“Do you know what they do to poor men in the States, who, like you, do not work for their living?”
“I am very ignorant,” she pleaded. “What do they do to the poor men who are like me?”
“They send them to jail. The crime of not earning a living, in their case, is called vagrancy. If I were Mr. Van Weyden, who harps eternally on questions of right and wrong, I’d ask, by what right do you live when you do nothing to deserve living?”
“But as you are not Mr. Van Weyden, I don’t have to answer, do I?”
She beamed upon him through her terror-filled eyes, and the pathos of it cut me to the heart. I must in some way break in and lead the conversation into other channels.
“Have you ever earned a dollar by your own labour?” he demanded, certain of her answer, a triumphant vindictiveness in his voice.
“Yes, I have,” she answered slowly, and I could have laughed aloud at his crestfallen visage. “I remember my father giving me a dollar once, when I was a little girl, for remaining absolutely quiet for five minutes.”
He smiled indulgently.
“But that was long ago,” she continued. “And you would scarcely demand a little girl of nine to earn her own living.”
“At present, however,” she said, after another slight pause, “I earn about eighteen hundred dollars a year.”