them bring me something in my room—some tea and toast and a little marmalade… I didn’t intend to come down at all,” she went on in a discontented tone, “but I got tired of staying up there all alone and I thought I’d just as well—I’d be just as well off down here as I’d be up in my room,” she concluded morosely.
“And how is your cold today, Mrs. Buckles?” one of the old women now asked with a kind of lifeless sympathy. “—Do you feel better?”
“—Oh,” the old woman said morosely, uncertainly, “I suppose so…. I think so…. Yes, I think it’s a little better…. Last night I was afraid it was getting down into my chest, but today it feels better—seems to be more in my head and throat—But I don’t know,” she muttered in a sullen and embittered tone, “it’s that room they’ve given me. I’ll always have it as long as I’ve got to live there in that room. I’ll never get any better till I get my old room back.”
“Did you do what I told you to do?” asked Doctor Withers. “Did you go and dose yourself the way I told you?”
“—No—well,” she said indefinitely, “I’ve been drinking lots of water and trying a remedy a friend of mine down at the Hotel Gridly told me about—it’s a new thing called Inhalo; all you got to do is put it up your nose and breathe it in—she said it did her more good than anything she’d ever tried.”
“I never heard of it,” said Doctor Withers sourly. “Whatever it is, it won’t cure your cold. No, sir!” He shook his head grimly. “Now, I didn’t practise medicine for forty years without finding out something about colds! Now, I don’t care anything about your Inhalos or Breathos or Spray-Your-Throatos, or whatever they may call’em—any of these newfangled remedies. The only way to get rid of a cold is to have a thorough cleaning-out, and the only way to get a thorough cleaning-out is to dose yourself with castor oil, the way I told you to.—Now you can do as you please,” he said sourly, with a constricted pressure of his thin convex mouth, “it’s no business of mine what you do—if you want to run the risk of coming down with pneumonia it’s your own affair—but if you want to get over that cold you’ll take my advice.”
“Well,” the old woman muttered in her tone of sullen discontent. “—It’s that room I’m in. That’s the trouble. I’ve hated that room ever since they put me in there. I know if I could get my old room back I’d be all right again.”
“Then why don’t you ask Mr. Betts to give it back to you?” said Mrs. Martin. “
