her for a deposit. Dr. Stewart had told her that this was the correct mode of procedure.
It was April now, and to Dot's young, slim figure there had come a change, a sudden impressive maturity, a simple, sweet promise that soon she too would be ready to give. A tree in blossom. A bush in bloom.
She wore a cape drawn tightly about her. If there's a fur collar lying around, all one has to do is get two yards of material and sew it at the neck, line it with some bright shade of silk, put the fur collar on, and there's a cape.
The sanitarium was on One Hundred and Thirty-sixth Street, as Dr. Stewart had said. It was in a row of brick houses. Two of them had been used in the creating of the sanitarium. Ivy covered the front of the house, and a nurse in stiff white linen sat on the stoop, anxiously assuring herself that it was spring.
Behind, in front, and to one side was New York's Congo. The rows of houses with their signs "For Colored Tenants" drew Dot's attention. She was pregnant. She was going to buy a bed upon which she might lie for the duration of her pain.
"Gee," thought Dot. "Niggers. But I guess you don't care who your neighbors are once the pain starts."
Inside the sanitarium it was hard to remember the ivy which climbed so green and inviting outside. There was a strong odor of ether and disinfectant. Dot felt small and frightened, defenseless. But what could she do? She had to have a place to have her baby. She felt that she would die with her pain in the strange, unfriendly, chemical atmosphere.
The nurse who had sat so idly on the stoop became a brisk, swift-footed messenger. In the time that it took Dot to be waved into a small, rather dingy office and to find a chair, the nurse had summoned the proprietor.
He was not a doctor. He was merely a man who for
