"I thought I heard some one out there," I said.
"It frightened me so that I got up to look. Nobody could be out there,
could they?"
She walked to the window and put her head out. Her lips tightened
grimly.
"No, nobody could be out there," she said, breathing hard, "but you
might get nervous just thinking there might be. We'll go to a room
upstairs."
And go we did, in spite of all I could plead about feeling well enough
now to go alone and all the rest of it. How was I to get out of a
second or third-story window?
I began to think about the Correction again as I followed her upstairs,
and after she'd left me I just sat waiting for the doctor to come and
send me there. I didn't much care, till I remembered the Bishop. I
could almost see his face as it would look when he'd be called to
testify against me, and I'd be standing in that railed-in prisoner's
pen, in the middle of the court-room, where Dan Christensen stood when
they tried him.
No, I couldn't bear that; not without a fight, anyway. It was for the
Bishop I'd got into this part of the scrape. I'd get out of it so's he
shouldn't know how bad a thing a girl can be.
While I lay thinking it over, the same maid that had brought me the tea
came in. She was an ugly, thin little thing. If she's a sample of the
maids in that house, the lot of them would take the kink out of your
pretty hair, Thomas J. Dorgan, Esquire, late of the House of Refuge
and soon of Moyamensing. Don't throw things. People in my set, mine
and the Dowager's, don't.
She had been sent to help me undress, she said, and make me
comfortable. The doctor lived just around the corner and would be in
in a minute.
Phew! She wasn't very promising, but she was my only chance. I took
her.
"I really don't need any help, thank you, Nora," I said, chipper as a
sparrow, and remembering the name the Dowager had called her by. "Aunt
Henrietta is too fussy, don't you think? Oh, of course, you won't say a
word against her. She told me the other day that she'd never had a
maid so sensible and quick-witted, too, as her Nora. Do you know, I've
a mind to play a joke on the doctor when he comes. You'll help me,
won't you? Oh, I know you will!" Suddenly I remembered the Bishop's
bill. I took it out of my pocket. Yep, Tom, that's where it went. I
had to choose between giving that skinny maid the biggest tip she ever
got in her life--or Nance Olden to the Correction.
You needn't swear, Tom Dorgan. I fancy if I'd got there, you'd got
worse. No, you bully, you know I wouldn't tell; but the police sort of
know how to pair our kind.
In her cap and apron, I let the doctor in and myself out. And I don't
regret a thing up there in the Square except that lovely red coat with
the high collar and the hat with the fur on it. I'd give--Tom, get me
a coat like that and I'll marry you for life.
No, there's one thing I could do better if it was to be done over
again. I could make that dear little old Bishop wish harder I'd been
his daughter.
What am I mooning about? Oh--nothing. There's the watch--Edward's
watch. Take it.