Philip Curtiss

“ Outside, Keefe, standing beside the car, was watching with the keenest interest an English starling hopping across the lawn, both tiny feet moving together. A gardener went by with a barrowfull of earth for a greenhouse but no one paid any attention to Bellsmith.
He decided to explore. Farther down the hall appeared a sitting-room furnished in chintz and seeming doubly luxurious by contrast with the bare hallways. A nurse in stiff white was writing at a little desk. The chief occupation of nurses was apparently writing. She did not look up, and Bellsmith cleared his throat timidly. ”

“ Then suddenly he heard a voice hail him jovially: "Hello, Nero!" and there, sitting in bed, laughing at him, was Tilly Marshall.
Bellsmith hesitated at the doorway and looked around furtively.
"Do I come in?" he asked. "Ought there not to be a corps of nurses flanking me on either side?"
The girl laughed. "Goodness, no! Hundreds of people are in and out all day. The gardener spent an hour here this morning. His wife is a handsome, large woman, he says, but spends too much on her clothes."
As Bellsmith advanced into the room she drew a long breath. "Um! You smell of outside!" ”

“ Could I see Miss Tilly Marshall?"
The nurse did not even look up at that.
"Second floor front," she replied; "the room at the end of the hall."
And so that was all there was to a Sanatorium! Bellsmith had expected at least to be searched and disinfected.
Embarrassed, he padded up the rubber matting on the stairs and passed by a row of bedrooms, all with doors wide open. In one a woman in a kimono was manicuring her finger nails. In another a man was stirring under white sheets and coughing. ”