“About half an hour, doctor. I am here alone with this child, and cannot leave her. Will you kindly see the proper people and send them here for the last offices? Some woman, of course, must be on hand. Please, also, see Mrs. Brown, our janitress. I must engage a large room on this flat. There are plenty of vacant rooms in the house now, since the exodus of the fourth of March. Will you kindly attend to these matters?”
“Willingly, my dear child,” said Roma’s old friend, who then took a clean towel from a rack, spread it over the dead face, and left the room.
Owlet sobbed herself to sleep on Roma’s bosom, and then the lady tenderly lifted her, bore her into the adjoining chamber, and laid her on the bed.
An hour later an undertaker and his assistants came to the room, introduced by Mrs. Brown herself, who was really full of sympathy and helpfulness.
A large front room, on the same floor, was prepared, and there the body of Margaret Nouvellini was laid out to await the day of the funeral, which was set for the following Friday.
Late in the afternoon, Roma, leaving the child asleep on her bed, and leaving her hired assistants to air her rooms and set them in order, went down to the restaurant to get the cup of tea she so much needed.
When she returned to the upper floor she thought she would look into the chamber of death to see that all was done decently and in order.
It was a large front corner room, with high windows, whose sashes were up and Venetian blinds closed. The heat had been turned off, and the room was intensely cold, as well as half dark.
She discerned the white-sheeted form on the table, in the middle of the floor, and there also, to her surprise and sorrow, she saw little Owlet, who had drawn a chair to the side of the bier, and climbed upon it, and was resting head and arms upon her mother’s cold body.
“Catherine, darling! darling! don’t stay here in the cold. It is not right, dear. Let me take you away and get you something to eat,” said Roma, gently taking hold of the child.