lso she had a fine flush, a combination of heat from the gas
stove and temper.

"They ought to be ashamed," she cried angrily, "leaving a lot of
sick people!"

"Oh, as to that," said the red-headed person, "there aren't any
very sick ones. Two or three neurasthenics like yourself and a
convalescent typhoid and a D.T. in a private room. If it wasn't
that Mary O'Shaughnessy----"

But at the word "neurasthenics" Jane had put down the toaster, and
by the time the unconscious young man had reached the O'Shaughnessy
she was going out the door with her chin up. He called after her,
and finding she did not turn he followed her, shouting apologies at
her back until she went into her room. And as hospital doors don't
lock from the inside she pushed the washstand against the knob and
went to bed to keep warm.

He stood outside and apologised again, and later he brought a tray
of bread and butter and a pot of the tea, which had been boiling for
two hours by that time, and put it outside the door on the floor.
But Jane refused to get it, and finished her breakfast from a jar of
candied ginger that some one had sent her, and read "Lorna Doone."

Now and then a sound of terrific hammering would follow the
steampipes and Jane would smile wickedly. By noon she had finished
the ginger and was wondering what the person about whom she and the
family had disagreed would think when he heard the way she was being
treated. And by one o'clock she had cried her eyes entirely shut and
had pushed the washstand back from the door.

II

Now a hospital full of nurses and doctors with a bell to summon food
and attention is one thing. A hospital without nurses and doctors,
and with only one person to do everything, and that person mostly in
the cellar, is quite another. Jane was very sad and lonely, and to
add to her troubles the delirium-tremens case down the hall began to
sing "Oh Promise Me" in a falsetto voice and kept it up for hours.

At three Jane got up and bathed her eyes. She also did her hair,
and thus fortified she started out to find the red-haired person.
She intended to say that she was paying sixty-five dollars a week
and belonged to a leading family, and that she didn't mean to
endure for a moment the treatment she was getting, and being
called a neurasthenic and made to cook for the other patients.

She went slowly along the hall. The convalescent typhoid heard her
and called.

"Hey, doc!" he cried. "Hey, doc! Great Sc