The Perfect World; A Romance of Strange People and Strange Places

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: … CHAPTER I AT WALLA BALLA NURSE MAVIS WYLTON looked after her patients cheerfully; she was glad of something to do. Life had been very dull in the little township and although the advent of the two Englishmen had made her unaccountably homesick, it had done a great deal towards breaking the monotony. In the first year of the Great War she had taken up nursing, had tended the suffering on the muddy battlefields of Flanders, had seen service under the scorching sun of Salonica, had continued her labors in Malta, Gibraltar and Egypt. She was in Cairo when the Armistice was signed, and applied for a post in Australia at the conclusion of the War. An orphan, she had no ties in the dear old Mother Country; her only brother was sleeping in the company of thousands of others in the battle-scarred region of Ypres. She was interested in her two patients,they had come from the mine in an unaccountable manner; she heard the story of the strange woman who had accompanied them and only half believed it, it sounded so very improbable. How could it be true? What was it Mr. Travers had said? She remembered his exact words. “Nurse, it was horrible,” he told her, “As we watched, it, the woman’s face,seemed to dry up and wrinkle until it looked like parchment. The outstretched arms grew thin and bony; the body trembled violently and crumpled up and fell to the ground, ,and when I went closer all trace of the woman had vanished and there was only a little patch of brown dust on the ground and a little purple package that she had been wearing fastened to her back.” The nurse could hardly believe anything so horrible, so uncanny. Yes, poor Jez-Riah had had her wish. She had seen the sun, had drunk in God’s pure air. But the atmosphere was too rare, and she…