"How can I afford to take it?" she asked.
"Save your money," said he, patting her thin shoulders, and chuckling prosperously. "You girls never put aside a cent."
"We don't earn enough."
"Poof! That's what you all say. I know—I know. We men aren't such fools as you take us for."
But Mary, as each evening she made up before her little mirror, noted the gradual depreciation of her wares; each week she found it harder to pay rent and retain enough money for food. Mrs. Foote seemed to come every day, instead of every seventh, and yet each night business grew more difficult. Whenever Mary missed a few evenings, or whenever she changed her hunting-grounds, the police needed fresh payments. She surrendered one uptown cross-street after another. At last she deserted Broadway and patrolled only that Fourteenth Street which the woman at the Haymarket had so scornfully referred to and which had so wonderfully burst upon Mary's sight when she first stepped from the Hudson Tunnel upon the surface of Manhattan.
Spring, summer, and autumn passed, and a lean winter followed them. Mary caught another cold and was ill for a week. She went to work too soon and had to go back to bed for several days and remain idle for several nights. At last, with the ancient fear of the white race—the fear of that poverty which is death—gnawing at her vitals, she struggled to her feet and tramped once more along Fourteenth Street from Sixth Avenue to Third.
But now the sword descended. Even the Fourteenth Street saloon best known for her purposes gave no fish to her net, and Eighth Street was little better. She was too tired to go farther; she had, the next morning, to offer Mrs. Foote only a third of what was due.
The landlady, whose bulk seemed to crowd the hall-bedroom, leaned heavily against its frail door. Mary thought the woman's slow, brown eyes more than commonly suspicious and her round face implacably hard. The tenant, with all explanation frozen upon her lips, handed over the clinking bits of money. They fell into the big, extended palm as a few drops of water might fall into a basin. Mrs. Foote began slowly to count the coins.
Mary watched, in fascinated silence, the counting of those few pieces of silver, each one of which seemed stained with her blood. She saw the landlady's expression change to one of incredulity. She saw the counting repeated.
Mrs. Foote again thrust out her grimy fingers.