Not until then did the
District Nurse have time to look at Gloria.
"Why, you poor dear! You're white as a sheet! I ought to have thought
how it would make you feel! Come with me up to Rose's room. That's the
quietest place around here. It's a little haven to us all. She's got
Dinney's baby with her now. Since the mother died she's about adopted
it. But Dinney pays for it. Dinney's a brave one!"
They now passed up the stairway, and as they came to the gap in the
railing that had been the ruin of poor Sal, the nurse paused with a look
of anxiety sweeping over her face.
"It mustn't be left in that way," she said in dismay. Then she called,
"Dinney! Is Dinney down there?" as she looked down the stairway.
"Someone tell Dinney to bring me a rope--clothesline will do."
The rope was brought, and Gloria, standing by in wonder, watched the
deft fingers weave it back and forth across the danger gap. This was an
unexpected type of a nurse's duties.
"There, that will do as a makeshift. Anyway, nobody but the thinnest of
them can leak through, and Sal isn't here to lean on it; poor Sal!"
Rose was not in the bare, half-lighted little room they entered. The
tidiness and cleanliness of it, however, bore witness to her recent
occupancy.
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