nodded the Lady of Shalott. "It comes up at night."

"Oh!" said the doctor, "the malaria. No wonder!"

"And what about the waves?" asked the doctor, talking while he touched
and tried the little brown calico shoulders. "I have a little girl of my
own down by the waves this summer. She--I suppose she is no older than
you!"

"I am seventeen, sir," said the Lady of Shalott. "Do they have green
faces and white hair? Does she see them run up and down? I never saw any
waves, sir, but those in my glass. I am very glad to know that your
little girl is by the waves."

"Where you ought to be," said the doctor, half under his breath. "It is
cruel, cruel!"

"What is cruel?" asked the Lady of Shalott, looking up into the doctor's
face.

The little brown calico night-dress swam suddenly before the doctor's
eyes. He got up and walked across the floor. As he walked he stepped
upon the pieces of the broken glass.

"O, don't!" cried the Lady of Shalott. But then she thought that perhaps
she had hurt the doctor's feelings; so she smiled, and said, "Never
mind."

"Her case could be cured," said the doctor, still under his breath, to
Sary Jane. "The case could be cured yet. It is cruel!"

"Sir," said Sary Jane,--she lifted her sharp face sharply out of billows
of nankeen vests,--"it may be because I make vests at sixteen and three
quarters cents a dozen, sir; but I say before God there's something
cruel somewheres. Look at her. Look at me. Look at them stairs. Just see
that scuttle, will you? Just feel the sun in't these windows. Look at
the rent we pay for this 'ere oven. What do you s'pose the meriky is up
here? Look at them pisen fogs arisen' out over the sidewalk. Look at the
dead as have died in the Devil in this street this week. Then look out
here!"

Sary Jane drew the doctor to the blazing, blindless window, out of which
the Lady of Shalott had never looked.

"Now talk of curin' her!" said Sary Jane.

The doctor turned away from the window, with a sudden white face.

"The Board of Health--"

"Don't talk to me about the Board of Health!" said Sary Jane.

"I'll talk to them," said the doctor. "I did not know matters were so
bad. They shall be attended to directly. To-morrow I leave town--" He
stopped, looking down at the Lady of Shalott, thinking of the little
lady by the waves, whom he would see to-morrow, hardly knowing what to
say. "But something shall be done at once. Meantime, there's the
Hospital."

"She t