They were going to operate, the nurse said, when Mary V simply could not stand it another minute.  She went and sat all curled up in the hammock, not letting it swing, but just keeping very, very still, and listening.  There were voices in there mumbling sentences she could not catch.  After awhile a sickly odor came drifting through the window, and more muttering between the two doctors.  Sudden came wandering up, tiptoed to his chair on the porch, and sat down rather heavily and twirled a cigar in his fingers without lighting it.  Mary V pulled a magazine toward her and began turning the leaves idly, her lips pressed tight together, her ears strained and listening still.

Ages passed.  Twice Mary V placed her fingers over her lips to stifle an impulse to scream.  Then—­

“We can’t make it.  Damn that brush,” said a new voice—­Johnny’s voice—­quite clearly.

Mary V dropped the magazine and went and put her arms around her dad’s neck and pressed her face hard against his shoulder.  Her dad held her tight, and swallowed fast, and said never a word.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

JOHNNY’S DILEMMA

“Well, thank heavens she’s gone!  Perhaps a person can have a minute or two of peace and comfort on this ranch now.  I don’t know when I have ever disliked a person so much.  I don’t see how you stood her.  For my part, that creature would make me sick, just having her around!” As a final venting of her animosity, Mary V made faces at the car that carried the nurse hack to town.

Johnny looked at Mary V, looked after the nurse, and looked at Mary V again.  He had thought the nurse a very nice nurse, with a quiet kind of efficiency that soothed a fellow without any fuss or frills.  It was queer Mary V did not like her, but then—­

“I know I’ve been a darned nuisance,” he apologized so meekly that he did not sound in the least like Johnny Jewel.  “But I’m getting well fast.  I’ll be able to beat it in a few days now.”

“Why, for gracious sake?  Haven’t we—­er—­made you comfortable?”

“Sure, you have.  Only you shouldn’t have put yourselves out, this way.  I ought to have gone to a hospital or some place.”  Johnny looked so distressed that Mary V could have cried.  Only she was afraid that would distress him still more, and the doctor had said he must not be worried about anything.

“It wasn’t any trouble.  You are being absolutely silly, so I guess you are getting well, all right.  I—­I didn’t see any sense of having that nurse in the first place.  Because I can take temperature and count pulse and everything.  I’ve really been crazy for a chance to practice nursing on somebody.  And then when I had the chance, they wouldn’t let me do a thing.”

Johnny grinned, which was rather pathetic—­he was so thin and so white.  “Why didn’t you practice on the greasers?” he taunted her.  “Bill says you sure made some dandy work for the hospitals.”