etimes on her off duty she took short walks there,
wondering if the passers-by who stared at her knew that she was a
part of the great building that loomed over the district, happily
ignorant of the real significance of their glances. Once a girl,
sitting behind bowed shutters, had leaned out and smiled at her.

"Hot to-day, isn't it?" she said.

The Probationer stopped politely.

"It's fearful! Is there any place near where I can get some soda
water?"

The girl in the window stared.

"There's a drug store two squares down," she said. "And say, if I
were you----"

"Yes?"

"Oh, nothing!" said the girl in the window, and quite unexpectedly
slammed the shutters.

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. And what is the use of
going home and being asked questions that cannot be answered? 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. Also it told the Probationer what to do.

"Hot-water bottles and screens," it said variously