"The same thing? Yes, I'll be over pretty soon."
Then Hussey left the laboratory with a slight nod of his head in the direction of the women. When he had gone and the outer door had banged behind him, the doctor remarked thoughtfully:—
"I guess it isn't just pure interest in science that makes him ready to try the pump."
"Tell me about him," Helen asked quickly.
"He lost his little girl two months ago,—malnutrition, that is to say slow starvation, and I guess his wife's not got long to live. That's why he came in this afternoon. But I can't do anything for her now, nor anybody else. She's just beat out. They came from somewhere in Pennsylvania, a little country place. He's a bookbinder by trade,—does fancy work,—and work gave out in the country, so he tried New York. He had some kind of trouble there with the union and came on here. But he might as well have stayed where he was,—there ain't anything in this town for him, and the union is after him again. He's been up against it pretty much ever since he started. That's his story."
"Poor woman!" Helen exclaimed, with a quick sense of her own new happiness. "Do you suppose she would like to have me call on her?"
"I don't know. Perhaps she might. But he's rather sour on folks in general," the doctor answered indifferently.
"Where do they live?"
"Out west here a ways on Arizona Avenue."
"I know that district. The River settlement is over there on Arizona Avenue. But I didn't know any Americans lived there. They are mostly Poles or Germans, I thought," Helen added.