"Surely the watchman would go to them! Oh, that must not be! I will go and speak with him.

He would not leave them to perish so!" The woman shook her head, and hurried up the stairs whither her husband had been carried.

Her heart was too full of her own anxious misery to have room for more than a passing sympathy for the needs and troubles of others.
But Gertrude could not rest.

She neither followed Janet into this house nor her aunt across the street.

She went to the door of the next house, upon which the red cross had been painted; and seeing her so stand before it, a man detached himself from a group hard by and asked her business, since the house was closed.
"I am a nurse," answered Gertrude, boldly.