Marion shrank back a little, but she was the only one. The others swarmed about the ambulance as though the officer had not spoken.
In the twinkling of an eye the ambulance swung around and a physician in uniform sprang to the curbing.
The crowd fell back a little when the officer resorted to vigorous measures, and the next moment Marion caught sight of a woman lying on the sidewalk, with her head actually falling over the curb into the gutter.
“Run out the stretcher,” ordered the physician as another officer arrived on the scene. He picked the woman up bodily and laid her on the floor of the ambulance, which was fitted with a mattress and blankets.
A break in the crowd enabled her to see clearly. In a second she was staring hard, her breath almost choking her.
There was something familiar about the woman’s dress, which was of a plain, dark homespun, so common in the country.
The next moment Marion had pressed forward until she obtained a clear view of the poor creature’s face, and then a cry burst from her lips that made the crowd stare at her.
“It is Sallie—Sallie Green!” she cried hysterically.
The ambulance bell clanged and there was a swaying of the crowd. Before she could collect her senses the ambulance dashed off, carrying Silas Johnson’s wretched wife to a cot in Bellevue Hospital.
Sallie had kept her word—she had “run away to the big city.”