Meanwhile Mary was having an exciting experience down at Diamond Row. A message had called her there just as they arose from the lunch-table.
"Oh, why couldn't it have come sooner," she mourned, "before I was all dressed up so spick and span for your grand speechifying occasion? I always feel as if I ought to be fumigated when I come back from there. More than likely it's just another complaint that old Mrs. Donegan wants to lodge against the universe. She seems to think lately that it owes her a special grudge, and that my ears are Heaven-ordained funnels for her to pour her troubles into."
But it was not Mrs. Donegan's troubles this time which summoned her, although that excitable old woman met her, crying and wringing her hands. It was for a neighbor's misfortunes that she invoked Mary's aid. Dena Barowsky, a frail girl in the room above hers, who supported a family by her work in the factory, had had a bad fall.
"Both legs broken and all hurted inside she is!" wailed Mrs. Donegan, eager to be the first to tell the bad news.
"Where is she?" asked Mary. "Where did it happen? At the factory?"
Half a dozen eager voices interrupted each other to tell her. It seemed as if all the inmates of the tenement had gathered on the stairs and the landing to discuss the accident in sympathizing little groups. It was something which might have happened to any one of them. Dena Barowsky had come home from the factory at noon to fix a bite and sup for her old father, who was worse than usual, and while going down the rickety stairs to the cellar for some reason, had fallen. A loose board had tripped her, so that she pitched against the bannister, which was so rotten that it broke under her weight, and she fell headlong into the cellar.
A doctor was in the room with her now, examining to find how badly she was hurt, Mrs. Donegan explained. The saints only knew what would become of the family if it should be so that she was laid up long. Her father was bedridden, and her mother so queer in her head that she did nothing but sit in a corner and mutter to herself all day long. Luckily there wasn't more than a foot of water in the cellar, and they got her out right away. It had been half full when little Terence Reilly fell in, for that was the time of the backwater in the spring freshets.
Following half a dozen self-appointed guides, Mary picked her way to the stairway and looked down. The broken piece of rotten timber, the gaping hole in the splintered bannister, the dark gleam of the water beneath, told their own story. One long, horrified look was enough for Mary. The others hung over the spot as if it held some unexplainable fascination, pointing out the step which tripped her first, the rusty nail to which still clung a shred of her dress torn out in falling, the jagged splinter that must have been the one which made the gash in her face.
With a shudder Mary turned away and asked to be taken to Dena's room. At the opening of the door a strong odor of anæsthetics rose above the mouldy smell of the unventilated apartment, which was made still closer by the inquisitive neighbors whom the doctor's orders had not been able to bar out. Despite his sternness they gathered in the corners, watching the white-faced girl on the bed. She was moaning, though unconscious. This was not the first time Mary had met the young doctor in such places. He looked up with evident relief at her entrance.
"It's a case for a district nurse," he said, when he had explained briefly in a low tone the seriousness of the injuries. He spoke purposely in medical terms so that the old father, sobbing childishly on the opposite bed, could not understand the gravity of the situation.