"Oh!" she exclaimed, "you are from the Gerry Society, aren't you?"
"Well?" I said nonchalantly. "What of it?"
"Well—it's all a lie, that's what I could tell you. The poor woman does her best. Why! she works herself to death. A widow with three small children—a fine woman, a good mother, a real lady, if you want to know. But her neighbour, the rag pedlar's wife, is jealous. I don't know why! And she did it. Why should you take away the children from a mother? She feeds them well. The children haven't good clothes! Well, she is a poor woman and children are children. They wear, they tear; what can she do? Buy every day new clothes? A poor widow that works from early morning till late at night!"
"What is the name of the rag pedlar?" I asked the woman.
"Goldberg," she informed me. "A bad woman, without a mother's heart. Don't go to her. She'll tell you a lot of bad things about the poor widow. Don't go to her, Mister. Oh! that such beings should be alive at all!" she muttered in Yiddish.
"I have to," I assured her, and after inquiring the floor where Mrs. Goldberg lived I walked up the three flights. I knocked at the door.
"Come in," came the answer. Mrs. Goldberg opened the door, and as I entered the cheerful aspect of a tidy kitchen and the singing of the boiling pots on the stove greeted me invitingly. Mrs. Goldberg bade me enter their "front room," furnished pretentiously. I sat down at her invitation, and contrary to all rules on such occasions I waited for her to start the discussion—I hardly knew what to say. I did not have to wait long. Mrs. Goldberg immediately asked me if I was an agent from the Gerry Society.
"But what have you against that poor woman? Why do you want her children taken away? Are you not a mother? Have you no feeling? What is it? Have you a personal grievance against the woman?" I said in the tone to invite confidences.
"But just because I am a mother," she snapped back angrily, her eyes flashing. "Come here," she said, making a sign for me to follow her. I followed her into a third room. A boy of about six years was in a bed. His face was burning with fever. Around his neck he had bandages, and on a small table were a dozen bottles of medicine.