She paced the driveway of the building, back and forth and up and down, in envy of the sick who enjoyed the luxury of warmth.
“To the earth with my healthy body!” she cursed. “Why can’t I only break a bone or something?”
With a sudden courage of despair she mounted the steps to the superintendent’s office; but one glance of the man’s well-fed face robbed her of her nerve.
She sank down on the bench of the waiting applicants, glancing stealthily at the others, feeling all the guilt of a condemned criminal.
When her turn came, the blood in her ears pounded from terror and humiliation. She could not lift her eyes from the floor to face this feelingless judge of the sick and the suffering.
“I’m so killed with the cold,” she stammered, twisting the fringes of her shawl. “If I could only warm myself up in a bed for the night——”
The man looked at her suspiciously.
“If we fill up our place with people like you, we’ll have no room left for the sick. We have a ’flu epidemic.”
“So much you’re doing for the ’flu people, why can’t you help me before I get it?” She spoke with that suppressed energy which was the keynote of her whole personality.
“Have you a fever?” he asked, his professional eye arrested by the unnatural flush on her face.