Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ After a time, when the autumn twilight had fallen on them like a benediction, she took her courage in her hands and told of her visit to the house on the Avenue, and about the parrot and the plot.
The interne stood very still. He was young and intolerant. Some day he would mellow and accept life as it is—not as he would have it. When she had finished he seemed to have drawn himself into a shell, turtle fashion, and huddled himself together. The shell was pride and old prejudice and the intolerance of youth. "She had to have an alibi!" said the Probationer. ”

“ The Dummy sat down near the door very humbly and gazed at the memorial window.
II
Time may be measured in different ways—by joys; by throbs of pain; by instants; by centuries. In a hospital it is marked by night nurses and day nurses; by rounds of the Staff; by visiting days; by medicines and temperatures and milk diets and fever baths; by the distant singing in the chapel on Sundays; by the shift of the morning sun on the east beds to the evening sun on the beds along the west windows.
The Avenue Girl lay alone most of the time. The friendly offices of the ward were not for her. ”

“ The interne and the Probationer were good friends again, but they had never quite got back to the place they had lost on the roof. Over the Avenue Girl's dressing their eyes met sometimes, and there was an appeal in the man's and tenderness; but there was pride too. He would not say he had not meant it. Any man will tell you that he was entirely right, and that she had been most unwise and needed a good scolding—only, of course, it is never the wise people who make life worth the living. ”

“ To some He gives intellect—and they move the earth. To some He allots heart—and the beating pulse of humanity is theirs. But to some He gives only a soul, without intelligence—and these, who never grow up, but remain always His children, are God's fools, kindly, elemental, simple, as if from His palette the Artist of all had taken one colour instead of many. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The interne watched her as she worked. It rather galled him to see her touching this patient. He had no particular sympathy for the Avenue Girl. He was a man, and ruthless, as men are apt to be in such things.
The Avenue Girl had no visitors. She had had one or two at first—pretty girls with tired eyes and apologetic glances; a negress who got by the hall porter with a box of cigarettes, which the Senior promptly confiscated; and—the Dummy. Morning and evening came the Dummy and stood by her bed and worshipped. ”

“ God's fool he was, indeed, for he liked to look in the interne's eyes, and did not know an interne cannot marry for years and years, and that a probationer must not upset discipline by being engaged. God's fool, indeed, who could see into the hearts of men, but not into their thoughts or their lives; and who, seeing only thus, on two dimensions of life and not the third, found the Avenue Girl holy and worthy of all worship! ”

“ Old Maggie put on an air of benevolence and called the Avenue Girl an unlovely name under her breath while she smoothed her pillow. She did not get the cup, but the water out of it, in her hard old face, and matters were as they had been.
The Girl did not improve as she should. The interne did the dressing day after day, while the Probationer helped him—the Senior disliked burned cases—and talked of skin grafting if a new powder he had discovered did no good. Internes are always trying out new things, looking for the great discovery. ”

“ It took three days' off-duty to get her courage up to ringing the doorbell of the house with the bowed shutters, and after she had rung it she wanted very much to run and hide; but she thought of the girl and everything going for nothing for the want of an alibi, and she stuck. The negress opened the door and stared at her.
"She's dead, is she?" she asked.
"No. May I come in? I want to see your mistress."
The negress did not admit her, however. She let her stand in the vestibule and went back to the foot of a staircase.
"One of these heah nurses from the hospital!" she said. ”

“ 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?
Or sometimes it is jealousy. Even an Avenue woman must love some one; and, because she's an elemental creature, if the object of her affections turns elsewhere she's rather apt to use a knife or a razor. In that case it is the rival who ends up on the emergency bed. ”

“ Or the life gets her, as it does sooner or later, and she comes in with typhoid or a cough, or other things, and lies alone, day after day, without visitors or inquiries, making no effort to get better, because—well, why should she?
And so the Dummy's Avenue Girl met her turn and rode down the street in a clanging ambulance, and was taken up in the elevator and along a grey hall to where the emergency bed was waiting; and the Probationer, very cold as to hands and feet, was sending mental appeals to the Senior to come—and come quickly. The ward got up on elbows and watched. ”

“ You're always under my feet," she had said—not unkindly—and pointed to the door.
The Dummy had stood, with his faded old-young eyes on her, and had not moved. The Senior, who had the ward supper to serve and beds to brush out and backs to rub, not to mention having to make up the emergency bed and clear away the dressings—the Senior tried diplomacy and offered him an orange from her own corner of the medicine closet. He shook his head.
"I guess he wants to know whether that girl from the Avenue's going to get well," said Irish Delia. "He seems to know her." ”

“ Also it told the Probationer what to do.
"Hot-water bottles and screens," it said variously. "Take her temperature. Don't be frightened! There'll be a doctor in a minute."
The girl lay on the bed with her eyes shut. It was Irish Delia who saw the Dummy and raised a cry.
"Look at the Dummy!" she said. "He's crying."
The Dummy's world had always been a small one. There was the superintendent, who gave him his old clothes; and there was the engineer, who brought him tobacco; and there were the ambulance horses, who talked to him now and then without speech. ”

“ And—oh, yes, I've got something for you." She went down into her silver bag and pulled out a roll of bills. "I've felt meaner'n a dog every time I've thought of you buying that parrot. I've got a different view of life—maybe—from yours; but I'm not taking candy from a baby."
When the Probationer could speak Rose was taking herself and the purple into the elevator and waving her a farewell.
"Good-bye!" she said. "If ever you get stuck again just call on me."
With Rose's departure silence fell behind the screen. The girl broke it first. ”

“ We bake in an out-oven. Did you ever smell bread as it comes from an out-oven?" Or: "That's a pretty shade of blue you nurses wear. It would be nice for working in the dairy, wouldn't it?"
"Fine!" said the Probationer, and scrubbed away to hide the triumph in her eyes.
III
That was the day the Dummy stole the parrot. The parrot belonged to the Girl; but how did he know it? So many things he should have known the Dummy never learned; so many things he knew that he seemed never to have learned! He did not know, for instance, of Father Feeny and the Holy Name students ”

“ 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. ”

“ She's as bad as they make 'em."
"You shut your mouth!" Irish Delia rose to the defence. "She's in trouble now and what she was don't matter. You go back to bed or I'll tell the Head Nurse on you. Look out! The Dummy——"
The Dummy was advancing on Old Maggie with threatening eyes. As the woman recoiled he caught her arm in one of his ugly, misshapen hands and jerked her away from the bed. Old Maggie reeled—almost fell.
"You all seen that!" she appealed to the ward. "I haven't even spoke to him and he attacked me! I'll go to the superintendent about it. I'll——"
The Probationer hurried in. ”

“ The Senior Nurse was writing fresh labels for the medicine closet, and for "tincture of myrrh" she wrote absently "tincture of mirth," and had to tear it up.
"He can't hear you," she said rather shortly. "How old? Oh, I don't know. About a hundred, I should think." ”

“ It was a young man who hesitated in the doorway, hat in hand—a tall young man, with a strong and not unhandsome face. The Probationer, rather twitchy from excitement and anxiety, felt her heart stop and race on again. Jerry, without a doubt!
The meeting was rather constrained. The girl went whiter than her pillows and half closed her eyes; but Rose, who would have been terrified at the sight of an elderly farmer, was buoyantly relieved and at her ease.
"I'm sorry," said Jerry. "I—we didn't realise it had been so bad. The folks are well ”

“ Many people would have been discouraged. Even the Senior was a bit cynical. It took a Probationer still heartsick for home to read in the Avenue Girl's eyes the terrible longing for the things she had given up—for home and home folks ”

“ Afterward the Probationer remembered putting the case to the stout woman who had claimed the parrot and finding it difficult to make her understand.
"Don't you see?" she finished desperately. "I want her to go home—to her own folks. She wants it too. ”