Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/191

 The wait continued. The blond nurse smiled encouragingly now and again. It grew warm in the pretty room. Dot took off her hat and later threw back her cape. Eddie sighed heavily and shifted his position. No other patients came into the room, but that was scant comfort, as a dozen people might well have been examined while Dot waited.

Dot leaned over and whispered to Eddie: "I wonder how Al Smith's doing?"

Eddie smiled. "It'll probably be Election Day before we get home," he said.

A woman came down the stairs, a dark, brainy-looking woman with a pleasant face. The doctor's wife. Dot had never before seen a doctor's wife. She stared at Mrs. Simons, wondering what it must feel like to be the wife of a clever doctor. Gee, Mrs. Simons must be proud. It wasn't long after that Dot learned that Dr. Simons was very proud of his wife. Dr. Stewart hadn't told Dot that Mrs. Simons was better known as Dr. Martin and that under that name she was recognized as an obstetrician of note.

Dot gazed at her interestedly and back at the child who was busily tearing pages out of her book. Having a child couldn't be bad, or all the doctors wouldn't be letting their wives have them, she thought.

Mrs. Simons exchanged a few words with the nurse and looked at Dot. She smiled and Dot smiled back at her. Did doctors deliver their wives' babies? she wondered. She would have liked to ask Mrs. Simons that and what was upstairs.

Suddenly the door to the doctor's office flew open. Nobody came out. The doctor had apparently been lost in his own thoughts for an hour and a quarter or had perhaps been deep in a mystery novel.

"You may go in, Mrs. Collins," said the nurse.