"Undoubtedly," said Carlotta.
"Turkey and goose, mince pie and pumpkin pie, four kinds of cake; that's
the sort of spread we have up in our part of the world. When I think of
what I sat down to to-day--!"
She had a profound respect for Carlotta, and her motto in the hospital
differed from Sidney's in that it was to placate her superiors, while
Sidney's had been to care for her patients.
Seeing Carlotta bored, she ventured a little gossip. She had idly glued
the label of a medicine bottle on the back of her hand, and was scratching
a skull and cross-bones on it.
"I wonder if you have noticed something," she said, eyes on the label.
"I have noticed that the three-o'clock medicines are not given," said
Carlotta sharply; and Miss Wardwell, still labeled and adorned, made the
rounds of the ward.
When she came back she was sulky.
"I'm no gossip," she said, putting the tray on the table. "If you won't
see, you won't. That Rosenfeld boy is crying."
As it was not required that tears be recorded on the record, Carlotta paid
no attention to this.
"What won't I see?"
It required a little urging now. Miss Wardwell swelled with importance
and let her superior ask her twice. Then:-"Dr. Wilson's crazy about Miss Page."
A hand seemed to catch Carlotta's heart and hold it.
"They're old friends."
"Piffle! Being an old friend doesn't make you look at a girl as if you
wanted to take a bite out of her. Mark my word, Miss Harrison, she'll
never finish her training; she'll marry him. I wish," concluded the
probationer plaintively, "that some good-looking fellow like that would
take a fancy to me. I'd do him credit. I am as ugly as a mud fence, but
I've got style."
She was right, probably. She was long and sinuous, but she wore her lanky,
ill-fitting clothes with a certain distinction. Harriet Kennedy would have
dressed her in jade green to match her eyes, and with long jade earrings,
and made her a fashion.
Carlotta's lips were dry. The violinist had seen the tears on Johnny
Rosenfeld's white cheeks, and had rushed into rollicking, joyous music.
The ward echoed with it. "I'm twenty-one and she's eighteen," hummed the
ward under its breath. Miss Wardwell's thin body swayed.
"Lord, how I'd like to dance! If I ever get out of this charnel-house!"
The medicine-tray lay at Carlotta's elbow; beside it the box of labels.
This crude girl was right--right. Carlotta knew it down to the depths of
her tortured brain. As inevitably as the night followed the day, she was
losing her game. She had lost already, unless-If she could get Sidney out of the hospital, it would simplify things. She
surmised shrewdly that on the Street their interests were wide apart. It
was here that they met on common ground.