Father! Anybody – somebody! Oh! where are you? What has happened? Mother – dearest mother Martha! Won't you answer?"
Certainly, this was a strange, a terrifying state of things. It was amazing that so careful a housewife as Martha Chester should leave her home in this unprotected condition, but it was quite natural for the well-trained girl, even in the midst of her alarm, to close the sashes against the rain that now came dashing in.
Then she hurried below and out into the little yard, or garden, that was her own special delight. Nobody there; but the pail and brush which Mrs. Chester had been using to clean her back kitchen were still upon its floor, the pail overturned and the water puddling its bricks, and the sight made Dorothy's heart sink lower yet.
Hurrying back to the street, a neighbor shielded her own head from the downpour and called from a next-door window:
"Something has happened to your father. A boy saw him picked up on the street and a policeman called a Johns Hopkins ambulance, that took him to the hospital. The boy knew him, told your mother, and she's hurried there. Don't worry. Probably it's nothing serious."
"Not serious! Oh! you don't know what you're saying! And to think I left him only such a little while! If that hateful old woman – I must go to him, too, I must, I must!"
With that Dorothy was retreating indoors, but again the neighbor's voice detained her:
"'Tisn't likely you'd be admitted, even if you did go. You'd better stay here and be ready for your poor mother when she comes. It's worse trouble for her than for you."
This might be so and the advice excellent, but the excited girl was in no mood to profit by it. Once, in her early childhood, she had answered to an inquiry: "I love my mother a little the best, but I love my father the biggest the best!" and it was so still. Her father, her cheery, indulgent, ever-tender father, would always be "the biggest the best" of her earthly friends, and to be absent from him now, not knowing what had befallen, was impossible.
Glancing upward she observed that the neighbor had already withdrawn her head from the dashing rain and was glad of it. It left her free to bang the front door shut, to rush backward through the house and out at the alley gate, which she also shut, snapping its lock behind her. But she had caught up the key that opened it and, hanging this in a crevice of the fence known for a safe hiding place to each of the family, she started eastward for the great hospital.
Though she had never entered the famous place, she had seen it once from a street-car, and love guided her flying feet. But it was a long, long way from Brown Street, and the present storm was one of those deluging "gusts" familiar to the locality. Within the first five minutes the gutters were filled, the muddy streams pushing outward toward the very middle of the narrower alleys and quite covering her shoe-tops as she splashed through. At one or two of the older thoroughfares she came to the old-time "stepping stones," provided for just such emergencies, and still left standing because of the city's pride in their antiquity. Over these she leaped and was glad of them, but alas! the storm was having its will of her. Her gingham frock was soaked and clung about her with a hindering obstinacy that vexed her, and her wet shoes grew intolerable. She did not remember that she had ever gone barefoot, as some of her mates had done, but at last she sat down on a doorstep and took off her shoes and stockings. After a moment's contemplation of their ruined state, she threw them far aside and stepped upon the brick pavement, just as a policeman in oilskins came up and laid his hand on her shoulder, asking:
"Little girl, what are you doing?"
Dorothy sprang aside, frightened, and wriggled herself free. She forgot that she had never been afraid of such officers; that, indeed, the one upon her own home beat was the friend of all the youngsters on the block, and that this one could give her the shortest direction to the place she sought. She had long ago been taught that, if she were ever lost or in any perplexity upon the street, she should call upon the nearest policeman for aid and that it was his sworn duty to assist her. She remembered only that it was a policeman who had summoned the ambulance that had carried her father to that horrible place – a hospital! Well, she, too, was bound for it, but only to snatch him thence; and stretching out her small, drenched arms, she wondered if they and mother Martha's together would have strength to lift and seize him.
Then on and on and on! Could one city be so big as this? Did ever brick pavements hurt anybody else as they were hurting her? How many more blocks must she traverse before she came in sight of that wide Broadway with its pretty parks, on which the hospital stood?
Everybody had retreated indoors. Nobody who could escape the fury of the storm endured it, and she had left the officer who could have guided her far behind. But, at last, a slackening of the downpour; and as if by magic, people reappeared upon the street; though of the first few whom she addressed none paused to listen. Yet, finally, a colored boy came hurrying by, his basket of groceries upon his arm, and another empty basket inverted over his head, by way of an umbrella. Him she clutched, demanding with what little of breath she had left:
"The – way – to – Johns Hopkins' – hospital, please!"
"Hey? Horspittle? Wha' for?"
"To find my father, who's been taken there. Oh! tell me the shortest way, please – please – please! I am so tired! and I must be – I must be quick – quick!"
A look of pity and consternation stole into the negro's face, and he drew in his breath with a sort of gasp as he answered:
"Laws, honey, I reckon yo' mus' be 'quick'! But de quickes' yo' is ain' half quick enough. Know wha' dem horspittles is for? Jus' to cut up folkses in. Fac'. Dey goes in alibe, dey comes out deaders. Yo' jus' done cal'late yo' ain' got no paw no mo'. He's had his haid, or his laig, or both his arms sawed off 'fore you-all more'n got started a-chasin' of him. Po' li'l gal! Pity yo' got so wet in de rain jus' fo' nottin'! Wheah yo' live at? Yo' bettah go right home an' tell yo' folks take dem cloes off, 'fore you-all done get de pneumony."
Dorothy was shivering, partly from nervousness, partly from the chill of wet garments in the strong breeze. Though she had often heard the postman comment upon the superstitions of the negroes, who formed so large a part of the city's population, and knew that such ideas as this lad expressed were but superstition only, she could not help being impressed by his words. It was his honest belief that to enter a hospital meant giving himself up to death; and in this ignorance he reasoned that this forlorn child should be prevented from such self-destruction by any means whatever. So when she still pleaded to be directed, despite the fear he had raised in her, he whirled abruptly about and pointed his hand in a direction wholly different from that she had followed. Then he added with a most dramatic air:
"Well, honey, if you-all done daid-set to go get yo' laigs sawed off, travel jus' dat-a-way till yo' come to de place. Mebbe, if dey gibs yo' dat stuff what makes yo' go asleep, you-all won't know nottin' erbout de job."
With this cheerful assurance the grocer's boy went his way, musically whistling a popular tune, and Dorothy gazed after him in deep perplexity. Fortunately, the rain had almost ceased and the brief halt had restored her breath. Then came the reflection:
"He wasn't telling the truth! I know that isn't the way at all, for Johns Hopkins is on the east of the city, and that's toward the north. I'll ask somebody else. There are plenty of people and wagons coming out now; and – Oh! my!"
As if in answer to her thought, there came the clang of an electric bell, the hurrying delivery wagons drew out of the way, and past her, over the clear space thus given, dashed another ambulance, hastening to the relief of some poor sufferer within. On its side she saw the name of the hospital she sought and with frantic speed dashed after this trustworthy guide.
Though she could by no means keep up
