He turned in at one of the darkest and most uninviting of the rickety stairways. He skipped, with a practised tread, the broken third step, and made a mental note to once more take up, with the property committee, the battle of minor repairs. He stopped at the third landing, and knocked at a dark door, whereupon a petulant voice told him to come in. The petulant voice came from a woman who sat in a broken rockered chair, with one leg held stiffly in front of her. She was heavy with the fat which rolls and bulges, and an empty beer pail, on which the froth had dried, sat by her side. On the rickety bed lay a man propped on one elbow, who had been unshaven for days, so that his sandy beard made a sort of layer on his square face. The man sat up at once. He was a trifle under-sized, but broad-shouldered and short-necked, and had enormous red hands.
“How are you to-day, Mrs. Rogers?” asked the rector, sitting on a backless and bottomless chair, with his hat on his knees, and holding himself small, with an unconscious instinct to not let anything touch him.
“No better,” replied the woman, making her voice weak. “I’ll never know a well day again. The good Lord has seen fit to afflict me. I ain’t saying anything, but it ain’t fair.”
The Reverend Smith Boyd could not resist a slight contraction of his brows. Mrs. Rogers invariably introduced the Lord into every conversation with the rector, and it was his duty to wrestle with her soul, if she insisted. He was not averse to imparting religious instruction, but, being a practical man, he could not enjoy wasting his breath.
“There are many things we can not understand,” he granted. “What does the doctor say about your condition?”
“He don’t offer no hope,” returned the woman, with gratification. “This knee joint will be stiff till the end of my days. If I had anything to blame myself with it would be different, but I ain’t. I say my prayers every night, but if I’m too sick, I do it in the morning.”
“Can that stuff!” growled the man on the bed. “You been prayin’ once a day ever since I got you, and nothin’s ever happened.”
“I’ve brought you a job,” returned the Reverend Smith Boyd promptly. “I have still ten places to fill on the sanitary squad which is cleaning up Vedder Court.”
The man on the bed sat perfectly still.
“How long will it last?” he growled.