Somehow I don’t seem to care so much just now about being the biggest person in the house.  Something awful has happened.  Zillah Forsyth is dead.  Really dead, I mean.  And she died in great heroism.  You remember Zillah Forsyth, don’t you?  She was one of my room-mates,—­not the gooder one, you know,—­not the swell,—­that was Helene Churchill.  But Zillah?  Oh you know!  Zillah was the one you sent out on that Fractured Elbow case.  It was a Yale student, you remember?  And there was some trouble about kissing,—­and she got sent home?  And now everybody’s crying because Zillah can’t kiss anybody any more!  Isn’t everything the limit?  Well, it wasn’t a fractured Yale student she got sent out on this time.  If it had been, she might have been living yet.  What they sent her out on this time was a Senile Dementia,—­an old lady more than eighty years old.  And they were in a sanitarium or something like that.  And there was a fire in the night.  And the old lady just up and positively refused to escape.  And Zillah had to push her and shove her and yank her and carry her—­out the window—­along the gutters—­round the chimneys.  And the old lady bit Zillah right through the hand,—­but Zillah wouldn’t let go.  And the old lady tried to drown Zillah under a bursted water tank,—­but Zillah wouldn’t let go.  And everybody hollered to Zillah to cut loose and save herself,—­but Zillah wouldn’t let go.  And a wall fell, and everything, and oh, it was awful,—­but Zillah never let go.  And the old lady that wasn’t any good to any one,—­not even herself, got saved of course.  But Zillah?  Oh, Zillah got hurt bad, sir!  We saw her at the hospital, Helene and I. She sent for us about something.  Oh, it was awful!  Not a thing about her that you’d know except just her great solemn eyes mooning out at you through a gob of white cotton, and her red mouth lipping sort of twitchy at the edge of a bandage.  Oh it was awful!  But Zillah didn’t seem to care so much.  There was a new Interne there,—­a Japanese, and I guess she was sort of taken with him.  “But my God, Zillah,” I said, “your life was worth more than that old dame’s!”

“Shut your noise!” says Zillah.  “It was my job.  And there’s no kick coming.”  Helene burst right out crying, she did.  “Shut your noise, too!” says Zillah, just as cool as you please.  “Bah!  There’s other lives and other chances!”

“Oh, you do believe that now?” cries Helene.  “Oh, you do believe that now,—­what the Bible promises you?” That was when Zillah shrugged her shoulders so funny,—­the little way she had.  Gee, but her eyes were big!  “I don’t pretend to know—­what—­your old Bible says,” she choked.  “It was—­the Yale feller—­who was tellin’ me.”

That’s all, Dr. Faber.  It was her shrugging her shoulders so funny that brought on the hemorrhage.

Oh, we had an awful time, sir, going home in the carriage,—­Helene and I. We both cried, of course, because Zillah was dead, but after we got through crying for that, Helene kept right on crying because she couldn’t understand why a brave girl like Zillah had to be dead.  Gee!  But Helene takes things hard.  Ladies do, I guess.