She knitted an
astounding purple scarf, which she hid under his supper plate. (When
he discovered it he looked embarrassed, and gasped, "Is today an
anniversary or something? Gosh, I'd forgotten it!")
Once she filled a thermos bottle with hot coffee a corn-flakes box with
cookies just baked by Bea, and bustled to his office at three in the
afternoon. She hid her bundles in the hall and peeped in.
The office was shabby. Kennicott had inherited it from a medical
predecessor, and changed it only by adding a white enameled
operating-table, a sterilizer, a Roentgen-ray apparatus, and a small
portable typewriter. It was a suite of two rooms: a waiting-room with
straight chairs, shaky pine table, and those coverless and unknown
magazines which are found only in the offices of dentists and
doctors. The room beyond, looking on Main Street, was business-office,
consulting-room, operating-room, and, in an alcove, bacteriological
and chemical laboratory. The wooden floors of both rooms were bare; the
furniture was brown and scaly.
Waiting for the doctor were two women, as still as though they were
paralyzed, and a man in a railroad brakeman's uniform, holding his
bandaged right hand with his tanned left.
Pages:
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354