Barbara touched her shoulder, but she did not move.
"Have you been sitting there all night, Mrs. Nelson?" she asked, gently.
The woman turned her weak eyes toward the speaker and stared without reply.
"You haven't tasted the food I brought you," Barbara continued.
The drooping figure stirred with sudden energy, as if the realization of the question first asked had begun to stir her intelligence.
"Yes. I set up all night with Jim. He'd a-done as much fer me. There's nobody else that cared enough to come. Ye know it ain't respectful to leave your dead alone——"
"But you must eat something," Barbara urged.
"I can't eat—it chokes me." She paused a moment, and looked at Norman in a dazed sort of way. "I tried to eat and something choked me—what was it? O God, I remember now!" she cried, with strangling emotion. "They are going to bury him in the potter's field unless we can save him, and I know we can't. He's got an old mother way back East that thinks he's doing well out here. Hit'll kill her dead when she finds out he wuz buried by the city."
"He shan't go to the potter's field," Norman interrupted, looking out of the window.
The woman rose, and tried to speak, but sank sobbing: