He was conscious of a feeling of failure when he left her at last. She had acquiesced in what he said, knew he was right, and even promised to talk to him again before making a decision one way or the other. But against his abstractions of conduct and morality there was pleading in Tillie the hungry mother-heart; law and creed and early training were fighting against the strongest instinct of the race. It was a losing battle.
CHAPTER XI
The hot August days dragged on. Merciless sunlight beat in through the slatted shutters of ward windows. At night, from the roof to which the nurses retired after prayers for a breath of air, lower surrounding roofs were seen to be covered with sleepers. Children dozed precariously on the edge of eternity; men and women sprawled in the grotesque postures of sleep.
There was a sort of feverish irritability in the air. Even the nurses, stoically unmindful of bodily discomfort, spoke curtly or not at all. Miss Dana, in Sidney's ward, went down with a low fever, and for a day or so Sidney and Miss Grange got along as best they could. Sidney worked like two or more, performed marvels of bed-making, learned to give alcohol baths for fever with the maximum of result and the minimum of time, even made rounds with a member of the staff and came through creditably.
Dr. Ed Wilson had sent a woman patient into the ward, and his visits were the breath of life to the girl.
“How're they treating you?” he asked her, one day, abruptly.
“Very well.”
“Look at me squarely. You're pretty and you're young. Some of them will try to take it out of you. That's human nature. Has anyone tried it yet?”
Sidney looked distressed.
“Positively, no. It's been hot, and of course it's troublesome to tell me everything. I—I think they're all very kind.”
He reached out a square, competent hand, and put it over hers.
“We miss you in the Street,” he said. “It's all sort of dead there since you left. Joe Drummond doesn't moon up and
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