The little girl toiled up the stairs like an old woman. Laura and Jess caught glimpses of other tenements as they followed the child and saw that there was real poverty here. Jess began to compare her situation with that of these humble folk, and saw that she had much to be grateful for.
She was troubled over the lack of a new party dress, perhaps, or because there were times when she and her mother were pinched for money. But the bare floors and uncurtained windows of these “flats,” with the poor furniture and raggedly clothed children, spelled a degree of poverty deeper than Jess Morse had imagined before.
A sallow woman met them at the door of one of the top-floor flats. She was as faded as her calico dress. Her arms were lean and her hands wrinkled, and all the flesh about her finger nails was swollen and of a livid hue, from being so much in hot water.
Indeed, two steaming tubs stood in the kitchen into which the girls of Central High were ushered. A big wash was evidently under way, and Mrs. Plornish wiped her arms and hands from the suds, as she invited the girls in, staring in amazement at one and another meanwhile.
“Your little Maggie met with an accident, Mrs. Plornish,” said Laura, pleasantly, putting the packages she had carried upon the table. “And so we helped her home with her groceries.”
“And Mr. Vandergriff says never mind the bottle of milk that was spilled,” explained Jess, setting the second bottle on the table.
“You come from Mr. Vandergriff?” asked the woman, her faded cheek coloring a trifle.
Laura explained more fully. Mrs. Plornish seemed to have had her motherly instincts pretty well quenched by time and poverty.
“Yes’m. I expect Maggie’ll git runned over and killed some day on that there Market Street,” she complained. “But I ain’t got nobody else to send. Bob and Betty, and Charlemagne, air either at school or to work——”
“Where is your husband?” asked Laura, briskly. “Is he working?”