, either.”
    “Doctor Ash is your offsider.”
    Miss Walsh was silenced for once.
    “Well,” she conceded presently, “if I have to go, I suppose it might as well be there.”
    Brownley had the gardens looking beautiful. Flowers that grew back home in England in high summer were in full bloom here by spring. As the Fete was in November, which held the first fair days of the crown of the year, the plots were at their best, ranunculi vying with scented stock, ice-clad poppies blowing in abandon.
    Candace was amazed at the amount of preparation.
    “Oh, it’s quite a big affair,” nodded Barbara. “We don’t lose financially even if it rains, for the Board always insures heavily, but, of course, it is so much nicer if the weather is kind.”
    During the preceding week kind weather did not seem at all likely; then on the Friday the sun came out of the clouds, and Candace, watching the giant marquees being erected on the lawn, thought of “clear shining after rain,” and how well the Biblical words suited the bright, freshly-washed morning.
    The tempo of the Fete increased once the marquees were up.
    Armies of helpers arrived, both to decorate and to erect their own subsidiary stalls.
    The handwork was a revelation. Candace resolved to draw substantially on her private bank and secure some of the lovely pieces.
    The second marquee was the tea-tent. Busy Mrs. Allenwood informed Candace that this was her fifteenth effort, and that last year five hundred tea tickets had been sold.
    The strawberry and cream counter could boast even higher figures, and the lemonade and ice-cream stall had only one fear, that they would run out of supplies.
    All the aides had been well-briefed,