“They don’t know you! What they think of is that it is the Minster money; that is what they hate. To take away from the men with a shovel, and give back to the girls with a spoon—they won’t stand that!” The latent class-feeling of a factory town flamed up in Jessica’s bosom, intolerant and vengeful, as she listened to her own words. “I would feel like that myself, if I were in their place,” she said, in curt conclusion.
The daughter of the millions sat for a little in pained irresolution. She was conscious of impulses toward anger at the coldness, almost the rudeness, of this girl whom she had gone far out of and beneath her way to assist. Her own class-feeling, too, subtly prompted her to dismiss with contempt the thought of these thick-fingered, uncouth factory-girls who were rejecting her well-meant bounty. But kindlier feelings strove within her mind, too, and kept her for the moment undecided.
She looked up at Jessica, as if in search for help, and her woman’s heart suddenly told her that the changes in the girl’s face, vaguely apparent to her before, were the badges of grief and unrest. All the annoyance she had been nursing fled on the instant. Her eyes moistened, and she laid her hand softly on the other’s arm.
“You at least mustn’t think harshly of me,” she said with a smile. “That would be too sad. I would give a great deal if the furnaces could be opened to-morrow—if they had never been shut. Not even the girls whose people are out of work feel more deeply about the thing than I do. But—after all, time must soon set that right. Tell me about yourself. You are not looking well. Is there nothing I can do for you?”
An answering moisture came into Jessica’s eyes as she met the other’s look. She shook her head, and withdrew her wrist from the kindly pressure of Kate’s hand.
“I spoke of you at length with Mr. Tracy,” Kate went on, gently. “Do believe that we are both anxious to do all we can for you, in whatever form you like. You have never spoken about more money for the Resting House. Isn’t your store about exhausted? If it is, don’t hesitate for a moment to let me know. And mayn’t I go and see the house, now that I am here? You know I have never been inside it once since you took it.”
For a second or two Jessica hesitated. It cost her a great deal to maintain the unfriendly attitude she had taken up, and she was hopelessly at sea as to why she was paying this price for unalloyed unhappiness. Yet still she persisted doggedly, and as it were in spite of herself.
“It’s a good deal run down just now,” she said. “Since the trouble came, Lucinda and I haven’t kept it up. You’d like better to see it some time when it was in order; that is, if I—if it isn’t given up altogether!”
The despairing intonation of these closing words was not lost upon Kate. She looked up quickly.
“Why do you speak like that?” she said. “Are you discouraged, Jessica? Oh, I hope it isn’t as bad as that!”