"Gertrude, has your mamma read her essay yet before the Ladies' Artistic and Ethical Club on the 'Self-Inflicted Sorrows of the Poor?'" asked Mr. Foster, pinching his daughter's chin, and allowing a chuckle of humorous derision to escape him as he glanced at their guest.
"No," said the girl, a trifle uneasily; "Lizzie Feedour read last time. Mamma's is next, and she has read her paper to me. It is just as good as it can be. Better than half the essays used to be at college, not excepting Mr. Holt's prize thesis on economics. I wish the poor people could hear it. She speaks very kindly of their faults even while criticising them. You—"
"Don't visit the tenement houses of the Feedour estate, dear, until after you read your paper to the club," laughed her husband, "or your essay won't take half so well. College theses and cold facts are not likely to be more than third cousins; eh, Martin? I'm sure the part on cleanliness would be easier for her to manage in discussion before she visited the Spillini family, for example."
"Which one is that, Fred?" asked Mr. Foster.
Martin, a droll twinkle in his eye. "The family of eight, with Irish mother and Italian father, who live in one room and take boarders?"
There was a little explosive "oh" of protest from Gertrude, while her mother laughed delightedly.
"Mr. Martin, you are so perfectly absurd. Why didn't you say that the room was only ten by fifteen feet and had but one window!"
"Because I don't think it is quite so big as that, and there is no outside window at all," said he, quite gravely. "And their only bath-tub for the entire crowd is a small tin basin also used to wash dishes in."
"W-h-a-t!" exclaimed Mrs. Foster, as if she were beginning to suspect their guest's sanity, for she recognized that his mood had changed from one of banter.
The portière was drawn aside, and other guests announced. As Mrs. Foster swept forward to meet them, Gertrude grasped her father's arm and looked into his eyes with something very like terror in her own. "Papa," she said hastily, in an intense undertone; "Papa, is he in earnest? Do the Feedour girls collect rent from such awful poverty as that? Do eight human beings eat and sleep—live—in one room anywhere in a Christian country? Does—?"