Many of these people were residents of the rickety tenement across from the model apartments, but one there was who had been unable to leave the small, hot room that she called home, and that one was Mrs. Wilovich.
She was not alone, nor had she been, for all that day Lena May had been at her bedside.
“She cannot last the night out,” the visiting district nurse had said. “Hastn’t she any own folks to stay with her till it’s all over?”
“I shall stay,” little Lena May had replied.
“You? Do you think you ought? You’re a mere girl. Aren’t there some women in this house who’d do that much for a neighbor?”
“I am seventeen,” was the quiet reply, “and Mrs. Wilovich would rather have me. She never made friends among the neighbors.”
“Well, as you wish,” the busy nurse had said. “I have many more places to visit this evening, so I can’t stay; and, anyway, there’s nothing to do but to let her——”
“Hush, please, don’t say it. Little Tony might hear,” Lena May had implored in a whisper as she glanced at the child curled up on the floor as though he were asleep.
When the nurse was gone, Dean Wiggin appeared in the open doorway, as he had many times that day and evening. Nell had been called to the country to see about the small farm which their foster-father had bequeathed them, or she would have been with Lena May. Gloria had left at eight to take her evening classes at the Settlement, and had promised to return at ten and remain with her sister until the end.
The giant of a lad, with his helpless arm that was always held in one position as it had been in slings so long ago, glanced first at the woman in the bed, and then at the girl who advanced to him.