The old woman stared at her. She was not used to being addressed as “Madam.”
“Yes’m,” she said, presently. “I live up to the other end of the street. If the cough wasn’t so bad, an’ my side didn’t ketch me so! But if I can git back to my own chair ag’in——”
Another fit of coughing seized her, and interrupted the “garrulousness of uncultured old age.” Salome waited until she got breath again and then took her by the arm, accommodating her steps to the feebler ones.
Here and there a surprised face peered curiously at her through a dirty window, knowing who she was, and wondering that she condescended to walk with old Granny Lancaster. Everywhere a general air of poverty, perhaps of actual hunger, impressed this woman, who had inherited the tumble-down tenement houses on each side.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but do you eat nourishing food enough? Good beef-steak and roast-beef would help your cough more than medicine.”
The old woman laughed, a grating, cackling laugh.
“Beef-steak and roast-beef ain’t for the likes o’ me,” she said. “Meat of any kind ain’t for us in times o’ strikes. May the Lord above send us oatmeal enough to keep us through till the mills open ag’in is all I ask. Here’s my house. Much ’bleeged, lady.”
Salome wanted to go inside the rickety old door and follow the woman up the dirty stairway, but she did not say so, and the old woman hobbled up the steps without asking her in.
Salome felt impulsively in her pocket, and drawing out her porte-monnaie, emptied its contents into the dirty, emaciated palm of Granny Lancaster. Then she turned and walked rapidly back home.
The next day Otis Greenough called on her.