“I know it,” Betty said, unexpectedly reasonable, “but as it happens I’m not. Collier Pratt really is up-stairs with a poor little orphan in tow. Ask any one of the girls.”
At this moment Dolly, her ribbons awry and her china-blue eyes widened with excitement, appeared with a dramatic confirmation of Betty’s astonishing announcement.
“There’s a little girl took sick from the peaches, and moved up-stairs in the room next to Gaspard’s,” she cried breathlessly. “The doctor that was sitting at the next table, had her moved right up there. He wants to see the lady that runs the restaurant, and he wants a lot of hot water in a pitcher, and some baking soda.”
“You see,” Betty said, “go on up, I’ll take 129 your place here. Dolly, get the things the doctor asked for.”
Nancy stripped off her cap and her apron and resigned her spoons and ladles to Betty without a word. She was still incredulous of what she would find at the top of the three flights of creaking age-worn stairs that separated her from the nest of rooms that were the storm quarters of her hostelry, now converted by a sudden malevolence on the part of fate into a temporary hospital. As she took the last flight she could hear Gaspard’s stertorous breathing coming at the regular intervals of distressful slumber, and through that an ominous murmur of grave and low-voiced conference, such as one hears in the chambers of the dead. The convulsive application of a powder puff to the tip of her burning nose—her whole face was aflame with exertion and excitement—was merely a part of her whole subconscious effort to get herself in hand for the exigency. Her mind, itself, refused any preparation for the scene that awaited her.
On one of the cushioned benches against the wall in the most decorative of the dining-rooms 130 of the up-stairs suite, a little girl was lying stark against the brilliant blue of the upholstery. She was a child of some seven or eight, lightly built and delicate of features and dressed all in black. Her eyes were closed, but the long lashes emphasizing the shadows in which they were set, prepared you for the revelation of them. Nancy understood that they were Collier Pratt’s eyes, and that they would open presently, and look wonderingly up at her. She recognized the presence of Dr. Sunderland, of Michael and several of the waitresses, and a flighty woman in blue taffeta—an ubiquitous patron,—but she made her way past them at once, and sank on her knees before the prostrate child.
“It’s nothing very serious, Miss Martin,” the young surgeon reassured her, “delicate children of this type are likely to have these seizures. It’s not exactly a fainting fit. It belongs rather to the family of hysteria.”
“Wasn’t it the peaches?” Nancy asked fearfully. “They—they had a little brandy in them.”
“They may have been a contributing cause,” Dr. Sunderland acknowledged, “but the child’s 131 condition is primarily responsible. Let her alone until she rouses,—then give her hot water with a pinch of soda in it at fifteen-minute intervals. Keep her feet hot and her head cold and don’t try to move her until after dark, when it’s cooler.”
“All right,” Nancy said, “I’ll take care of her.”