"He isn't fit to do any bargaining yet," replied Miss Pilgrim, and
Mr. Baruch nodded agreeably.
The doctor and Selby finished their talk, and the former came back into the group.
"Well, take him down to the ambulance," he bade the men.
They moved to obey, but the sick man, mouthing strange sounds, seemed to try to hang back, making gestures with his head towards the disregarded bundle that was the whole of his earthly wealth.
"What's the matter with him?" cried the doctor impatiently. "Those rugs? Oh, we can't take a hotbed of microbes like that to the hospital! Move him along there!"
"And I'm not going to have 'em here," barked Selby. The peddler, limp between the big stretcher bearers, moaned and seemed to shiver in a vain effort to free himself.
"Wait, please!" Miss Pilgrim came forward. She had been folding the silken rug of Mr. Baruch's choice, and was now carrying it before her. It was as though she wore an apron of dawn gold and sunset red.
The pitiful man rolled meek imploring eyes upon her. She cast down the rug she carried upon the others in their bundle and stood over them.
"I'll take care of them," she said. "They will be safe with me. Do you understand? Me!" She touched herself upon her white-clad bosom with one hand, pointing with the other to the rugs.
The man gazed at her mournfully, resignedly. Martyrdom was the daily bread of his race; oppression had been his apprenticeship to life. It was in the order of things as he knew it that those who had power over him should plunder him; but, facing the earnest girl, with her frank and kindly eyes, some glimmer of hope lighted in his abjectness. He sighed and let his head fall forward in a feeble motion of acquiescence, and the big men who held him took him out and down the stairs to the waiting ambulance.