“I am seventeen, sir,” said the Lady of Shalott.  “Do they have green faces and white hair?  Does she see them run up and down?  I never saw any waves, sir, but those in my glass.  I am very glad to know that your little girl is by the waves.”

“Where you ought to be,” said the doctor, half under his breath.  “It is cruel, cruel!”

“What is cruel?” asked the Lady of Shalott, looking up into the doctor’s face.

The little brown calico night-dress swam suddenly before the doctor’s eyes.  He got up and walked across the floor.  As he walked he stepped upon the pieces of the broken glass.

“O, don’t!” cried the Lady of Shalott.  But then she thought that perhaps she had hurt the doctor’s feelings; so she smiled, and said, “Never mind.”

“Her case could be cured,” said the doctor, still under his breath, to Sary Jane.  “The case could be cured yet.  It is cruel!”

“Sir,” said Sary Jane,—­she lifted her sharp face sharply out of billows of nankeen vests,—­“it may be because I make vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen, sir; but I say before God there’s something cruel somewheres.  Look at her.  Look at me.  Look at them stairs.  Just see that scuttle, will you?  Just feel the sun in’t these windows.  Look at the rent we pay for this ’ere oven.  What do you s’pose the meriky is up here?  Look at them pisen fogs arisen’ out over the sidewalk.  Look at the dead as have died in the Devil in this street this week.  Then look out here!”

Sary Jane drew the doctor to the blazing, blindless window, out of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.

“Now talk of curin’ her!” said Sary Jane.

The doctor turned away from the window, with a sudden white face.

“The Board of Health—­”

“Don’t talk to me about the Board of Health!” said Sary Jane.

“I’ll talk to them,” said the doctor.  “I did not know matters were so bad.  They shall be attended to directly.  To-morrow I leave town—­” He stopped, looking down at the Lady of Shalott, thinking of the little lady by the waves, whom he would see to-morrow, hardly knowing what to say.  “But something shall be done at once.  Meantime, there’s the Hospital.”

“She tried Horspital long ago,” said Sary Jane.  “They said they couldn’t do nothing.  What’s the use?  Don’t bother her.  Let her be.”

“Yes, let me be,” said the Lady of Shalott, faintly.  “The glass is broken.”

“But something must be done!” urged the doctor, hurrying away.  “I will attend to the matter directly.”

He spoke in a busy doctor’s busy way.  Undoubtedly he thought that he should attend to the matter directly.

“You have flowers here, I see.”  He lifted, in hurrying away, a spray of lilies that lay upon the bed, freshly sent to the Lady of Shalott that morning.

“They ring,” said the Lady of Shalott, softly.  “Can you hear?  ‘Bless—­it!  Bless—­it!’ Ah, yes, they ring!”