Love Stories Part 24

"I am not at all afraid," urged the Probationer, "and my blood is good. It would grow--I know it would."

The _interne_ had hard work not to stoop and kiss the blue veins that rose to the surface in the inner curve of her elbow. The dressing screens were up and the three were quite alone. To keep his voice steady he became stern.

"Put your sleeve down and don't be a foolish girl!" he, commanded.

"Put your sleeve down!" His eyes said: "You wonder! You beauty! You brave little girl!"

Because the Probationer seemed to take her responsibilities rather to heart, however, and because, when he should have been thinking of other things, such as calling up the staff and making reports, he kept seeing that white arm and the resolute face above it, the _interne_ worked out a plan.

"I've fixed it, I think," he said, meeting her in a hallway where he had no business to be, and trying to look as if he had not known she was coming. "Father Feeny was in this morning and I tackled him.

He's got a lot of students--fellows studying for the priesthood--and he says any daughter of the church shall have skin if he has to flay 'em alive."

"But--is she a daughter of the church?" asked the Probationer. "And even if she were, under the circ.u.mstances----"

"What circ.u.mstances?" demanded the _interne_. "Here's a poor girl burned and suffering. The father is not going to ask whether she's of the anointed."

The Probationer was not sure. She liked doing things in the open and with nothing to happen later to make one uncomfortable; but she spoke to the Senior and the Senior was willing. Her chief trouble, after all, was with the Avenue Girl herself.

"I don't want to get well," she said wearily when the thing was put up to her. "What's the use? I'd just go back to the same old thing; and when it got too strong for me I'd end up here again or in the morgue."

"Tell me where your people live, then, and let me send for them."

"Why? To have them read in my face what I've been, and go back home to die of shame?"

The Probationer looked at the Avenue Girl's face.

"There--there is nothing in your face to hurt them," she said, flushing--because there were some things the Probationer had never discussed, even with herself. "You--look sad. Honestly, that's all."

The Avenue Girl held up her thin right hand. The forefinger was still yellow from cigarettes.

"What about that?" she sneered.

"If I bleach it will you let me send for your people?"

"I'll--perhaps," was the most the Probationer could get.

Many people would have been discouraged. Even the Senior was a bit cynical. It took a Probationer still heartsick for home to read in the Avenue Girl's eyes the terrible longing for the things she had given up--for home and home folks; for a clean slate again. The Probationer bleached and scrubbed the finger, and gradually a little of her hopeful spirit touched the other girl.

"What day is it?" the Avenue Girl asked once.

"Friday."

"That's baking day at home. We bake in an out-oven. Did you ever smell bread as it comes from an out-oven?" Or: "That's a pretty shade of blue you nurses wear. It would be nice for working in the dairy, wouldn't it?"

"Fine!" said the Probationer, and scrubbed away to hide the triumph in her eyes.

III

That was the day the Dummy stole the parrot. The parrot belonged to the Girl; but how did he know it? So many things he should have known the Dummy never learned; so many things he knew that he seemed never to have learned! He did not know, for instance, of Father Feeny and the Holy Name students; but he knew of the Avenue Girl's loneliness and heartache, and of the cabal against her. It is one of the black marks on record against him that he refused to polish the plate on Old Maggie's bed, and that he shook his fist at her more than once when the Senior was out of the ward.

And he knew of the parrot. That day, then, a short, stout woman with a hard face appeared in the superintendent's office and demanded a parrot.

"Parrot?" said the superintendent blandly.

"Parrot! That crazy man you keep here walked into my house to-day and stole a parrot--and I want it."

"The Dummy! But what on earth----"

"It was my parrot," said the woman. "It belonged to one of my boarders. She's a burned case up in one of the wards--and she owed me money. I took it for a debt. You call that man and let him look me in the eye while I say parrot to him."

"He cannot speak or hear."

"You call him. He'll understand me!"

They found the Dummy coming stealthily down from the top of the stable and haled him into the office. He was very calm--quite impa.s.sive. Apparently he had never seen the woman before; as she raged he smiled cheerfully and shook his head.

"As a matter of fact," said the superintendent, "I don't believe he ever saw the bird; but if he has it we shall find it out and you'll get it again."

They let him go then; and he went to the chapel and looked at a dove above the young John's head. Then he went up to the kitchen and filled his pockets with lettuce leaves. He knew nothing at all of parrots or how to care for them.

Things, you see, were moving right for the Avenue Girl. The stain was coming off--she had been fond of the parrot and now it was close at hand; and Father Feeny's l.u.s.ty crowd stood ready to come into a hospital ward and shed skin that they generally sacrificed on the football field. But the Avenue Girl had two years to account for--and there was the matter of an alibi.

"I might tell the folks at home anything and they'd believe it because they'd want to believe it," said the Avenue Girl. "But there's the neighbours. I was pretty wild at home. And--there's a fellow who wanted to marry me--he knew how sick I was of the old place and how I wanted my fling. His name was Jerry. We'd have to show Jerry."

The Probationer worried a great deal about this matter of the alibi.

It had to be a clean slate for the folks back home, and especially for Jerry. She took her anxieties out walking several times on her off-duty, but nothing seemed to come of it. She walked on the Avenue mostly, because it was near and she could throw a long coat over her blue dress. And so she happened to think of the woman the girl had lived with.

"She got her into all this," thought the Probationer. "She's just got to see her out."

It took three days' off-duty to get her courage up to ringing the doorbell of the house with the bowed shutters, and after she had rung it she wanted very much to run and hide; but she thought of the girl and everything going for nothing for the want of an alibi, and she stuck. The negress opened the door and stared at her.

"She's dead, is she?" she asked.

"No. May I come in? I want to see your mistress."

The negress did not admit her, however. She let her stand in the vestibule and went back to the foot of a staircase.

"One of these heah nurses from the hospital!" she said. "She wants to come in and speak to you."

"Let her in, you fool!" replied a voice from above stairs.

The rest was rather confused. Afterward the Probationer remembered putting the case to the stout woman who had claimed the parrot and finding it difficult to make her understand.

"Don't you see?" she finished desperately. "I want her to go home--to her own folks. She wants it too. But what are we going to say about these last two years?"

The stout woman sat turning over her rings. She was most uncomfortable. After all, what had she done? Had she not warned them again and again about having lighted cigarettes lying round.

"She's in bad shape, is she?"