“Because if you did you would not be so low down. Read your New Testament. But, there, I won’t preach.”
Will Harcourt smiled. His neighbor so often declared she would not preach, yet she preached all the time.
She began again:
“I will give you three words: Read (the Word of God), work, pray. Now I will leave you. But call on me any time, day or night, and I will come to you.”
She took up her little waiter and left the room.
“If the blessing of such a miserable wretch as myself could avail, I should bless her; but I can obey her. I will read, work and pray. But, oh! Roma! Roma! Roma! Where are you now? How are you now? Will you become reconciled to the love of that man who loved you enough to wreck his soul and my own for your sake? I must not think of it. That way, indeed, ‘madness lies.’ Who is my kind neighbor, I wonder? She came and ministered to me, and never told her name or asked mine. True Arabian kindness! The janitor downstairs said that she was a poor seamstress, who worked for the ready-made clothing department of a large store in Grand Street, and that she was a most respectable woman. To me she is only my neighbor, with a little gift of preaching. Well, I must be up and doing. I must go out and look for work.”
He went to the water tank and filled his pitcher, and then washed his face and hands, brushed his hair, whisked his rough suit of clothes, and went down the four flights of stairs that led to the street door.
Outside, he suddenly thought of Adler’s family, and determined to go to see them before going to seek work.
But he had not walked half a block before he met Adler.
“Well,” he said, “how is the wife, and how are the babies?”