She ought to be ashamed. As for the other one, tattooless trash, even for a demon. Doesn’t belong in a decent home. I can’t imagine what the mistress sees in him, all that music from the pit of hell. Some might call it vulgar.”

There was more to do when the doctor came home. The elevator man had run away during the night, so when Thanakar came home in the morning, he carried Jenny Pentecost upstairs, wrapped in blankets. His knee was creaking like a metal hinge, and he could hardly bend it. “It’s like when you were a child,” said Mrs. Cassimer. “You would go out without your crutches, and you would play kickball with the others, and then you’d come home limping like a criminal, just so the mistress would see. Well, she’s past caring now. What’s in the bundle? Another nasty surprise, I’m sure. Beloved Angkhdt preserve us, it’s alive!

Oh, sir, you’re doing it on purpose.”

“This is Jenny Pentecost,” said the doctor wearily. “She needs a bath.”

“And a change of clothes. What a getup! Where did you get this one, the circus? If I might be permitted to ask.”

“Please, Mrs. Cassimer, just do it. I’ve had a long night.”

“I suppose you have. Out all night, and then you stroll in with this . . . with this . . . I don’t know what to call her. If she was a little older, I’d know exactly. Little strumpet!”

“Please . . .”

“I suppose you’re the only one who’s had a long night. I’ve done the work of ten around here. Not that I get any thanks. I’d like a bath myself.”

The doctor tried to lower Jenny into an armchair, but she wouldn’t let go her hands from around his neck. “Don’t make me go with her,” she whispered. They were the first words that she had spoken.

Mrs. Cassimer was cleaning the cotton out of her ears, and she heard them. In an instant, her anger subsided into tears. “Oh, sir,” she sniffed. “You left me alone. You said you wouldn’t.”

“I was arrested.”

“Hmph. Easy to say. I’ve heard that one before.”

The doctor disengaged Jenny’s fingers from around his neck and sat down on the arm of the chair.

“How’s my mother?” he asked.

“A lot better than she has any business being, if you want my opinion,” retorted the housekeeper. “And that music all night long, it’s enough to drive you crazy. You can hear it now.”

But she relented when Jenny was asleep, curled up on the sofa with her thumb in her mouth. “She’s just a child,” she said. The doctor took off her headdress and bandaged her feet, and together they sponged away some of her makeup and perfume, and found a flannel nightgown for her. Then the doctor tended to himself, injecting oil into his knee to soothe the joint. He wrapped it in a bandage of hot silk. “The elevator man has run away,” he remarked.