"You flatter me by the choice," she said; "but if we can get along without the drink, we can't get along without a bite to eat now an' then. No, Hermann-boy, it's no use, I'm tellin' you. I seen it tried. Me father swang a pick and me mother took in washin'—when she could get it—an' even then it wouldn't work: the one would have starved to death if the third rail hadn't got him, an' poor mother killed herself tryin' to keep her an' me. It won't work, an' I know it."
While the train hurried above the dead level of Brooklyn houses, out through the suburban monstrosities and across the dunes, the optimist, still an optimist, renewed his endeavors to find the chance for lodging his own arguments; but all the while Katie continued to overwhelm him with a flow of errors. They had almost reached the sandy island before Hermann, still stubbornly hopeful, elected to drop the subject for the present, and took up, in its stead, the story of Violet.
He spoke simply, which is to say forcibly, and he had an understanding, and therefore sympathetic, audience. Katie's face immediately softened.
"The poor child!" she murmured. "An' don't I know what it is? I've seen them go under, here one an' there another, hungry or overworked, every mother's daughter of them. There was Molly Ryan, as good a girl as you'd find in a day's search of the parish, left alone with no one to put clothes on her back; an' pretty Agnes Donovan—out of work for four months—her as died in the City Hospital; an' Giulia Fortuni, whose father kept a fruit-stand by the Grand Street "L" station.—What can we do for her, Hermann-boy?"
"Dot's vat I vanted to ask you, Katie," said Hoffmann. "She has to hof friends und vork first of all."
"Friends she has right here; but work she must have whether or no. I begin me old search for meself in the mornin', an' I'll keep eye an' mouth ready to get a job for her."
Cynically hopeless and city-wise in regard to her own chances, Katie's Celtic soul warmed to something of Hermann's optimism in the cause of a sister. She began planning at once, and when the train drew up outside the tunnel-shed, she had the absent Violet established as a cloak-model in the big Lennox Department-Store, and engaged to marry a floor-walker.
And then Coney—Coney the sweetly reasonable in price and the extravagantly generous in provision—crowded out of her mind, for that day, all thoughts save the thought of itself.
A great many years ago—oh, a very great many years ago!—when you were a little boy, your father took you to the county-fair. You remember it, even yet, as a purple day in the glad calendar of your childhood: the blood cattle, the show of farm implements, the prize pumpkins, the side-shows with their fat ladies and skeleton gentlemen, and the suave individual that put a bean under a cup and then, for a dollar, showed your shrewd parent that it was under another. But above all you remember the crowd. Never before had you seen so many people in one place, never realized that there were so many people in the world; and even now, out of the past, you can hear an awed voice saying:
"There are five thousand persons here."