“Oh, I don’t know.”
“What are you going to do if you don’t get work?”
“Go back home, I guess.”
There was the least quaver in her voice as she said this. Somehow, the influence he was exerting was powerful. They came to an understanding of each other without words—he of her situation, she of the fact that he realised it. “No,” he said, “you can’t make it!” genuine sympathy filling his mind for the time. “Let me help you. You take some of my money.”
“Oh, no!” she said, leaning back.
“What are you going to do?” he said.
She sat meditating, merely shaking her head.
He looked at her quite tenderly for his kind. There were some loose bills in his vest pocket—greenbacks. They were soft and noiseless, and he got his fingers about them and crumpled them up in his hand.
“Come on,” he said, “I’ll see you through all right. Get yourself some clothes.”
It was the first reference he had made to that subject, and now she realised how bad off she was. In his crude way he had struck the key-note. Her lips trembled a little.