Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/174

 "Have you got anything for a hundred and twenty-five?" asked Dot, timidly.

"Yes, we have a couple," said the nurse. "But they're very small, and you have to remember that you're going to be here in the middle of summer. For twenty-five dollars more you might as well be comfortable."

"May I see the ones that are a hundred and twenty-five?" asked Dot.

"Certainly."

They walked up another flight of steps. On the way they passed a pretty, brown-eyed nurse carrying a tray. She looked at Dot and smiled faintly. Dot smiled back at her.

"Has Mrs. King gone yet?" asked Dot's guide.

"No," said the brown-eyed nurse. "Her doctor's making her stay another day."

Dot's guide shook her head as though Mrs. King's doctor were a person of inexplicable actions.

"We can only see one of the rooms," she said. "We only have two at that price, and one of them is taken."

Dot saw the room. It was Number Nine. It was as wide as Dot's bathroom and but a trifle longer. A snow-white bed, a less snow-white bureau, and a little stiff-backed chair had been squeezed in somehow. A table stood by the bed, a small table. There was a telephone on the shelf above the bed.

"This is a hundred and twenty-five," the nurse announced in the tone of one who says: "That's what you get for being cheap."

"Oh," said Dot. "It's so tiny."

The nurse read in her voice the hopelessness of one who cannot spend another cent, and a feeling of pity prompted her to make a suggestion.

"You could go in the ward," she said, brightly.

"The ward," echoed Dot.

"Yes. Of course, it isn't the kind of ward that perhaps