She sternly refused to look anxious even when the dressing-gong found the wanderer still absent in the rain. At six Berta started for the dining-room, leaving Robbie hovering at Bea’s open door with a supply of hot water, rough towels, dry stockings, and spirits of camphor. In the leaden twilight of the lower corridor a draggled figure passed with a sodden drip of heavy skirts and the dull squashing of water in soaked shoes.
“Where are the apple-blossoms?” asked Berta in polite greeting as they met at the elevator.
“I’ve b-b-b-been studying b-b-b-bobolinks,” Bea’s teeth chattered. “It’s original to follow birds in the rain.”
“But”—Berta’s eyes snapped, “I myself when I did it I wore a gym suit and a mackintosh and rubber boots. Of all the idiots!”
“‘O wad some power the giftie gie us,’” chanted Bea’s tongue between clicks,
| “‘To see oursels as ithers see us, It wad fra mony a blunder free us, And foolish notion.’” |
Then as Berta took a threatening step in her direction, she broke into a run. “I think I’ll take some exercise now,” she called back mockingly as she fled up the stairs.
At midnight Berta was roused wide awake by an insistent rapping on the wall between her room and Bea’s. Startled at last wide awake, she asked what was the trouble. Upon receiving no audible reply, she hurried around through the corridor to the door. She heard the key turned as she grasped the knob. An instant later she felt Bea sway against her and stand choking for breath, her hands to her chest.
“It’s croup,” she gasped. “The doctor! Run!”
Berta ran. She ran as she had never run before. Down the endless corridor and up the stairs, two steps at a time. Then a hail of frantic knocks on the doctor’s door brought her rushing to answer. In four minutes they were back beside Bea’s bed, and the doctor’s orders kept Berta flying, till after a limitless space of horror and struggle she heard dimly from the distance: “She’ll do now.” Whereupon Berta sat down quietly in a chair and fainted.