"Where is that? I will go there and shame him before them all. Don't you feel no shame? Because you've got things comfortable here, I suppose it's all nothing to you. You don't care, though my children were starving in the gutter,—as they will do."
"If you knew me, Mrs. Parker, you wouldn't speak to me like that."
"Know you! Of course I know you. You're a lady, and your father's a rich man, and your husband thinks no end of himself. And we're poor people, so it don't matter whether we're robbed and ruined or not. That's about it."
"If I had anything, I'd give you all that I had."
"And he's taken to drinking that hard that he's never rightly sober from morning to night." As she told this story of her husband's disgrace, the poor woman burst into tears. "Who's to trust him with business now? He's that broken-hearted that he don't know which way to turn,—only to the bottle. And Lopez has done it all,—done it all! I haven't got a father, ma'am, who has got a house over his head for me and my babies. Only think if you was turned out into the street with your babby, as I am like to be."
"I have no baby," said the wretched woman through her tears and sobs.
"Haven't you, Mrs. Lopez? Oh dear!" exclaimed the soft-hearted woman, reduced at once to pity. "How was it then?"
"He died, Mrs. Parker,—just a few days after he was born."
"Did he now? Well, well. We all have our troubles, I suppose."
"I have mine, I know," said Emily, "and very, very heavy they are. I cannot tell you what I have to suffer."