It was the end of July now. The baby was to have come in the middle of the month. A miscount. Well, how could a woman tell? What unfairness, not even to know positively when your baby was due. Mother Nature, indeed! A woman surely wouldn't have arranged things so. Nature was a man, a rather unpleasant old man who spat tobacco juice out of the corner of his mouth and said in a wheezy voice, "A little pain and worriment never hurt no woman."
No, there was nothing to do but wait. The money was all ready for distribution between the doctor and the sanitarium. It was lying in the Post Office waiting to be moved to the banks of Dr. Stewart and the sanitarium proprietor. It had been difficult to save so much, but it was well worth it. Dr. Stewart who came all the way from Long Island, who trudged up all those stairs, who gave his best efforts to her, was surely entitled to be paid in cash and not in small portions.
Eddie had his suit. It was blue serge and looked very nice on him. He hadn't worn it yet. He had tried it on for her, and it fitted so beautifully that she agreed with him that it was well worth walking up one flight to get a suit like that for twenty-four dollars and fifty cents. Surely none of the men who came to see their wives at the hospital would look any nicer than Eddie.
"Eddie"—Dot was lying on the bed holding Eddie's hand as he sat in a chair beside her—"there's a 'bus that runs about a quarter of a block from the sanitarium. It takes you to a Hundred and Eighty-first Street. Right to the subway entrance. You can get the subway there, and of course that takes you to Dyckman Street, and you know what a short walk it is to here from there. I want you to bring me home from the sanitarium like that. I'll be strong enough to stand it. Don't get a taxi. It'll cost too much. I'm telling you now because I don't know how soon I'll go."
