Sooner or later the Avenue girls get to the hospital.  Sometimes it is because they cannot sleep, and lie and think things over—­and there is no way out; and God hates them—­though, of course, there is that story about Jesus and the Avenue woman.  And what is the use of going home and being asked questions that cannot be answered?  So they try to put an end to things generally—­and end up in the emergency bed, terribly frightened, because it has occurred to them that if they do not dare to meet the home folks how are they going to meet the Almighty?

Or sometimes it is jealousy.  Even an Avenue woman must love some one; and, because she’s an elemental creature, if the object of her affections turns elsewhere she’s rather apt to use a knife or a razor.  In that case it is the rival who ends up on the emergency bed.

Or the life gets her, as it does sooner or later, and she comes in with typhoid or a cough, or other things, and lies alone, day after day, without visitors or inquiries, making no effort to get better, because—­well, why should she?

And so the Dummy’s Avenue Girl met her turn and rode down the street in a clanging ambulance, and was taken up in the elevator and along a grey hall to where the emergency bed was waiting; and the Probationer, very cold as to hands and feet, was sending mental appeals to the Senior to come—­and come quickly.  The ward got up on elbows and watched.  Also it told the Probationer what to do.

“Hot-water bottles and screens,” it said variously.  “Take her temperature.  Don’t be frightened!  There’ll be a doctor in a minute.”

The girl lay on the bed with her eyes shut.  It was Irish Delia who saw the Dummy and raised a cry.

“Look at the Dummy!” she said.  “He’s crying.”

The Dummy’s world had always been a small one.  There was the superintendent, who gave him his old clothes; and there was the engineer, who brought him tobacco; and there were the ambulance horses, who talked to him now and then without speech.  And, of course, there was his Father.

Fringing this small inner circle of his heart was a kaleidoscope of changing faces, nurses, internes, patients, visitors—­a wall of life that kept inviolate his inner shrine.  And in the holiest place, where had dwelt only his Father, and not even the superintendent, the Dummy had recently placed the Avenue Girl.  She was his saint, though he knew nothing of saints.  Who can know why he chose her?  A queer trick of the soul perhaps—­or was it super-wisdom?—­to choose her from among many saintly women and so enshrine her.

Or perhaps——­ Down in the chapel, in a great glass window, the young John knelt among lilies and prayed.  When, at service on Sundays, the sunlight came through on to the Dummy’s polished choir rail and candles, the young John had the face of a girl, with short curling hair, very yellow for the colour scheme.  The Avenue Girl had hair like that and was rather like him in other ways.