Gloria never quite knew what happened the next half hour. It was mercifully always a bad dream to her. At its end something like order and quiet reigned in the old house, thanks to the quiet self-command of the District Nurse. Sal had been removed in the ambulance to the hospital, the little crowd of women sent back to their work, and the curious children scattered to their homes. 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. On the neat bed lay a baby asleep.
“Hunkie!” Gloria said softly, as she tiptoed across the room and looked down at the thin little face.