"I wish to God you'd mind your own business!" Mrs. Brown cried after them. "If you'd only tend to your own affairs, you good people!" She hurled the words after them like a curse, her voice breaking with sobs. The door slammed under Mrs. Campbell's angry hand.
Helen, shaking and quivering, tried not to be sorry for Mrs. Brown. She was ashamed of the feeling. She knew that Mrs. Campbell did not have it. Hurrying to keep pace with that furious lady's haste down the street, she was overwhelmed with shame and confusion. The whole affair was like a splash of mud upon her. Her cheeks were red, and she could not make herself meet Mrs. Campbell's eyes.
Even when they were on the street-car, safely away from it all, her awkwardness increased. Mrs. Campbell herself was a little disconcerted then. She looked at Helen, at the bulging telescope-bag, the shabby shoes, and the faded sailor hat, and Helen felt the gaze like a burn. She knew that Mrs. Campbell was wondering what on earth to do with her.
Pride and helplessness and shame choked her. She tried to respond to Mrs. Campbell's efforts at conversation, but she could not, though she knew that her failure made Mrs. Campbell think her sullen. Her rescuer's impatient tone was cutting her like the lash of a whip before they got off the car.
Mrs. Campbell lived in splendor in a two-story white house on a complacent street. The smoothness of the well-kept lawns, the immaculate propriety of the swept cement walks, cried out against Helen's shabbiness. She had never been so aware of it. When she was seated in Mrs. Campbell's parlor, oppressed by the velvet carpet and the piano and the bead portieres, she tried to hide her feet beneath the chair and did not know what to do with her hands.
She answered Mrs. Campbell's questions because she must, but she felt that her last coverings of reticence and self-respect were being torn from her. Mrs. Campbell offered only one word of advice.
"The thing for you to do is to go home."
"No," Helen said. "I—I can't—do that."
Mrs. Campbell looked at her curiously, and again the red flamed in Helen's cheeks. She said nothing about the mortgage. Mrs. Campbell had not asked about that.
"Well, you can stay here a few days."