"You both came," she said, and she spoke in the tone of a mother of chickens who has found two young and precocious ducklings in her brood, "you both came to help people—of that I'm sure!"
Rose-Marie started up, suddenly, from the table.
"I came," she said, as she moved toward the door that led to the hall, "to make people better."
"And I," said the Young Doctor, moving away from the table toward the opposite side of the room and another door, "I came to make them healthier!" With his hand on the knob of the door he spoke to the Superintendent.
"I'll not be back for supper," he said shortly, "I'll be too busy. Giovanni Celleni is out of jail again, and he's thrown his wife down a flight of stairs. She'll probably not live. And while Minnie Cohen was at the vaudeville show last night—developing her soul, perhaps—her youngest baby fell against the stove. Well, it'll be better for the baby if it does die! And there are others—" The door slammed upon his angry back.
Rose-Marie's face was white as she leaned against the dark wainscoting.
"Minnie Cohen brought the baby in last week," she shuddered, "such a dear baby! And Mrs. Celleni—she tried so hard! Oh, it's not right—" She was crying, rather wildly, as she went out of the room.
The Superintendent, left alone at the table, rang for the stolid maid. Her voice was carefully calm as she gave orders for the evening meal. If she was thinking of Giovanni Celleni, his brute face filled with semi-madness; if she was thinking of a burned baby, sobbing alone in a darkened tenement while its mother breathlessly watched the gay colours and shifting scenes of a make-believe life, her expression did not mirror her thought. Only once she spoke, as she was folding her napkin, and then—
"They're both very young," she murmured, a shade regretfully. Perhaps she was remembering the enthusiasm—and the intolerance—of her own youth.