“But why not take him home?”
“Because he will get attendance there quickly, Madam,” said the foreman, who evidently felt he was to blame for a very painful accident.
“If that is the case, let us go to the hospital,” Lizzie said, getting into the wagon. She sat beside Gabriel, and placed his head in her lap. Gabriel smiled, and his beautiful eyes were full of love, but he could scarcely speak a word.
The jolting of the wagon gave him much pain, and Lizzie asked the driver to go very slow. “He ought to be carried on a stretcher, ma'am; he is too much hurt to go in a wagon,” said the driver.
They now came to a street-crossing, and several wagons were standing still, waiting for a line of carriages to pass first.
“Oh, why do we wait? He is suffering so much!” Lizzie exclaimed. “He is bleeding; he might bleed to death!”
“We are waiting for them carriages to pass, ma'am. They are carrying people to a reception on Nob Hill, ma'am,” said the driver.
On the other side of the street, in a carriage which also had been stopped that the guests for the Nob Hill festivities might pass, sat George and Clarence, just arrived, and on their way to see Lizzie and Gabriel. They saw that a man lay in a wagon which stood in front of them, and noticing that a woman sat by his side holding his head in her lap, bending over him anxiously, Clarence said to the driver that there seemed to be some one sick in that wagon, and that it should be allowed to pass.
“Yes, sir; but he is a hod-carrier who fell down and hurt himself. I suppose he'll die before he gets to the hospital,” said the driver, indifferently, as if a hod-carrier more or less was of no consequence. “The carriages must pass first, the police says.”
As Lizzie raised her head to ask the driver to take some other street, they saw her. Both uttered an exclamation of surprise, and left their carriages immediately, walking hurriedly to the wagon where she was.