“Yes, and you get a good big salary,” I clipped in, imitating his drawl, and making my voice as insolent as possible. “I don’t care a whoop about your time. It’s my business to protect the health of the dogs in this district. I report at Society headquarters every afternoon at five. On my way I shall make a point of passing that corner. If I see any dogs around that dead horse I shall report it to our manager, Mr. Horton. He’ll know what to do.” I hung up the receiver with a snap.
As I stepped out of the booth the boy at the soda-fountain spoke to me.
“Telephoning about that dead horse, lady?” He shook his head as he filled a glass with fizz. “Wastin’ good money. Must’ve been a hundred people in here in the last three days telephonin’ about that horse.”
“My grandbaby’s so sick,” the woman at my side wailed. “Seems like——”
“Much they care about sick babies!” the stouter of two young women for whom the boy was mixing drinks sneered, and she eyed me insolently. “They’re too busy sweeping Park and Fifth Avenues—afraid the dust’ll speck the white marble palaces of the millionaires.”
She was good-looking, well dressed, and judging by her features and coloring a daughter of foreign parents, though she spoke without accent. Her manner was so pointedly offensive, so evidently aimed at me, that the woman at my side resented it.
“’Tain’t the lady’s fault,” she reproved the girl. “She’s done all she could to get the dead horse took away.”
“Sure she’s done all she could,” the girl retorted, taking her eyes off me long enough to wink at her thin companion. “But I’ve noticed that social workers never do anything that the rich don’t want done. Oh, I’m not blaming you,” she added, addressing me directly in the same sneering tone. “If I made my living distributing crumbs from millionaires’ tables I’d do just as you do—perhaps.”
“Perhaps you might,” I consented cheerfully, glad to get a candid opinion of social workers from the class among whom they work. “But, as it happens, you’ve missed your guess. I’m an inspector for the A. S. P. C. A. That dead horse is a menace to the dogs in my district.”
“Menace to dogs!” the thin girl giggled, and she broke the straw through which she was drinking. “Thinks they’ll do more for dogs than children!”