The next two days were busy ones for Marion, for she was almost constantly at the bedside of poor, delirious Kittie.
As the girl tossed on her pillow she talked incessantly, so that, bit by bit, Marion learned her sad history, finding that, like herself, the child had been born and bred in the country, but had run away from her home only to find treachery and disgrace in a conscienceless city. The names of “father” and “mother” were constantly on her lips. Then there was another name which she tried to speak, but which seemed always to be choked back by a flood of agony or a torrent of bitter, ill-timed denunciations.
Marion guessed that this name would have meant a revelation. It was doubtless the name of poor Kittie’s betrayer, which, for some reason or other, she could never utter.
A sudden dislike to her own child was the next development of the fever. When she saw its tiny face she screamed and shrieked with rage. It was necessary to remove it from her sight entirely.
“It is a typical case,” said Miss Williams to Marion. “You can study the chart as much as you wish. It will not hurt you to learn the tracings, even though you are a ‘probationer.’”
On the very next bed to Kittie lay an older woman. She was also a mother and was slowly dying of consumption.
As Kittie moaned and cried, this woman wept silently. In her own dire distress she was consumed with pity.
“Oh, the misery of it all,” she sighed, as Marion bent over her. “Bless your dear face, nurse, and may the good God keep you from such wretchedness.”
Marion looked upon death for the first time that night, for the poor consumptive died without a sound or struggle.
Try as they would, they could not keep it from Kittie. There was too much to be done, too many to be cared for, to go into any extraordinary effort at secrecy. As the stretcher was carried out with the still, cold figure upon it Kittie almost sprang from her bed and tried to peer over the screen to look at it.