She rose as if to show her visitor to the room.
But Helen said, quickly, "In just a moment. Mrs. Whaley, won't you tell me first—is there—is there no one to help you?" She asked the question timidly, as if fearing to offend.
The other woman answered, hopelessly, "The charity ladies do a little, and the Interpreter and Mary Martin do all they can. But you see, ma'am, there's so many others just like us that there ain't near enough to go 'round."
The significance of the woman's colorless words went to Helen's heart with appalling force—"so many others just like us." This stricken home was not then an exception. With flashing vividness her mind pictured many rooms similar to the cold and barren apartment where she sat. She visioned as clearly as she saw Mrs. Whaley the many other wives and mothers with Bobbies and Maggies who were caught helplessly in the monstrous net of the strike, as these were caught. She knew now why the Interpreter and Billy Rand worked so hard. And again she felt her cheeks burn with shame as when the old basket maker had said, "For every idle hand—"
Helen Ward had been an active leader in the foreign relief work during the war. Her portrait had even been published in the papers as one who was devoted to the cause of the stricken women and children abroad. But that had all been impersonal, while this—Already in her heart she was echoing the old familiar cry of the comparative few, "If only the people knew! If only they could be made to see as she had been made to see! The people are not so cruel. They simply do not know. They are ignorant, as she was ignorant."
Aloud she was saying to Bobby, as she thrust her purse in the boy's hand, "You must run quickly, Bobby, to the nearest store and get the things that your mother needs first, and have some one telephone for a doctor to come at once."
To the mother she added, hurriedly, as if fearing a protest, "Please, Mrs. Whaley, let me help. I am so sorry I did not know before. Won't you forgive me and let me help you now?"
"Gee!" exclaimed Bobby, who had opened the purse. "Look-ee, mom! Gee!"
As one in a dream, the mother turned from the money in the boy's hand to Helen. "You ain't meanin', ma'am, for us to use all that?"
"Yes—yes—don't be afraid to get what you need—there will be more when that is gone."