opened the door I knew who she was and I took her in my room and had her
take her hat off and smooth her hair and try to make it easy about
Jenny. I told her she had been working too hard, and had caught cold and
that if she was took home where she had the right kind of things to eat
and real nursing, not just us girls going in when we had the time, that
she would soon get all right. The mother could hardly wait until I had
finished, and she sort of trembled all over. When I took her into
Jenny's room, Jenny was laying with her eyes shut, not asleep, but just
like she lays most of the time, and she looked so white and little and
her lashes were so black against her white face, that I could see it
went right into that mother's heart. She went up to the bed, and put her
arms around Jenny, and her face against hers, and said, "My little girl,
mother's own little girl," and then I left, 'cause I am kinda soft, and
I could see it was the hose cart for me. In about half an hour, I went
in to see if they was hungry, and Jenny was laying there with her
mother's hand in hers looking as if she had found peace. I just wanted
to put my arms around that little old fashioned woman and cry. You know,
style don't seem to count when it is your mother. The old lady is going
to stay until Jenny is better, then they are going home, and I hope we
will never see Jenny again. Being a chorus girl ain't her place. She
belongs in a little town playing the church organ.

But say, you would laugh to see the old lady. She don't fit in a rooming
house in 28th Street. She has a nice, sweet, old face and she combs her
hair back from it, parted in the middle, and she smiles at all of us in
a loving way, cause she thinks we have been good to Jenny. And the
girls! It is funny to see them when they first blow into the room and
run into her. They look as if they saw a ghost, and then they set back
quiet, and let her talk. She tells them all about Iowa or wherever it is
she is from, and about Jenny when she was a little girl, and her father
and her two brothers, and how sorry they were when Jenny come to New
York to study music, but they didn't want to stand in her way. All the
girls come in whenever they have a chance and bring Jenny some little
thing from the delicatessen or some plants or flowers. Her room is awful
pretty, cause they keep it just filled with flowers. Mary Callahan took
the mother out the other afternoon to a moving picture show. She didn't