"Good day, Mrs. Adam," from a sharp-faced neat woman, sitting at the doorway of the barricaded house, knitting rapidly.
"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" said Madame ingratiatingly.
"Lovely," responded the woman. "It's a great thing we had so much rain, we need a lot down here, we're that dry."
Madame chose to take the sarcasm as a joke, and laughed blithely.
But the woman did not smile. "She's had to work too hard, poor soul," whispered the visitor when they had passed. "She's clean and thrifty but she has to wash to support a crippled boy and a consumptive girl. No wonder she's sour."
They passed two or three more sorry-looking houses and finally paused before the gate of the home of Madame's little pupil. The bare grassless yard was filled with old boxes and rubbish. A big lumbering lad of about fourteen sprawled over the doorstep playing with a string. He looked up with vacant eyes, and clutched at the visitors' skirts, muttering and jabbering in idiot glee.
Madame put her hand tenderly on his small, ill-shaped head.
"Poor Eddie," she whispered, "poor boy."
She fumbled in her big black satchel and brought out a gay candy stick. He grabbed it with strange cries of joy. The sounds brought a ragged little ghost of a woman to the door, carrying a tiny bundle on her arm.
"Well, well, is that you, Madame?" she cried, smiling a broad toothless smile. "I thought it was you, an' Minnie she says, I believe that's my teacher, Ma."