At ten o’clock Marion started out. Her boat left at eleven from the East Twenty-sixth street dock, and she had a permit in her pocket which the clerk at Charity Hospital had sent her.
It was to be a strange experience, and Marion trembled a little. Some way she dreaded to see the sights that she was about to encounter.
“There are prisoners and crazy people of all kinds up there,” she whispered to herself. “I just dread to face such misery, and yet some one has to do it.”
She had packed her little trunk and sent it on before her, so now she had nothing but a handbag to carry, and she quite enjoyed the ride from Harlem in the elevated train.
Marion had just reached the street from the elevated station, when the sharp clang of a bell startled her from her reflections.
There was a large group of people about half way down the block, and in an instant an ambulance came dashing around the corner.
“A woman either sick or drunk,” said somebody near her.
Marion walked along slowly, so as not to get in the crowd which, like all New York crowds, seemed to spring right up through the sidewalk.
“Get out of the way there, will you!” shouted a burly policeman, as he rushed up. “Stand back there and give the doctor a chance. Move on, I say, or I’ll club the heads off’n you!”