“The hospital is only twenty-two years old,” Hasbrook said, “so the patient you’re looking up must have been here soon after it was opened.” “You have the records, I suppose?” asked Wise. “Yes,—if you care to hunt them over, they are at your disposal.”
As a result of this permission, Wise and Zizi spent several hours looking over the old and not very carefully kept records of the earliest years of the little country hospital.
“The worst of it is,” said Zizi, “I don’t exactly know what we’re hoping to find, do you?”
“I have a dim idea, Zizi, and it’s getting clearer,” Wise replied, speaking as from a deep absorption. “Here’s something.”
“What?”
“It’s a list of births for a year,—the year Betty Varian was born and,—oh, Zizi! the very same night that Mrs Varian’s baby was born, a Mrs Curtis also bore a child!”
“Well?”
“Oh, don’t sit there and babble ‘What?’ and ‘Well?’ Can’t you see?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Well, wait a bit,—now, let me see,—yes, Miss Morton,—h’m,—Miss Black,——”