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Page 28
The floor was cold. To Jane's wrath was added indignation. She
hitched herself along the boards to the radiator and put her hand on
it. It was even colder than Jane.
The family temper was fully awake by this time and ready for
business. Jane, sitting on the icy floor, jerked on her stockings,
snapped the pink bands into place, thrust her feet into her slippers
and rose, shivering. She went to the bed, and by dint of careful
manoeuvring so placed the bell between the head of the bed and the
wall that during the remainder of her toilet it rang steadily.
The remainder of Jane's toilet was rather casual. She flung on the
silk kimono, twisted her hair on top of her head and stuck a pin or
two in it, thus achieving a sort of effect a thousand times more
bewildering than she had ever managed with a curling iron and
twenty seven hair pins, and flinging her door wide stalked into the
hall. At least she meant to stalk, but one does not really stamp
about much in number-two, heelless, pink-satin mules.
At the first stalk--or stamp--she stopped. Standing uncertainly just
outside her door was a strange man, strangely attired. Jane clutched
her kimono about her and stared.
"Did--did you--are you ringing?" asked the apparition. It wore a
pair of white-duck trousers, much soiled, a coat that bore the words
"furnace room" down the front in red letters on a white tape, and a
clean and spotless white apron. There was coal dust on its face and
streaks of it in its hair, which appeared normally to be red.
"There's something the matter with your bell," said the young man.
"It keeps on ringing."
"I intend it to," said Jane coldly.
"You can't make a racket like that round here, you know," he
asserted, looking past her into the room.
"I intend to make all the racket I can until I get some attention."
"What have you done--put a book on it?"
"Look here"--Jane added another line to the two between her
eyebrows. In the family this was generally a signal for a retreat,
but of course the young man could not know this, and, besides, he
was red-headed. "Look here," said Jane, "I don't know who you are
and I don't care either, but that bell is going to ring until I get
my bath and some breakfast. And it's going to ring then unless I
stop it."
The young man in the coal dust and the white apron looked at Jane
and smiled. Then he walked past her into the room, jerked the bed
from the wall and released the bell.
"Now!" he said as the din outside ceased. "I'm too busy to talk just
at present, but if you do that again I'll take the bell out of the
room altogether. There are other people in the hospital besides
yourself."
At that he started out and along the hall, leaving Jane speechless.
After he'd gone about a dozen feet he stopped and turned, looking at
Jane reflectively.
"Do you know anything about cooking?" he asked.
"I know more about cooking than you do about politeness," she
retorted, white with fury, and went into her room and slammed the
door. She went directly to the bell and put it behind the bed and
set it to ringing again. Then she sat down in a chair and picked up
a book. Had the red-haired person opened the door she was perfectly
prepared to fling the book at him. She would have thrown a hatchet
had she had one.
As a matter of fact, however, he did not come back. The bell rang
with a soul-satisfying jangle for about two minutes and then died
away, and no amount of poking with a hairpin did any good. It was
clear that the bell had been cut off outside!
For fifty-five minutes Jane sat in that chair breakfastless, very
casually washed and with the aforesaid Billie Burkeness of hair.
Then, hunger gaining over temper, she opened the door and peered
out. From somewhere near at hand there came a pungent odor of
burning toast. Jane sniffed; then, driven by hunger, she made a
short sally down the hall to the parlour where the nurses on duty
made their headquarters. It was empty. The dismantled bell register
was on the wall, with the bell unscrewed and lying on the mantel
beside it, and the odour of burning toast was stronger than ever.
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