To this house Nora went, and found the girl alone, and weeping more from loneliness than suffering. The doctor had left, promising to come again, and to send an ambulance later in the day, to take the sufferer to the hospital. Nora knocked gently at the chamber door.
"Come in!" a voice from within answered wearily.
The visitor, standing in the doorway, was impressed by the dreariness of disorder which reigned inside. Such a room would have been impossible to Nora herself while hands and knees and a scrubbing-brush were left to her. In one sweeping glance she took in the hastily dumped clothing on the floor, the bureau heaped with mussy finery, the fly-specked window-pane, and soiled bed-spread.
"Who are you?" asked the girl, raising her head from the pillow. "Oh, one of those Salvation Army women," she added, as she caught sight of the dark bonnet.
"Yes," answered Nora, "I heard of your accident and that you were all alone. I have come to try to help you."
"You can't. Nobody can help me. I wish I was dead." With this the girl buried her face in the pillow and resumed her half-hysterical weeping.
Nora wisely wasted no words in trying to prove her ability to help, but began quietly to hang up the clothes, to slip the soiled lace and brass chains from the top of the bureau into the drawer, to close the blinds, and fold a towel over a basin on the chair within reach of the sufferer.
"There," she said, "maybe if you could wash you'd feel a bit more comfortable, and I'll run round to my lodgings—they're not far off—and back in no time."
When she reappeared, it was with a snowy white dimity spread taken from her own bed, a pitcher of ice-water, and a large palm-leaf fan. When the bed was re-made, the self-appointed nurse seated herself by the bedside of the sick girl, promising to stay until the coming of the ambulance, and settling down to listen to all the details of the accident, which seemed to give the victim a grewsome satisfaction in rehearsing.