He groped till he found the shelf and lit the candle.  By degrees the flickering light revealed to him a small bare room with no furniture except a bed, a chair, a small stove, and a table.  A box in the corner apparently contained a few worn garments.  Some dishes and provisions were huddled on the table.  The walls and floor were bare.  The district nurse had done her level best to clear up, perhaps, but there had been no attempt at good cheer.  A desolate place indeed to spend a weary night of suffering, even with an inch of candle sending weird flickerings across the dusky ceiling.

His impulse was to flee, but somehow he couldn’t.  “Here’s this medicine,” he said.  “Where do you want me to put it?”

The woman motioned with a bony hand toward the table.  “There’s a cup and spoon over there somewhere,” she said, weakly.  “If you could go get me a pitcher of water and set it here on a chair I could manage to take it durin’ the night.”

He could see her better now, for the candle was flaring bravely.  She was little and old.  Her thin, white hair straggled pitifully about her small, wrinkled face, her eyes looked as if they had been burned almost out by suffering.  He saw she was drawn and quivering with pain, even now as she tried to speak cheerfully.  A something rebellious in him yielded to the nerve of the little old woman, and he put down his impatience.  Sure he would get her the water!

She explained that the hydrant was down on the street.  He took the doubtful-looking pitcher and stumbled out upon those narrow, rickety stairs again.

Way down to the street and back in that inky blackness!  “Gosh!  Thunder!  The deuce!” (He didn’t allow himself any stronger words these days.) Was this the kind of thing one was up against when one majored in sociology?

“I be’n thinkin’,” said the old lady, quaveringly, when he stumbled, blinking, back into the room again with the water, “ef you wouldn’t mind jest stirrin’ up the fire an’ makin’ me a sup o’ tea it would be real heartenin’.  I ‘ain’t et nothin’ all day ’cause the pain was so bad, but I think it’ll ease up when I git a dose of the medicine, and p’r’aps I might eat a bite.”

Courtland was appalled, but he went vigorously to work at that fire, although he had never laid eyes on anything so primitive as that stove in all his life.  Presently, by using common sense, he had the thing going and a forlorn little kettle steaming away cheerfully.

The old woman cautioned him against using too much tea.  There must be at least three drawings left, and it would be a long time, perhaps, before she got any more.  Yes, there was a little mite of sugar in a paper on the table.

“There’s some bread there, too—­half a loaf ’most—­but I guess it’s pretty dry.  You don’t know how to make toast I ’spose,” she added, wistfully.