He pushed open the door before which they had halted. A rush of foul air and odors of cooking swept out. They enveloped the girl and seemed to hurl her back. A black-haired woman, holding a crying baby in her arms, rose hastily from an unmade bed at one side of the room. Two little girls, six or eight years of age, and a boy still younger, ranged about their mother and stared in wide-eyed wonder.
“Dis-a lady, she come to visit,” announced Carmen’s guide abruptly, pointing a dirty finger at her.
The woman’s face darkened, and she spoke harshly in a foreign tongue to the little fellow.
“She say,” the boy interpreted, as a crestfallen look spread over his face, “she say she don’t spik Inglese.”
“But I speak your language,” said the girl, going quickly to her and extending a hand. Then, in that soft tongue which is music celestial to these Neapolitan strangers upon our inhospitable shores, she added, “I want to know you; I want to talk to you.”
She glanced quickly about the room. A littered, greasy cook stove stood in one corner. Close to it at either end were wooden couches, upon which were strewn a few tattered spreads and blankets, stained and grimy. A broken table, a decrepit chest of drawers, and a few rickety chairs completed the complement of furniture. The walls were unadorned, except for a stained chromo of the Virgin, and the plaster had fallen away in many places. There was only one window in the room. Several of its panes were broken and stuffed with rags and papers.
At the sound of her own language the woman’s expression changed. A light came into her dull eyes, and she awkwardly took the proffered hand.
“You are––from Italy?” she said in her native tongue. Then, sweeping the girl’s warm attire with a quick glance, “You are rich! Why do you come here?”
“Your little boy brought me. And I am glad he did. No, I am not from Italy. I am rich, yes, but not in money.”