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Jane saw herself in the glass and assumed immediately the two lines between her eyebrows which were the outward and visible token of what she had suffered. Then she found her slippers, a pair of stockings to match and two round bits of pink silk elastic of private and feminine use, and sat down on the floor to put them on.

The floor was cold. To Jane’s wrath was added indignation. She hitched herself along the boards to the radiator and put her hand on it. It was even colder than Jane.

The family temper was fully awake by this time and ready for business. Jane, sitting on the icy floor, jerked on her stockings, snapped the pink bands into place, thrust her feet into her slippers and rose, shivering. She went to the bed, and by dint of careful manoeuvring so placed the bell between the head of the bed and the wall that during the remainder of her toilet it rang steadily.

The remainder of Jane’s toilet was rather casual. She flung on the silk kimono, twisted her hair on top of her head and stuck a pin or two in it, thus achieving a sort of effect a thousand times more bewildering than she had ever managed with a curling iron and twenty seven hair pins, and flinging her door wide stalked into the hall. At least she meant to stalk, but one does not really stamp about much in number-two, heelless, pink-satin mules.

At the first stalk–or stamp–she stopped. Standing uncertainly just outside her door was a strange man, strangely attired. Jane clutched her kimono about her and stared.

“Did–did you–are you ringing?” asked the apparition. It wore a pair of white-duck trousers, much soiled, a coat that bore the words “furnace room” down the front in red letters on a white tape, and a clean and spotless white apron. There was coal dust on its face and streaks of it in its hair, which appeared normally to be red.

“There’s something the matter with your bell,” said the young man. “It keeps on ringing.”

“I intend it to,” said Jane coldly.

“You can’t make a racket like that round here, you know,” he asserted, looking past her into the room.

“I intend to make all the racket I can until I get some attention.”

“What have you done–put a book on it?”

“Look here”–Jane added another line to the two between her eyebrows. In the family this was generally a signal for a retreat, but of course the young man could not know this, and, besides, he was red-headed. “Look here,” said Jane, “I don’t know who you are and I don’t care either, but that bell is going to ring until I get my bath and some breakfast. And it’s going to ring then unless I stop it.”

The young man in the coal dust and the white apron looked at Jane and smiled. Then he walked past her into the room, jerked the bed from the wall and released the bell.

“Now!” he said as the din outside ceased. “I’m too busy to talk just at present, but if you do that again I’ll take the bell out of the room altogether. There are other people in the hospital besides yourself.”

At that he started out and along the hall, leaving Jane speechless. After he’d gone about a dozen feet he stopped and turned, looking at Jane reflectively.

“Do you know anything about cooking?” he asked.

“I know more about cooking than you do about politeness,” she retorted, white with fury, and went into her room and slammed the door. She went directly to the bell and put it behind the bed and set it to ringing again. Then she sat down in a chair and picked up a book. Had the red-haired person opened the door she was perfectly prepared to fling the book at him. She would have thrown a hatchet had she had one.

As a matter of fact, however, he did not come back. The bell rang with a soul-satisfying jangle for about two minutes and then died away, and no amount of poking with a hairpin did any good. It was clear that the bell had been cut off outside!