“That depends,” Edith replied, simply, but with that spirit and air of breeding before which Carmen always inwardly felt defeat—“that depends very much upon ourselves.”
Naturally, with this absorption in the baby, Edith was slow to resume her old interests. Of course she knew of the illness of Father Damon, and the nurse, who was from the training-school in which Dr. Leigh was an instructor, and had been selected for this important distinction by the doctor, told her from time to time of affairs on the East Side. Over there the season had opened quite as usual; indeed, it was always open; work must go on every day, because every day food must be obtained and rent-money earned, and the change from summer to winter was only a climatic increase of hardships. Even an epidemic scare does not essentially vary the daily monotony, which is accepted with a dogged fatality:
There had been no vacation for Ruth Leigh, and she jokingly said, when at length she got a half-hour for a visit to Edith, that she would hardly know what to do with one if she had it.
“We have got through very well,” she added. “We always dread the summer, and we always dread the winter. Science has not yet decided which is the more fatal, decayed vegetables or unventilated rooms. City residence gives both a fair chance at the poor.”
“Are not the people learning anything?” Edith asked.
“Not much, except to bear it, I am sorry to say. Even Father Damon—”
“Is he at work again? Do you see him often?”
“Yes, occasionally.”
“I should so like to see him. But I interrupted you.”
“Well, Father Damon has come to see that nothing can be done without organization. The masses”—and there was an accent of bitterness in her use of the phrase—“must organize and fight for anything they want.”