"But you're not able to work now; you can't go out to your fruit stand, can you?" continued Miss South.
"Oh, no indeed, no indeed," shaking her head. "I'm awful weak."
"Then how have you been paying your rent?"
"Well, the good minister, he help me; he pay it just now, and John he have a license for papers, and he sell quite a good many every day after school—and, oh well, we get along." Mrs. Rosa had a very pleasant expression, and as she talked she looked almost handsome. Her black stuff dress, worn without a collar, made her pale face seem more haggard than usual, yet it beamed with gratitude as she told how kind one and another had been since her illness had become so serious.
"Where does she sleep?" asked Julia in a half whisper to Nora.
"Why, in that little room where you see the door open. I remember they told us when we were here before, that she and the girls sleep there, while the boys have a mattress to themselves on the kitchen floor. They bring it out every night."
"How dreadful!" was all that Julia had time to say, for she saw Angelina's sharp eyes turned towards her, and feared that already she had been impolite in talking thus in an aside to Nora.
The latter, while Miss South was talking with Mrs. Rosa about her recent symptoms, tried to draw Manuel into conversation, but, as before, only a word or two at a time could be drawn from him, although his expression was still as seraphic as ever, even when Nora was half teasing him.
Yet, after all, they had been in the dingy room but a very short time when Miss South reminded them that it was growing dark, and that Mrs. Gostar and Mrs. Barlow would both disapprove their being out much later. As they rode up Hanover street in the car both girls noticed that Miss South was unusually quiet. At last Julia broke the silence.
"I'm sure that you are thinking about Mrs. Rosa," she said softly.