topped to think I wouldn't have run the risk, but while
I stood there with them things in my hand a idee popped into my mind.
I looked round; there wasn't a soul near me, an' the winders was all
dark, so't nobody could see me from the house, and of course they
hadn't seen the woman git arristed an' took away. We didn't look much
alike, but I thought mebbe they'd let me in, thinkin' 'twas her; and
when I got in I'd tell 'em I'd found the trumpet at their door, and
p'r'aps, if I felt like it, I'd say I'd seen a gentleman to the winder
that I was 'quainted with; that is if he didn't come to the door.
Anyhow, I thought I'd try to make sure it 'twas him I see at the
winder.'

I shuddered at her cool recital of such a daring venture; and yet I
could see how, with her country training, she would see nothing so
very serious or dangerous in thus thrusting herself into a strange
house, gossip-like, 'to find out what was goin' on.' She took up the
trumpet.

'I was used to these things,' she said, 'for my aunt on my mother's
side used to live with me; she was a old maid an' she used one.
Stone-deef she was, a'most, but I didn't think then o' usin' this.
When I got onto the top step I felt 'most like runnin' off all of a
sudden, but I set my teeth and give the bell a jerk. 'Twa'n't long
before the door opened jest a crack, and I see an eye lookin' out. I
meant to git inside before I said anything, so I kind o' give the
speakin' trumpet, hangin' over my arm, a shake; it was 'most hid under
the veil, you know; and then the door opened wider, and I see a woman.
My! the palest, woe-begon'dest woman I'd ever see, 'most. "Oh!" she
says, in a shaky, scairt sort o' voice, "come in quick." She looked so
peaked and strange I jest stood starin' at her a minit, and all to
once she reached out her hand and motioned to me; and as I stepped in
she caught hold of the big end of the speakin' trumpet, and then I see
that she thought I was deef; and quick as a wink it come to me to play
deef 's long as I could--deef folks are allus makin' blunders--and
then to 'polergize an' git out. So I stuck the tube to my ear.

'"You're the nurse?" she says through it, but not very loud, for a
deef person, that is. "Louder," sez I. So she sed it real loud, an' I
nodded.

'Then she motioned me to come into the room to the front, that I had
seen the man look out of. It was 'most dark there, only there was a
winder on the alley that 'peared to be all boarded up,