"But you can't stay here, if you grow worse, and indeed, I am sure that you cannot get any better, if you stay here. Then your children would be much worse off than they would be if you should be parted from them for a little while. The doctors at the hospital might make you perfectly well." Mrs. Rosa shook her head feebly, and Miss South felt decidedly discouraged. Even when Julia added her voice in a gentle persuasive way, Mrs. Rosa refused to be convinced. No, she would stay where she was for a while. By and by perhaps she would go somewhere, but she could not tell; she couldn't leave the children, and the nurse had told her that she could not take them with her to the hospital.
"Well, wouldn't you go to the country if we could find a place for you there?" asked Julia gently; "perhaps we could find a house where you and the children all could go, for you can't get well if you stay here."
At this suggestion, Mrs. Rosa's face brightened a trifle, but from her reply it was hard to tell whether she would be perfectly willing to leave her own unwholesome abode, even for the country.
"You ought to make Angelina keep this room cleaner," said Miss South.
"Oh, I can't make Angelina do nothing," she answered; "Angelina is so lazy I don't know what to do with her. She just reads library books all the time."
Again Mrs. Rosa leaned back in a fit of coughing, and Miss South and Julia, after leaving one or two little delicacies that they had brought her, went away less cheerful than they had been.
"It's rather dreadful, isn't it?" said Julia.
"Yes," replied Miss South, "especially as it would not require a great deal of effort or money to make that family perfectly comfortable."
"How much?" asked Julia.
Miss South laughed. "You are very practical," she said. "Perhaps I ought to have said that it is effort in the right direction that is needed rather than money."