The restaurant receipts began to fall with the increasing hardness of the times among the working people. Soon it was down to practically no profit at all—that is, nothing toward the rent. Tom Brashear was forced to abandon his policy of honesty, to do as all the other purveyors were doing—to buy cheap stuff and to cheapen it still further. He broke abruptly with his tradition and his past. It aged him horribly all in a few weeks—but, at least, ruin was put off. Mrs. Brashear had to draw twenty of the sixty-three dollars which were in the savings bank against sickness. Funerals would be taken care of by the burial insurance; each member of the family, including Susan, had a policy. But sickness had to have its special fund; and it was frequently drawn upon, as the Brashears knew no more than their neighbors about hygiene, and were constantly catching the colds of foolish exposure or indigestion and letting them develop into fevers, bad attacks of rheumatism, stomach trouble, backache all regarded by them as by their neighbors as a necessary part of the routine of life. Those tenement people had no more notion of self-restraint than had the "better classes" whose self-indulgences maintain the vast army of doctors and druggists. The only thing that saved Susan from all but an occasional cold or sore throat from wet feet was eating little through being unable to accustom herself to the fare that was the best the Brashears could now afford—cheap food in cheap lard, coarse and poisonous sugar, vilely adulterated coffee, doctored meat and vegetables—the food which the poor in their ignorance buy—and for which they in their helplessness pay actually higher prices than do intelligent well-to-do people for the better qualities. And not only were the times hard, but the winter also. Snow—sleet—rain—thaw—slush—noisome, disease-laden vapor—and, of course, sickness everywhere—with occasional relief in death, relief for the one who died, relief for the living freed from just so much of the burden. The sickness on every hand appalled Susan. Surely, she said to old Brashear, the like had never been before; on the contrary, said he, the amount of illness and death was, if anything, less than usual because the hard times gave people less for eating and drinking. These ghastly creatures crawling toward the hospital or borne out on stretchers to the ambulance—these yet ghastlier creatures tottering feebly homeward, discharged as cured—these corpses of men, of women, of boys and girls, of babies—oh, how many corpses of babies!—these corpses borne away for burial, usually to the public burying ground—all these stricken ones in the battle ever waging, with curses, with hoarse loud laughter, with shrieks and moans, with dull, drawn faces and jaws set—all these stricken ones were but the ordinary losses of the battle!
"And in the churches," said old Tom Brashear, "they preach the goodness and mercy of God. And in the papers they talk about how rich and prosperous we are."
"I don't care to live! It is too horrible," cried the girl.
"Oh, you mustn't take things so to heart," counseled he. "Us that live this life can't afford to take it to heart. Leave that to them who come down here from the good houses and look on us for a minute and enjoy themselves with a little weepin' and sighin' as if it was in the theater."
"It seems worse every, day," she said. "I try to fool myself, because I've got to stay and——"
"Oh, no, you haven't," interrupted he.
Susan looked at him with a startled expression. It seemed to her that the old man had seen into her secret heart where was daily raging the struggle against taking the only way out open to a girl in her circumstances. It seemed to her he was hinting that she ought to take that way.
If any such idea was in his mind, he did not dare put it into words. He simply repeated:
"You won't stay. You'll pull out."
"How?" she asked.