"What do you do with the rooms the rest of the time?"
"They are vacant."
"You don't put none of the mothers in 'em?"
"Certainly not. We could not use them if they had been occupied by the class of people we send out."
"Why don't you double up when you go out, and not take so much room? You could put four beds in that room and all be together and use them other rooms for mothers."
"That would be hard on our workers. They like their privacy. And then we would not like the mothers and their children so close to us. They would disturb us and we could not get the rest we need."
Drusilla was quiet for a moment, drumming lightly on the table with her fingers.
"I don't see how you can rest or sleep at night with a cry in your ears like that I jest heard from that mother. I'd sleep on a board by the side of the fence to let her get a chance to 'put her face in the grass' as she says. How can you talk about privacy and quiet when you see such misery and unhappiness as that I jest saw? No, don't stop me—" as she saw Mrs. Harris raise her flushed face and open her lips as if to speak—"I'm all wrought up. I'll hear that mother's cry and see her poor body bent over that table, and those babies settin' there workin' when they ought to be out playin' as long as I live. And you see them and hear them every day and yet can talk about havin' to have quiet and privacy! And you take the three best rooms in a house that's supported by people who think they are giving some poor Italian family an outin' in the country! You could all go in one room and that would mean that five or six more mothers could go; the woman we left up there could go—instead of keeping the rooms for women who have a nice place like your'n here." She looked with scorn around the cozily furnished room. "And you keep them for only one or two days a week! I can't talk, I'm all wrought up."
Drusilla sat back in her chair and fanned herself with the book of views.
The worker was aghast. She had not thought of any possible outcome except the one for which she had been planning.