“Swherah ... iz ... Rosh?”
Lillian Parkins sat like a race horse at the starter. Every time he crushed the nurse, she thanked him ... silently....
He swayed horribly and they staggered.
He increased his grip and his voice was brutal.
“Stell me! St-ell me! Swhere iz Rosh?”
“Rose is dead!” Miss Kerr’s voice had taken on life at last. Every woman in the ward heard her remark.
And it was Mrs. Witherspoon’s horrible, scrunching scream that came like the brakes of a truck after an accident, which shocked the other women into silence and brought Horace, the new orderly, up the corridor on the run.
And with that scream the brain of Lieutenant Brady, U.S.N. disintegrated. He loosened his grip upon the student nurse and flung her to the floor.
“Rosh iz dead! Dead in a hoshbittle!”
He began skipping around as a child might and singing monotonously, “Ring aroun’ de Roshy! Rosh’s dead. Rosh’s dead. Ring aroun’ de Roshy.”