“I saw you coming!” she said. “Oh, Mr. Landry, I didn’t know what to do! He’s sick—he’s very, very sick! The doctor says he’ll either have to go to the hospital or have a nurse, and Katie won’t let him go.... She’s in such a terrible state....”
“Let him have a nurse, of course.”
“But we can’t. There’s no place for a nurse to sleep. And it’s not a fit place for little Petey, either. He ought to go to the hospital. He won’t have any chance here. I know it’s dreadful of me, but I——”
She had suddenly seized one of his hands with both of hers and pressed it violently, quite distraught, quite unconscious of what she did.
“I don’t care! I made up my mind that I would ask you.... Won’t you come upstairs and talk to Katie? You don’t know how she feels about a hospital.... She’s only known people in the wards, where—it isn’t so nice.... When you’re so poor, you’re—so helpless.... If you’d just tell her that Petey’s to have a private room and a nurse and everything done for him, and that she can see him any time she wants...? Oh, I know it will cost a fortune! I have no right to ask you.... But I knew you’d do it!”
“You don’t know how glad I am to be asked,” said Nick. “Come on! Let’s go upstairs!”
This where she lived—where she had lived for five years! This dirty, dilapidated hole, dark, airless, with grimy windows on a malodourous court, with the thundering roar of the trains making the very walls shake, with these pitiful and fragile little children always underfoot! He had known that she was poor, that the whole family was poor, but he had not imagined anything like this. He had never set foot in such a place before. It filled him with horror, these mean, cramped little quarters which the despair of poverty had left dirty and neglected. There wasn’t a chair in that room on which he dared to sit, one had a broken back, another a broken seat, another had a leg missing....
There came bursting into the room a big, gaunt woman like a fury, desperate with grief and fright.
“What is it ye want?” she cried, to Nick.
Rosaleen began to whisper to her, and she became calmer, became little by little composed and shrewd. This was a man from whom benefits might be expected.