Basic HTML Version
9
However, six months after Sue and Johnsy moved in
together, something terrible happened. It was November,
and it was very cold in New York. A bad illness made
many people in Greenwich Village very sick. A lot of
people got fevers and died. The doctors said the illness
was called pneumonia. It was a very bad kind of cold. The
illness was like an old man with long, cold, thin fingers.
If the old man’s cold fingers touched you, you would get
sick.
Johnsy was a small and weak woman. It was hard
for her body to fight illnesses, so she caught pneumonia.
She got very, very sick. She couldn’t eat. All she did was
lie in bed all day, looking out of the window.