"Just what do you want me to do?" she asked. Now that it was down to brass tacks and no talk about home and mother, she was more comfortable.
"If you could just come over to the hospital while her people are there and—and say she'd lived with you all the time——"
"That's the truth all right!"
"And—that she worked for you, sewing—she sews very well, she says. And—oh, you'll know what to say; that she's been—all right, you know; anything to make them comfortable and happy."
Now the stout woman was softening—not that she was really hard, but she had developed a sort of artificial veneer of hardness, and good impulses had a hard time crawling through.
"I guess I could do that much," she conceded. "She nursed me when I was down and out with the grippe and that worthless nigger was drunk in the kitchen. But you folks over there have got a parrot that belongs to me. What about that?"
The Probationer knew about the parrot. The Dummy had slipped it into the ward more than once and its profanity had delighted the patients. The Avenue Girl had been glad to see it too; and as it sat on the bedside table and shrieked defiance and oaths the Dummy had smiled benignly. John and the dove—the girl and the parrot!
"I am sorry about the parrot. I—perhaps I could buy him from you."
She got out her shabby little purse, in which she carried her munificent monthly allowance of eight dollars and a little money she had brought from home.
"Twenty dollars takes him. That's what she owed me."