FullReads

Mrs. C. (plaintively). “Doctors are never satisfied. If anything floats they want to get it stationary, and if it’s stationary they want to cut it loose.”

Mrs. G. “Just after my youngest child–“

Mrs. B. “They say Mrs. H. is going to leave to-morrow; she doesn’t like the food or the service.”

Mrs. E. “Goodness, she has all the service there is on our floor! Nobody else gets a chance! She spends her whole silent hour pushing the electric button.”

Mrs. D. “Yes, Miss Oaks declares she ‘lays’ on it. She says that the head nurse told Mrs. H. she must ring less frequently, or the bell would be removed. Miss Oaks says the patients that pay the smallest rates always ring the bells most. It isn’t fair that a thirty-dollar patient should annoy a whole row of eighty-dollar ones and prevent their bells from being answered.”

Mrs. X. “There’s nothing made out of Mrs. H. at thirty dollars a week. She was as contented as possible last night, but this morning she wanted her bed in the other corner, awnings put on the windows, and the bureau changed for a chiffonier. Come, we must all go in for treatment–it wants five minutes of four.”

Mrs. G., in despair, as she sees the occupants of the hammocks dispersing, almost shrieks: “JUST AFTER MY YOUNGEST–“

But the ladies, for some reason or other, do not care to hear anything about Mrs. G.’s youngest, and she is obliged to seek another audience.

* * * * *

Saturday

The doctor found me “over-treated” this morning and advised a day of quiet, with a couple of hours on the roof-garden or under the trees.

I have heard at various times sighs of weariness or discontent or pain issuing from the room opposite mine, and this afternoon when Miss Blossom had gone into Number 19 to sit with the haughty Mrs. Chittenden-Ffollette I stole across the corridor and glanced in at the half-open door of Number 18.

The quaintest girl raised herself from a mound of sofa-pillows and exclaimed: “Why, you beautiful thing! Are you Number 17? I didn’t know you looked like that!”

“It’s very kind of you,” I answered, blushing at this outspoken greeting; “but I am not beautiful in the least; it is because you do not expect much from a person who has just crept out of bed. I don’t look any better when I am dressed for a party.”

“You don’t need to,” she said. “Now get on my bed and cuddle under the afghan and we’ll talk till Miss Blossom comes back. Won’t she beat you for being out of your room? Why are you here? You haven’t the least resemblance to a rest cure! What is the matter with you?”

“Backache, sideache, shoulderache, headache, sensation of handcuffs on wrists, balls and chains on ankles, lack of appetite, and insomnia.”

“Is that all? Haven’t you any disease?”

“I believe not,” I answered humbly, “but the effect is the same as if I had. Why are you here?” I asked in return, as I looked admiringly at her shining brown hair, plump, rosy cheeks, and dancing eyes.

“I came here, so to speak, in response to an ideal; not my ideal–I never have any–but Laura Simonds’s. She is my dearest friend and one of the noblest girls you ever knew. She said the separation from the world would do us both good, and so it might if she could have stayed to keep me company. Now she has the world and I have the separation.”

“She isn’t here, then?”

“No, worse luck! She is always working and planning for the good of others, but she is constantly meeting with ingratitude and misunderstanding. She had just brought me here when she was telegraphed for to turn about and go home. You see she had sent two ailing slum children to be taken care of at her house, and it proved to be scarlet fever, and, of course, her stepmother took it the first thing–she’s a hateful person and takes everything she can get–and then the cook followed suit. Now they blame Laura and she has to find trained nurses and settle everything before she comes back to me.”