“I thought you’d come, Musser.”
It was Fanny herself. Pidge had crossed the threshold to look into eyes in which hate and hunger moved in a narrow orbit; narrow like the wet spot on the floor, in which the first-born played. Tired back, draggled hair, merely a stretched and faded vestige of a girl was Fanny Gallup now. Laugh and street talk were gone for the time, at least; gone as Albert, the barber, as much a myth as ever, so far as Pidge was concerned, though the place hypothecated a male parent. These three remaining seemed purposeless bits of life which a perverted scheme permitted to live on.
Pidge hated herself for becoming involved in the complication. For the moment, she hated New York that could not keep itself clean. No rent, no food, somebody else’s washing in the tubs, and the rags of Fanny and her children unwashed.
“... No, it ain’t no good to think of staying, Musser, because they’re tearing the buildin’ down.”
“How much rent do you owe?”
“Five weeks. But it ain’t no good to pay that, because I got to get out anyway. Gawd, Redhead, you look like a doll in a window!”
“Is there any place around here where you can go?”
“It’s hard to get in with the two, and you’d have to pay a month in advance,” Fanny said.
“How soon do you have to leave here?”
“Four days. That’s why I sent the letter.”