from the back staircase that connected the two floors, and, going out, would see Sidney’s flushed face and slightly crooked cap bending over the stair-rail.
“I’m dreadfully sorry to bother you,” she would say, “but So-and-So won’t have a fever bath”; or, “I’ve a woman here who refuses her medicine.” Then would follow rapid questions and equally rapid answers. Much as Carlotta disliked and feared the girl overhead, it never occurred to her to refuse her assistance. Perhaps the angels who keep the great record will put that to her credit.
Sidney saw her first death shortly after she went on night duty. It was the most terrible experience of all her life; and yet, as death goes, it was quiet enough. So gradual was it that Sidney, with K.‘s little watch in hand, was not sure exactly when it happened. The light was very dim behind the little screen. One moment the sheet was quivering slightly under the struggle for breath, the next it was still. That was all. But to the girl it was catastrophe. That life, so potential, so tremendous a thing, could end so ignominiously, that the long battle should terminate always in this capitulation—it seemed to her that she could not stand it. Added to all her other new problems of living was this one of dying.
She made mistakes, of course, which the kindly nurses forgot to report—basins left about, errors on her records. She rinsed her thermometer in hot water one night, and startled an interne by sending him word that Mary McGuire’s temperature was a hundred and ten degrees. She let a delirious patient escape from the ward another night and go airily down the fire-escape before she discovered what had happened! Then she distinguished herself by flying down the iron staircase and bringing the runaway back singlehanded.
For Christine’s wedding the Street threw off its drab attire and assumed a wedding garment. In the beginning it was incredulous about some of the details.
“An awning from the house door to the curbstone, and a policeman!” reported Mrs. Rosenfeld, who was finding steady employment at the Lorenz house. “And another awning at the church, with a red carpet!”
Mr. Rosenfeld had arrived home and was making up arrears of rest and recreation.
“Huh!” he said. “Suppose it don’t rain. What then?” His Jewish father spoke in him.
“And another policeman at the church!” said Mrs. Rosenfeld triumphantly.
“Why do they ask ‘em if they don’t trust ‘em?”
But the mention of the policemen had been unfortunate. It recalled to him many things that were better forgotten. He rose and scowled at his wife.
“You tell Johnny something for me,” he snarled. “You tell him when he sees his father walking down street, and he sittin’ up there alone on that automobile, I want him to stop and pick me up when I hail him. Me walking, while my son swells around in a car! And another thing.” He turned savagely at the door. “You let me hear of him road- housin’, and I’ll kill him!”
The wedding was to be at five o’clock. This, in itself, defied all traditions of the Street, which was either married in the very early morning at the Catholic church or at eight o’clock in the evening at the Presbyterian. There was something reckless about five o’clock. The Street felt the dash of it. It had a queer feeling that perhaps such a marriage was not quite legal.
The question of what to wear became, for the men, an earnest one. Dr. Ed resurrected an old black frock-coat and had a “V” of black cambric set in the vest. Mr. Jenkins, the grocer, rented a cutaway, and bought a new Panama to wear with it. The deaf-and-dumb book agent who boarded at McKees’, and who, by reason of his affliction, was calmly ignorant of the excitement around him, wore a borrowed dress-suit, and considered himself to the end of his days the only properly attired man in the church.
The younger Wilson was to be one of the ushers. When the newspapers came out with the published list and this was discovered, as well as that Sidney was the maid of honor, there was a distinct quiver through the hospital training-school. A probationer was authorized to find out particulars. It was the day of the wedding then, and Sidney, who had not been to bed at all, was sitting in a sunny window in the Dormitory Annex, drying her hair.
The probationer was distinctly uneasy.
“I—I just wonder,” she said, “if you would let some of the girls come in to see you when you’re dressed?”
“Why, of course I will.”
“It’s awfully thrilling, isn’t it? And—isn’t Dr. Wilson going to be an usher?”
Sidney colored. “I believe so.”
“Are you going to walk down the aisle with him?”
“I don’t know. They had a rehearsal last night, but of course I was not there. I—I think I walk alone.”
The probationer had been instructed to find out other things; so she set to work with a fan at Sidney’s hair.
“You’ve known Dr. Wilson a long time, haven’t you?”
“Ages.”
“He’s awfully good-looking, isn’t he?”
Sidney considered. She was not ignorant of the methods of the school. If this girl was pumping her—
“I’ll have to think that over,” she said, with a glint of mischief in her eyes. “When you know a person terribly well, you hardly know whether he’s good-looking or not.”
“I suppose,” said the probationer, running the long strands of Sidney’s hair through her fingers, “that when you are at home you see him often.”
Sidney got off the windowsill, and, taking the probationer smilingly by the shoulders, faced her toward the door.
“You go back to the girls,” she said, “and tell them to come in and see me when I am dressed, and tell them this: I don’t know whether I am to walk down the aisle with Dr. Wilson, but I hope I am. I see him very often. I like him very much. I hope he likes me. And I think he’s handsome.”
She shoved the probationer out into the hall and locked the door behind her.
