A good lesson
Margaret saw a little girl, playing with her ball and running around the house. The child looked “so delicate,” so fragile that Margaret couldn’t help thinking that “it was too late for a child to be up.” However, she decided to refrain from expressing her concerns about the girl’s wellbeing. “Four years in a hospital” had taught her “never to meddle in things” that didn’t concern her. There was nothing a nurse learned quicker than “not to try to put the world to rights in a day.” The irony of that situation was that Margaret was right. The girl did look rather unhealthily and needed to be in her bed. However, later on, Margaret would learn that that girl was a ghost and her decision to keep silence was the best one.
False Idols
Mr. Maradick was an extraordinary man - notable for attractiveness, perfect manners, and enigmatic charisma. It was next to impossible not to be “caught in the web of Ronald Maradick’s personality.”Margaret knew that she wasn’t the first nurse “to grow love-sick about a doctor who never gave her a thought.” The irony of that situation was that all the nurses that fell in love with Ronald Maradick’s personality so easily knew nothing about him. It was true that the man was good-looking and an even better doctor, but that was all. A true monster was hiding under a beautiful mask.
The alienist
Margaret’s first meeting with Doctor Brandon, “the famous alienist,” was a strange one. He was in charge of Mrs. Maradick’s case, so the nurse had to report everything to him. “From the first moment” that she looked at him she “took his measure almost by intuition.” He was an honest man who believed in what he did. It wasn’t his fault that he “lacked red blood in his brain.” It wasn’t his fault that he had formed the habit “of regarding all life as a disease” either. The irony was that almost everyone after “long association with abnormal phenomena” would form that habit.
