“You stay here, don't you let that baby die. By the gods, she sha'n't die!”
“My staying will do no good, my friend. The little girl is death-struck already. It's quick work with the children. Sometimes we can bring the grown folks through. Get another doctor, if you feel like it, but I've got to keep moving—there are lots of folks waiting for me in these tenements.”
He shook off Farr's hand and hurried away.
Old Etienne stood by the bedside, gazing down on the little sufferer, closing and unclosing his shriveled hands as if he were grasping at straws of hope, dragging the depths of his soul for reassurance even as he dragged his rake in the black waters of the canal.
“The whippersnapper lied about her. Because she's a baby he won't bother,” stormed Farr. “I'll ransack this town for doctors—I'll find one who knows his business.” He tiptoed to the bed and laid tender palm against the child's cheek. “I say her face isn't as hot as it was,” he persisted. “Where can I find a doctor with gray whiskers, Etienne? That young fool doesn't know.”
“There are many wise old docteurs in the long street named Western Boulevard—they live in the big houses—but they don't come to the tenement folks.”
“One of them will come this time even if I have to lug him on my back.”
He began to search for his hat, not remembering where he had tossed it in the haste and eagerness of his arrival at the good woman's house. He did not find it readily and he rushed out bareheaded.
“The sun and the air they do no good! It is the poison water—and the poor folks of the tenements they do not know!” muttered the old man. “That is what he say?” He went to the kitchen sink and unscrewed the faucet. He sniffed and made a wry face, then he ran his thin finger into the valve-chamber. He hooked and brought forth stringy slime, held it near his nose, and groaned. “The poor folks do not know. They who ask for the votes of the slashers, the weavers, the beamers—the men of the mills—they who ask votes do not want the poor folks to know, because the votes would not be given to them who sell poison in the water,” he told the astonished good woman who had watched his act.
“I am careful about my kitchen—I am neat—I wash everything, Etienne,” she assured him, sniffing at the slime in the sink, overcome by confusion, her housewife's reputation at stake.