The woman cried, whined. She was a poor widow. Charities gave her too little and all the rest of the story that I expected.
"But where are you the whole day long and late at night?" I insisted.
She gave a thousand explanations, none of which were true. The last one was that she went to neighbours in order to save coal. At this point the boy came out from the other room. He looked determined, and he had a little book folded in his hand.
"Mamma lies. She goes out for business. She sells laces and curtains."
"Shut up—shut up!" She sprang from her chair. I interfered. "Let the boy alone."
"Mamma lies," the boy continued, and showed me the bank book. I opened it and saw that the balance was almost five hundred dollars.
"What is this?" I asked. "Five hundred dollars in the bank and your children hungry and naked?"
The woman looked like a criminal before the bar. The boy explained.
"It's not her fault, Mister. It's the fault of the ladies from the charities. They come here and bother every day. She can't buy anything, not even meat every day. She has to put the money in the bank. She has promised that when we move out she will buy me a pair of skates like all the other boys and girls have. Now she has enough money. Let her move away from here to a place where nobody knows us. I don't want to be called 'charity kid' any longer. I want roller skates. I want to move, I want new pants, I want meat every day. I don't want to be called charity kid any longer, and that's all."
The mother looked at her son and cried. The little girl hid in a corner. The boy had finished. His nerves gave out and he too cried. A few moments I looked at them and thought again of the poor wretches who are in the clutches of organised charity, the mother that starved her children because she dared not buy meat, because she dared not dress them. In four years she had saved five hundred dollars. Just the price of meat for every day of the year. A little more bread and fruit. She certainly had saved with an object in view. To save herself. And all the time the children knew that she had the price of food. The boy, longing for childish pleasures, roller skates, which the mother dared not buy because of the investigator's "Where did you get the money?" The bad neighbour, for whom the poor woman may not have wanted to wash the floor, would call in the "Lady" and tell her: "They have meat every day. The children have pennies, and now they have skates too." And the "Lady" would question, torture, menace, call names, insult. Ah! I knew the whole game now. Knew it only too well. That little room at the top of which is the sign "Investigator." I knew how they went in there. Knew how they came out. No, it was not her fault.