Just then the telephone rang. The nurse picked up the receiver. She listened to the call from the office. Then she answered:
"I'm awfully sorry, but I cannot see how we can take her. We haven't a single public bed unoccupied."
She waited a moment, then resumed: "Poor thing. I hate to have you turn her away, but what can we do?"
"A bed," thought Dorothy. "Why, of course, Miss Pumfret will provide a private one for her brother, and perhaps——"
But she did not wait to think further.
"Nurse," she interrupted, her voice carrying through the 'phone, "perhaps that patient could have our bed. Captain Mayberry is to go to the private wing."
In a few words the nurse gathered Dorothy's meaning.
Then she told the matron, speaking through the transmitter, to hold the applicant.
"Would you like to come with me?" she asked Dorothy, as she prepared to interview the prospective patient. "Miss Pumfret will be here for some time yet."
Down the broad marble steps, that seemed to exude everything antiseptic and sterilized, Dorothy hurried along after the head nurse. Into a large hall, then across this into a small waiting-room they passed.