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“I’ll put away the bandages first,” she said. “That’s what you said, I think–never to leave the emergency bed with anything on it?”

“Right-oh!” said the Senior.

“Though nothing ever happens back here–does it?’

“It’s about our turn; I’m looking for a burned case.” The Probationer, putting the bandages into a basket, turned and stared.

“We have had two in to-day in the house,” the Senior went on, starting on the N’s and making the capital carefully. “There will be a third, of course; and we may get it. Cases always seem to run in threes. While you’re straightening the bed I suppose I might as well go to supper after all.”

So it was the Probationer and the Dummy who received the new case, while the Senior ate cold salmon and fried potatoes with other seniors, and inveighed against lectures on Saturday evening and other things that seniors object to, such as things lost in the wash, and milk in the coffee instead of cream, and women from the Avenue who drank carbolic acid and kept the ambulance busy.

The Probationer was from the country and she had never heard of the Avenue. And the Dummy, who walked there daily with the superintendent’s dog, knew nothing of its wickedness. In his soul, where there was nothing but kindness, there was even a feeling of tenderness for the Avenue. Once the dog had been bitten by a terrier from one of the houses, and a girl had carried him in and washed the wounds and bound them up. Thereafter the Dummy had watched for her and bowed when he saw her. When he did not see her he bowed to the house.

The Dummy finished the brass plates and, gathering up his rags and polish, shuffled to the door. His walk was a patient shamble, but he covered incredible distances. When he reached the emergency bed he stopped and pointed to it. The Probationer looked startled.

“He’s tellin’ you to get it ready,” shrilled Irish Delia, sitting up in the next bed. “He did that before you was brought in,” she called to Old Maggie across the ward. “Goodness knows how he finds out–but he knows. Get the spread off the bed, miss. There’s something coming.”

* * * * *

The Probationer had come from the country and naturally knew nothing of the Avenue. Sometimes on her off duty she took short walks there, wondering if the passers-by who stared at her knew that she was a part of the great building that loomed over the district, happily ignorant of the real significance of their glances. Once a girl, sitting behind bowed shutters, had leaned out and smiled at her.

“Hot to-day, isn’t it?” she said.

The Probationer stopped politely.

“It’s fearful! Is there any place near where I can get some soda water?”

The girl in the window stared.

“There’s a drug store two squares down,” she said. “And say, if I were you—-“

“Yes?”

“Oh, nothing!” said the girl in the window, and quite unexpectedly slammed the shutters.

The Probationer had puzzled over it quite a lot. More than once she walked by the house, but she did not see the smiling girl–only, curiously enough, one day she saw the Dummy passing the house and watched him bow and take off his old cap, though there was no one in sight.

Sooner or later the Avenue girls get to the hospital. Sometimes it is because they cannot sleep, and lie and think things over–and there is no way out; and God hates them–though, of course, there is that story about Jesus and the Avenue woman. And what is the use of going home and being asked questions that cannot be answered? So they try to put an end to things generally–and end up in the emergency bed, terribly frightened, because it has occurred to them that if they do not dare to meet the home folks how are they going to meet the Almighty?