"Think what a mean little story I should have to tell! I do wish you'd bought that house. If we'd lost fifty thousand!—but a few bed-quilts and those old frogs and bugs and dried leaves of yours! The most miserable Irish woman on DeKoven street can tell as big a story of losses as we can."
"I'll go to the relief-rooms and get some clothes for you," said the doctor decidedly: "I'm not ashamed."
"I won't wear any of the things if you bring them," said Mrs. Lively.
"Oh, wife," said the doctor, his face pallid and grieved, "you are wrong, you are wrong. Are you to get no kind of good out of this calamity? Is the chastisement to exasperate only? to make you more perverse, more bitter?"
"You are very complimentary," was the wife's reply.
The doctor was silent for a moment: then he took up his hat. "I'm going to try to get passes out of the city," he said.
He had a long walk by Twelfth street to the rooms of the committee on transportation. Arrived at the hall, he found two long lines of waiting humanity reaching out like great wings from the door, the men on one side, the women on the other. He fell into line at the very foot, and there he waited hour after hour. For once, the women held the vantage-ground. They passed up in advance of the men to the audience-room, being admitted one by one. The audience consumed, on the average, five minutes to a person. At length all the women had had their turn: then, one by one, the men were admitted. Slowly Dr. Lively moved forward. He had attained the steps and was feeling hopeful of a speedy admission, when the business-session was pronounced ended for the day, and the doors were closed. He went back drooping, and related his experience to his wife.
"You don't mean to say you've been gone all this afternoon and come back without the passes?" she exclaimed.
"That's just how it is," answered the doctor.
"Well, I'll warrant I would have got in if I'd been there," she said.