TROUBLE AT ROSE HOUSE
"If it weren't that I could come out here and see you every day or so I
should be wild to get back to work in Oklahoma."
Edward Watkins was the speaker. He and Miss Merriam were walking
through a wooded path that ran from Rosemont to Rose House. The day
was warm and the shade of the trees was grateful.
"How is your patient?" asked Gertrude.
"Getting on very well, but the doctors won't let him travel yet."
"Have you heard lately from your doctor in Oklahoma?"
"I hear about every day! I was with him just long enough for him to
find that I was useful and he's wild to have me there again. I wired
him that I'm ready to go, but that the sick man is nervous about making
the return trip alone. Of course he wants to keep on the good side of
a good patient, so he answered, 'Stay on'."
"Are you able to do anything for your patient? He's still in the
hospital, isn't he?"
"I go there every day and he sends me on errands all over town. I'm
getting to know almost as much about oil as I do about medicine! But
I'm rather tired of playing errand boy."
"You have a chance to see your family."
"And you. But I'm supposed to stay at the hotel, much to Mother's
disgust. I'm doing a little medical inspection among Father's poor
people, though. That whiles away a few hours every day, and of course,
every time I go to the hospital the doctors there tell me about any
interesting new cases, so I'm not 'going stale' entirely."
"As if you could!" exclaimed Gertrude admiringly. "You're just storing
up ideas and information to startle the Oklahoman natives with."
"The 'natives' in Oklahoma are all too young to be startled," laughed
Edward, "but of course I'm stowing away everything new I hear about
methods of treatment and operations and so on to tell Dr. Billings when
I get back. Now let me hear what you've been doing. How are these
kiddies at Rose House?"
"I want you to look them over and talk with the mothers. Dr. Hancock
comes over when we send for him, but all these people are so delicate
that I feel that they ought to have a physician's eye on them all the
time."
"They have you pretty often, don't they?"
"I go over every day either in the morning or the afternoon, and I give
them advice about the babies, and teach them and Moya how to prepare
their food, but they do such strange things that you can't forestall
because you never had the wildest idea that any woman in her senses
would treat a baby so."
Edward laughed.
"Russian and Bulgarian peasant customs, I suppose. I never shall
forget the first time I saw a two-day old negro baby sucking a bit of
fat bacon. I nearly had a chill."
"Didn't the child have a chill?"
"Not the slightest! If they get ahead of you with some pleasing little
trick like that you can console yourself with the thought that
generally there is some basis of old-time experience that has shown it
to be not so harmful as we are apt to think."
"I've done enough tenement house work to know that the babies certainly
survive extraordinary treatment, but these babies here are so delicate
that they ought to have the most careful diet. Most of them need real
nursing."
"Do you think your talks are making any impressions on the mothers?"
"Sometimes Mrs. Schuler and I think so, and just then it almost always
happens that one of them does something totally unexpected that gives
our hopes a terrible blow."
"Let's trust that this is a good day; I'd rather talk to you than work
over a case this fine afternoon."
Gertrude smiled at his tone and they walked on in silence out of the
wood and across the brook and down the lane that brought them to the
back of Rose House where the Club boys and girls were busy making a
piece of furniture of some sort. Mrs. Schuler was talking to Moya in
the kitchen.
"I've brought Dr. Watkins to see everybody," announced Miss Merriam
gayly. "Where are they all?"
"The ones who are at home are up in the pine grove, but Moya has just
told me that Mrs. Paterno and her older boy and Mrs. Tsanoff and one of
the twins have gone to town."
"Walked?"
"Walked by the road on this scorching day!"
Miss Merriam turned to the doctor.
"This is one of the unexpected events we were just talking about.
Little Paterno is four and too large for that little woman to carry,
and far too small and weak to take that long walk on his own legs even
on a more suitable day than this, and the Tsanoff twins are just
holding on to life by the tips of their fingers!"
She sat down in despair. Dr. Watkins looked serious.
"Is there any way of heading them off or bringing them back. Can we
reach them anywhere by telephone?"
"No one knows where they can have gone. It seems it must have been
about an hour and a half ago that they started and I should think
they'd be back before long if they're able to come back--"
"--under their own steam!" finished the doctor with a doubtful smile.
"Let's go to the grove and see the women and children there and perhaps
the others will be in sight by the time you've finished your
examination."
They turned toward the pines whose thick needles cast a heavy shade
upon the ground and gave forth a delicious fragrance under the rays of
the sun. As they disappeared Mrs. Schuler went out on the platform
where the carpentering operations were going on.
"I'm so disturbed about those women," she said, "I've come to see what
you're doing to divert my mind from them."
"We're going to make two of these seats, one for your office and the
other for the veranda," said Ethel Brown, standing erect and putting a
hand upon her weary back. The rest of the young carpenters stopped
their work and wiped their perspiring foreheads while they explained
the construction of the piece of furniture to their friend.
"This long narrow box is the seat, you see. It's a shoe case, and it's
just the right height for comfort. Roger has put hinges on the cover,
so you can use it for a chest and keep rugs and cushions inside."
"That's about as simple as it could be. Does it take all of you to
help Roger do that?"
"O, that's only a part of the entire affair. We're making these two
sets of shelves to go at the ends of the seat."
"I see. A great light breaks on me!"
"They're to be fastened to the ends of the seat."
"Not for keeps. That's Ethel Blue's patent. She said it would be
awkward to move about if it were all built together, so we're making it
in three parts, and we're going to lock them together with hooks and
screw eyes."
"That is clever! Then if you want to you can use these sets of shelves
for little bookcases in another room or you can fasten on one of them
and not the other."
"Ethel Blue and I thought we'd make pink cushions for your office if
you'd like them."
"I think they'd be charming. That pink room raises my spirits when--"
"--when you get _blue_?" suggested Roger.
"I'll have to go there now to get revived if those women who walked to
town don't turn up soon," and the Matron went to the corner of the
house whence she could see the lane that led from the road. "If they
come home ill I'll have to ask you to make two bed trays," she
suggested as she peered across the grass.
"How do you make them?"
"Ask Ethel Blue."
"Merely put legs on a light board so that the weight of the plates will
be lifted from the sick person's legs as he sits up in bed."
"What's to prevent the plates sliding off?"
"Nothing if he's much of a kicker, I should say," laughed Roger; "but
you could put a little fence an inch or two high at the back and sides
and keep them on board."
"You'd better begin them right off," said Mrs. Schuler dryly, "for here
they come."
She disappeared around the corner and the young people followed to see
what was the matter.
Trouble there was in very truth. Mrs. Paterno led the way stumbling
and running. Her face was flushed a deep, threatening crimson and her
breath came fast. By the arm she held little Pietro, who from
exhaustion had ceased to scream and merely gave a gulping moan when the
gravel scraped his bare knees as his mother jerked him along regardless
of whether he was on his feet or whether she dragged him. Behind them
at some distance came Mrs. Tsanoff carrying her baby in her arms--one
of the twins that always seemed to be merely "holding on to life by the
tips of its fingers," to use Gertrude's expression, and now seemed to
have lost even that frail hold. It lay in its mother's arms white and
with its eyes closed.
Mrs. Schuler ran to meet the Italian woman and lifted the worn child
into her arms where he sank against her shoulder as if in a faint.
"Run up in the grove and get Dr. Watkins and Miss Gertrude," Helen said
to Roger. "Ask them quietly to come here. Don't frighten the women."
Roger dashed away, his swift feet slowing to a walk as he neared the
bit of woods where he delivered his message in an undertone. Ethel
Blue meanwhile, had rushed into the house to tell Moya to heat plenty
of water and to crack some ice, and Margaret had opened Mrs. Schuler's
closet of simple remedies and found the bottle of aromatic spirits of
ammonia. Ethel Brown and James ran to meet Mrs. Tsanoff, Ethel taking
the baby from her and James steadying her shaking steps by a stout arm
under her elbow.
As Dr. Watkins ran around the corner of the house he came upon Helen
trying to help Mrs. Paterno, who was pushing her away with both hands,
while she kept looking over her shoulder and screaming hysterically.
Edward seized her hands and commanded her attention at once by speaking
to her in Italian. Although she did not know him she responded to his
command to tell him of what she was afraid, and poured out a story of
terror. "_Mano, nera, mano nera_--the Black Hand," she repeated over
and over again, and Edward, who had heard her history, realized that
something she had seen had set her mind in the old train of thought.
While Miss Merriam attended to the children he calmed the woman and
then turned her over to Mrs. Schuler with instructions to put her to
bed in a darkened room and to see that some one stayed with her or just
outside her door.
Fortunately for the doctor his experience with the people among whom
his father worked in his East Side chapel had given him a smattering of
many languages and he was able to make out from Mrs. Tsanoff, although
her fright and fatigue had made her forget almost all the English she
knew, what had terrified her companion. They had gone to the
stationery shop of the Englishman who also sold ice cream and soda, she
said, and they had had each a glass of soda and the children had each
had an ice cream cone.
Edward groaned and over his shoulder directed Delia to run and tell
Miss Merriam that both babies had had ice cream cones. "It will help
her to know what to do until I come," he explained.
Just as they were coming out of the store a dark man who looked like an
Italian had passed them.
So far as she noticed he had paid no attention to them, but Mrs.
Paterno had seized her arm, pointing after him, and then had picked up
Pietro and started to run toward home. Neither far nor fast could she
go in such heat with such a burden and the poor little chap was soon
tossed down and forced to run with giant strides all the rest of the
eternal mile that stretched between Rosemont and Rose House. Mrs.
Tsanoff herself had followed as fast as she could because she was
afraid that something, she knew not what, would happen to her friend.
She, too, was sent to bed, with Moya standing over her to lay cool
compresses on her eyes, to sponge her wrists and ankles with cool water
and to lay an occasional bit of cracked ice on her parched lips.
The condition of the two children was pitiable. The heat, the sudden
chill from the ice cream and the terrible homeward rush sent them both
so nearly into a collapse that the doctor, Mrs. Schuler and Miss
Merriam worked over them all night, resting only when Dr. Hancock, who
had heard the story from James and Margaret and came up to see the
state of affairs, relieved them for an hour.
"How are we ever going to teach them the madness of such behavior?"
Gertrude asked wearily as Dr. Watkins insisted that she and Mrs.
Schuler should go to bed as the dawn broke.
"The poor little Italian woman is almost mad already, thanks to this
Black Hand business. It will take her a long time to recover her
balance, but I think I can teach the others a lesson from this
experience of their friends. Wait till to-morrow comes and hear me
talk five languages at once," he promised cheerfully as he turned her
over to Mrs. Schuler.