. Mrs. Cotter says she
can't die until she sees you, and she's so tired trying to hold out.
She won't have breath left to talk, mother says, if you don't hurry."

Perplexed, uncertain, I waited a half-minute longer. Mrs. Cotter,
the renter of Mrs. Gibbons's middle room, and sometime boarder, I had
seen frequently of late. Nothing human could have stood what she had
been forcing herself to do for some weeks past, and that resistance
should have yielded to relentless exaction was not to be wondered at.
Ten hours a day she sewed in the carpet department of one of the
city's big stores, and for some time past she had been one of the
office-cleaning force of the Metropolitan Building, which at night
made ready for the day's occupants the rooms which were swept and
dusted and scrubbed while others slept or played, or rested or made
plans for coming times. The extra work had been undertaken in order
to get nourishment and medicine needed for her little girl, who had
developed tuberculosis. There was nowhere for the child to go. The
insufficient sanatorium provided by the city for its diseased and
germ-disseminating poor was over-crowded. To save her child she had
fought valiantly, but her life was the forfeit of her fight. I
wondered what she wanted to tell me.

I looked at Selwyn, in my eyes questioning. Mrs. Mundy was out. I
could not leave Bettina alone in the house. What must I do?

"Do you think she is really dying? People like that are often
hysterical, often nervously imaginative." Selwyn's voice was
worried. "You ought not to be sent for like this. It isn't right."

"She wouldn't have sent as late as this, but the doctor says she
won't last till daybreak." Jimmy twisted his cap into a round, rough
ball. "I'll get Mrs. Mundy for Bettina if you'll tell me where she
is."

"You can't get her. She's out the prayer-meeting by now and gone to
see somebody who sent for her. I don't know who it is, and I ain't
by myself. Miss Sallie Jenks is sitting with me while grannie's
out." Bettina's tones were energetic. She turned to me. "You
needn't stay back on my account, Miss Danny. Aren't you going?"

"Yes--I'm going." I walked toward my bedroom. At its door I
stopped. "I'm sorry, Selwyn, but I'll have to go. The woman is
dying."

Selwyn's teeth came together sharply and in his eyes were disapproval
and protest. For a half-minute he did not speak, then he faced me.

"If you insist, there's not