The nurse whose adventure I am about to tell did not particularly like the look of the house to which she had been summoned. Her quick, professional eye read the character of the inmates before she had passed through the hall into the room occupied by her patient.
The patient, a woman of about five-and-thirty, was what is technically known as "a drink case." The doctor who had been in attendance and telephoned to the institution was in the room waiting for the nurse.
"She is very bad," he said, "and I don't think there is much hope. I have ascertained who she is, and I have communicated with her husband. He may come this afternoon or this evening."
At eight o'clock in the evening a gentleman called and asked to see Mrs. —————. He saw the nurse and told her the doctor had informed him that Mrs. ————— was ill. He asked to see her alone.
The visitor, a man of about fifty, remained alone with the sick woman for a few minutes. Then he came out and spoke to the nurse.
"She is very bad," he said. "Does the doctor give any hope?"
The nurse shook her head. "Very little," she replied.
Two days afterwards the blinds were down in the Pimlico lodging-house. The patient was dead.
The morning after the visitor had called, the nurse read the daily paper, and, because a certain fact which had come to her knowledge had aroused her curiosity, she turned to the Parliamentary Report.
A well-known and distinguished member of Parliament had made a speech the previous evening which had attracted general attention, and which was reproduced in full, as it was on a burning question of the day.