It was a beautiful morning, and Gloria and the cat were occupying the
broad piazza. At last Abou Ben Adhem slid with a soft thud to the piazza
floor. It was his signal that no more petting was desired for the time.
Gloria, too, got out of the big rocker and went into the house.
“Aunt Em, would you want to be a District Nurse and _never_ get home?
I've watched till I'm 'blind of seeing.'”
“It can't be a very desirable position, dear--you won't ever be one,
will you?”
“I'm going to 'be one' to-morrow!” Gloria laughed. “Have to get used to
it, auntie. You can't change my mind--it's set. The next to-morrow that
ever is, I am going to begin!”
“Dear! dear!” sighed Aunt Em. She felt anxious again. Here was the child
back just where she had left off. What good, then, all the traveling
about and the getting tired and hot? A wave of fresh weariness and
travelstrain seemed to sweep over the dear little woman. Close upon it
like a cool breeze came the recollection that in October Gloria would go
back to school. Then, at any rate, this undue, unwelcome fascination for
grimy streets would terminate. It was mid-August now.
The next morning Mrs. McAndrew opened the door to Gloria's room. The
girl lay smiling among the pillows.
“If you are to be a District Nurse, dear, it might be well for you to
get up to breakfast.”
“Well, I'm prepared to go to even that length! You'll hear a bird,
auntie, and simultaneously you'll hear me getting up!”
Gloria was as good as her word. Mrs. McAndrew met her with a smile.
Gloria's face was good to see; it was grave with purpose, but the light
of youth and happiness softly irradiated the gravity. But the studied
simplicity of the girl's costume that morning rather surprised Mrs.
McAndrew as her eyes fell upon it.
Gloria laughed. “Aunt Em, you're unprepared for the grown-up appearance
of the new District Nurse,” she said. The neat coils of brown hair were
quite disquieting to Aunt Em. She was not ready for Gloria to be a
woman; her gentle heart misgave her.
“Dear child, let your hair down again--let it down!” she pleaded.
“Auntie! As if--after I've been to all this work and used twenty-three
hairpins! I thought you'd approve of me. I think I look just like a
nurse now. Did you suppose I could be one with my hair the old way? Dear
me! I must dress the part, auntie. The play begins as soon as I've eaten
an egg and two rolls--now why do you suppose nurses always eat an egg
and two rolls for breakfast? But I'm sure they do.”
Gloria was in fine spirits. The “play” on the eve of beginning was sure
to be an entertaining one, and for novelty could anything be better?
She meant to go all the rounds with brisk little Miss Winship. She was
prepared to sweep floors and wash faces if it should prove to be in her
part of the play. “I may have to be prompted,” she thought, “but you
won't catch me having stage-fright!”
She had sent a note across the street by a maid to prepare the District
Nurse, and that cheerful little person was waiting for her as she
tripped down the McAndrews' doorsteps after her hurried meal.
“Am I late? Did I keep you waiting?” she cried.
“Not more than a piece of a minute. I've been trying to scrape
acquaintance with your beautiful cat, but he is above District Nurses.”
“If I had time I'd give him a good scolding. He's got to get used to
nurses if I'm one! Do you hear that, you Old Handsome? Good-by, and be
a good boy while I'm gone!” And Gloria waved her hand affectionately to
the big silver fellow on his silken cushion. She and the District Nurse
walked away together.
“I feel as if I were setting sail for a foreign land,” laughed the girl,
daintily tripping along.
“My dear, you are.” The voice of Gloria's companion was suddenly grave.
“I don't know as I'm doing right to let you embark--I ought to send you
back to your beautiful home.”
“Send me back! No, I'm set on 'sailing.'” In sheer exuberance of spirits
Gloria's laugh bubbled out again, then as quickly stopped. “Oh, you will
think me such a silly! I ought not to laugh, ought I?”
“Yes, keep on all the way, dear; you won't feel like it, I'm afraid,
coming back. The first time I 'came back' do you want to know what I
did?”
_“Cried,”_ Gloria said softly. A new mood was upon her now, and a gentle
solemnity gave her piquant face a new attraction. Gloria's moods were
wont to follow each other with surprising swiftness.
“Yes, I did. I saw so much that I could not help, that it made my heart
ache. Children that needed attention and love and care, and mothers
with tired hands, and wives whose faces wore a hopeless look. Yes, I
_cried_.”
After this the two walked on in silence. But Gloria's eyes were bright
and her breath was coming in quick, strong waves through her red lips.
The picture her companion had given set her tingling, and then came the
thought she had up in the mountains--Couldn't she help?
Seeming to think she had said too much, the District Nurse began
chatting in a cheery way, as though to turn her companion's thoughts
into a different channel. In this mood, the one chatting lightly, the
other listening, they drew near to “Dinney's House.” But no sooner had
they entered the neighborhood than they noticed that something exciting
was going on, and shrill voices came to them.
“Something has happened!” cried Miss Winship, hurrying her footsteps.
“I'm afraid someone is hurt.”
But then, the District Nurse was “always afraid” in that locality. There
were so many pitfalls where accidents could happen. As they drew near a
boy ran from the crowd toward them. It was Dinney.
“What is it, Dinney? Quick!” asked the nurse.
“Sal went over the stairs--the railing broke. She hain't got up either!”
the boy answered, breathlessly.
As the two drew nearer the crowd a chorus of voices greeted them.
“Miss District! Here's Miss District!”
The throng made way for the nurse. Down in the heap of fallen stair
railing lay poor Sal. Immediately Miss Winship was beside her.
Gloria never quite knew what happened the next half hour. It was
mercifully always a bad dream to her. At its end something like order
and quiet reigned in the old house, thanks to the quiet self-command
of the District Nurse. Sal had been removed in the ambulance to the
hospital, the little crowd of women sent back to their work, and the
curious children scattered to their homes. Not until then did the
District Nurse have time to look at Gloria.
“Why, you poor dear! You're white as a sheet! I ought to have thought
how it would make you feel! Come with me up to Rose's room. That's the
quietest place around here. It's a little haven to us all. She's got
Dinney's baby with her now. Since the mother died she's about adopted
it. But Dinney pays for it. Dinney's a brave one!”
They now passed up the stairway, and as they came to the gap in the
railing that had been the ruin of poor Sal, the nurse paused with a look
of anxiety sweeping over her face.
“It mustn't be left in that way,” she said in dismay. Then she called,
“Dinney! Is Dinney down there?” as she looked down the stairway.
“Someone tell Dinney to bring me a rope--clothesline will do.”
The rope was brought, and Gloria, standing by in wonder, watched the
deft fingers weave it back and forth across the danger gap. This was an
unexpected type of a nurse's duties.
“There, that will do as a makeshift. Anyway, nobody but the thinnest of
them can leak through, and Sal isn't here to lean on it; poor Sal!”
Rose was not in the bare, half-lighted little room they entered. The
tidiness and cleanliness of it, however, bore witness to her recent
occupancy. On the neat bed lay a baby asleep.
“Hunkie!” Gloria said softly, as she tiptoed across the room and looked
down at the thin little face.
“It seems a tiny morsel of humanity to get hold of life, doesn't
it?” said the nurse. “But Rose is so careful of it, and Dinney is so
insistent that it shall have everything it needs.”
Then she turned to Gloria. “Now sit down and make yourself comfortable,
and wait for me. You are not fit to go around with me now. Rose will be
here in a little while, doubtless.”
Gloria dropped into a chair. Left to herself, she looked around the
plain little room. Her eyes took in the pitiful details--the uneven
boards of the floor, the sagging ceiling, the cracked window panes. How
sharply the room contrasted with her own, and yet this was the room of
Rose--with eyes like hers. A girl who had thoughts and dreams and
aspirations the same as she had. As these thoughts went through
Gloria's mind she leaned back. The strain of excitement had told on her.
Exhaustion took possession of her. She did not intend to sleep, but her
eyes closed against her will. How long she sat thus she did not know,
but in time there came to her a consciousness of whispering in the room
and a baby's laugh. Opening her eyes she saw a pretty picture--a young
girl tossing a baby into the air and catching it again, and the baby
cooing.
[Illustration: IMMEDIATELY MISS WINSHIP WAS BESIDE HER.]
Instantly the girl with the baby caught sight of Gloria as she stirred.
“And so you are awake. You looked so tired,” said the girl.
Gloria straightened and arranged her hair. The many hairpins felt
uncomfortable.
The girl with the baby looked at her curiously.
“Why,” she said, “I thought you wore your hair different.” And then she
flushed. Her own hair was in a braid, and she flushed still more when,
glancing into a little mirror, she looked from her face to Gloria's. She
had put her own hair down into a braid to be like the girl Dinney had
told of. But how different they were! Instantly she realized that hers
was a face without round, girlish curves. But she did not speak of this.
She turned to Gloria and said in her quiet way:
“You shouldn't take it so hard--Sal's falling. We get used to such
things here.” And she smoothed out Hunkie's dress as she sat down on the
window-sill, there being but one chair in the room. “And then when you
come right down to it,” she said, “Sal will have the time of her life.
I just came from the hospital. She's bad broke, but they can mend her,
they said. And if she can stand the mending, what a time it will be for
her!”
Gloria's eyes opened wide with astonishment. Rose smiled. It was a smile
that almost made her face look girlish. “It does seem awful to talk that
way, but it's the truth. Just think of it!--Sal never had anything nice
to eat! I saw them bringing a tray to one near Sal, and it held things
Sal never tasted in her life. And she has such a nice room and bed.”
“Tell me about Sal, please,” said Gloria. “Her mother seemed to feel so
terribly.”
Rose's face hardened. “Well, she's probably forgotten her grief by now;
that is, if she's got hold of anything to drink. That's the way she'll
celebrate it. She beat poor Sal regular. You know--” Rose's voice
dropped a little, as though she hated to say what she was going to say,
“Sal isn't just the same as the rest of us. She's always had to lean on
things, and sometimes they break with her.”
Gloria shuddered.
“Sal's had lots of breaks; but then everything in this house is sort of
uncertain. The ceiling, for instance. The ceiling in Dinney's room came
down once before his mother died, and it just missed her. It would have
killed her then if it had hit her. It nearly killed Dinney, but he's
tough.”
“They will mend the stair railing!” Gloria cried.
Rose's face hardened, and she looked down and pressed her lips against
the baby's forehead. It was as though the girl, Gloria, beside her was
reaching too far. Lifting her head, she said in a cold voice:
“They don't mend things around here. But maybe they will the railing. It
costs money to mend, and they say things don't stay mended. Maybe they
don't.”
Gloria sat looking straight in front of her. What a world it was,
compared with her own world! At last she said in a low tone:
“Did they mend the ceiling?”
“No,” answered Rose. “But then, it don't matter. She died soon after,
you know. The hole is there yet.” Gloria rose; she was growing anxious
for a change. Something seemed somehow choking her.
Out in the hall an angry voice was suddenly heard. It was a woman's
voice pitched high.
“I tell yez, I'll have the law on thim! It's toime somebody was afther
doin' on't, an' it's up to me, with me poor Sal lyin' in the hospital!
The one that owns this house is a murdherer! I'll tell yez, it's the
truth!”
Gloria was standing with eyes wide opened and face flushed. She drew a
quick breath of relief as she heard the voice of the District Nurse.
“Oh, hush! Do hush!” the District Nurse pleaded, and there seemed an
agony of fear mingled with the words.
Then came in still angrier tones:
“Hush, is it! Oh, yes, it's hush wid you as wid them all! I tell yez
I'll have the law! I'll foind the murdherin' crachure before I'm a
day older! You needn't be hushin' av me up! I'm goin' now; it's toime
somebody wint!”
Gloria heard the shuffling of the angry woman's feet, but the nurse
evidently followed her, as she did not enter the room.