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Marion, the Story of an Artist's Model

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<h2>XXXVI</h2> WE were all sitting around the big hall stove, and papa said: “Put your feet on the fender, Marion, and get them warm.” Mama was feeding me with a big spoon of ice-cream, which Reggie tried to snatch away, and then he would throw red-hot coals in my face. Screaming: “Reggie! Reggie! Stop! Stop!” I woke up. A man was sitting on the bed in my little room, and he was holding my wrist. I recognized him as a young doctor who had attended Miss Darling when she had the grippe. He had straight blond hair and a gentle expression. Standing by him was the girl who had taken the big room on the first floor a few days before. I had noticed her, because she dressed so well and had so many visitors. Now she was holding some ice on my head, and I heard her say to the doctor that she had just put a hot-water bag on my feet. She was not beautiful like Rose St. Denis, for she was short and stout, but she had a large, gen{223}erous mouth, which, when she laughed, showed the most beautiful teeth, and she laughed a great deal so that one could not help liking her. “How is she, doctor?” she asked, and he replied: “She ought to stay in bed some time. Her temperature is a hundred and five. I’m afraid of her being left alone. Has she no one to take care of her?” “No, no,” I moaned weakly. “I have nobody. They are all dead.” “Who was that ‘Reggie’ you were calling for?” asked the girl, and I said: “He’s dead, too.” My eyes felt very heavy, and I could not keep them open. I heard their voices as if in a dream. “My! but she gave us a scare,” said the girl. “We were just going out of the front door last night to get a bite of supper over at the Plaza, and as we opened the door she was coming up the front steps, and she suddenly threw out her hands as if she were drowning, and would have fallen down the stairs had not Al caught her.” There was a long silence, and then I heard her voice again—she was stroking my hand. “Poor girl! What a pretty little thing she is.” I put my cheek against her hand. Somehow it seemed to me natural that she should be good and kind to me. Then the doctor said: “I will have her moved to the hospital. This{224} room is too small, and she will need the best of care.” “Why can’t I care for her?” asked the girl suddenly. “I can do it! Oh, you don’t believe me, eh?” I heard them both laugh, and she said: “It’ll be lots of fun. To begin with, you carry her down to my room.” “Do you really mean that?” I heard him ask, and her reply: “Why, of course, I do.” I did not say a word. I did not care much what they did to me, and there seemed to me no reason why I should not be cared for by this stranger. I suppose it was my weakness, but perhaps it was the consciousness that I would have done the same in her place. Poor girls instinctively depend upon each other in crises like these. And then this girl—Lois Barret was her name—had a jolly way that made even the most trying service seem like a game to her. She acted as if she really enjoyed doing something that another person would have considered a trial. She kept saying: “It’ll be all kinds of fun. Come along, doctor, let’s get her right down now. Can you do it?” “Easily,” declared the doctor. “Ah!” said she. “It’s fine to have big, broad shoulders. I wish I were a man—like you.” She added the last two words softly, and the{225} doctor chuckled. They wrapped the blankets around me, and the doctor lifted me up in his arms and carried me down the stairs. I was so weak, that even this slight movement affected me, and I fainted. I must have been even iller than the doctor thought, for I did not know anything more for a long time. Then one day I opened my heavy eyes, to find myself in a big sunny room, and dreamily I watched Lois Barret hovering over me like a ministering angel. Then, in the evening, I have a dim remembrance of the doctor standing in the window and putting his arm around Lois, and it seemed to me he was kissing her. I called out: “Oh, I am not asleep. I can see you.” They both laughed, and Lois came over and gave me something to swallow and, as I dropped asleep, they seemed to grow into one person.{226} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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