As they passed out, the white rubber-tired carts were being wheeled down the halls, the patients they bore still breathing profoundly under the anesthetics, from which it was hoped they would awaken in their clean, smooth beds. The young women hurried out, and Elizabeth drank in the cool wintry air eagerly.
"Oh, Gusta!" she said, "this air is delicious after that air in there! I shall have the taste of it for days."
"Miss Elizabeth, that place is sickening!"--and Elizabeth laughed at the solemn deliberation with which Gusta lengthened out the word.
"Come in, old man." Marriott glanced up at Dick Ward, who stood smiling in the doorway of his private office.
"Don’t let me interrupt you, my boy," said Dick as he entered.
"Just a minute," said Marriott, "and then I’m with you." Dick dropped into the big leather chair, unbuttoned his tan overcoat, arranged its skirts, drew off his gloves, and took a silver cigarette-case from his pocket. Marriott, swinging about in his chair, asked his stenographer to repeat the last line, picked up the thread, went on:
"And these answering defendants further say that heretofore, to wit, on or about--"
Dick, leaning back in his chair, inhaling the smoke of his cigarette, looked at the girl who sat beside Marriott’s desk, one leg crossed over the other, the tip of her patent-leather boot showing beneath her skirt, on her knee the pad on which she wrote in shorthand. The girl’s eyelashes trembled presently and a flush showed in her cheeks, spreading to her white throat and neck. Dick did not take his eyes from her. When Marriott finished, the girl left the room hurriedly.
"Devilish fine-looking girl you’ve got there, old man!" said Dick, whose eyes had followed the stenographer.
"She’s a good girl," said Marriott simply.
Dick glanced again at the girl. Through the open door he could see her seating herself at her machine. Then he recalled himself and turned to Marriott.
"Say, Bess was trying to get you by ’phone this morning."
"Is that so?" said Marriott in a disappointed tone. "I was in court all morning."
"Well, she said she’d give it up. She said that old man Koerner had left the hospital and gone home. He sent word to her that he wanted to see you."