"Oh, madam, ask me anything but that! 'Twould break my heart to tell that tale and yours to hear it. How can a poor girl live who has a baby in her arms and not a friend?... I went from door to door asking for work. It was the same old story everywhere I went. They looked at me—a girl of seventeen—and at the child—and then they shook their heads and closed the door.
"One day when I was desperate I got a piece of crepe and put it on my hat and lied. I said my husband had been killed, and would they give a poor girl work? The child was good—he seldom cried, I told them—and I would work at night and have no afternoon off to make up for his being there. If only they would try me! Then they asked me questions—what was my husband's name? Where was he killed? and how?—simple, natural questions, all of them, I know now, but then they seemed traps to catch me, and I grew confused and tripped myself, and then—they shook their heads, just as before, and shut the door."
"Did you never try anything but housework?"
"Oh, yes, I tried the others first. They would not have me in the stores. They found out. Somehow I could not help their finding out. I don't know how they did it, but they did. There was always somebody to tell."
"And could you get no sewing to do?"
"I had never been taught to sew. I had been in school until I met him. It was the plan always that I should be a teacher. Of course I could not even think of that—afterwards."
Margaret's lips tightened.
"Why did you not go to him, this man," she cried with sudden vehemence, "and demand support for your child?"
"I did at last. In my fierce anger that day I had said I never would—that I would starve in the streets before I would take a penny from his hands.... But, madam, then I did not know how hard 'twould be to starve with a baby at your breast,—a helpless baby growing thinner day by day for lack of mother's milk that had dried up because she had no food! It is not so hard—this starving—for one's self, when you get used to the crusts and refuse from the market; but when your child, your baby, fades away, and has not strength to cry, and gets that pitiful, pinched look, and you realize that it too is starving—oh, madam, then your pride is gone!... I went to him and begged food for his child. He gave me money for awhile, and then he went away."
"Went away and left you helpless," breathed Margaret.