"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Why the poor little thing—"
"What poor little thing?" I interrupted.
"Michele's baby. It lay there in dirty rags with its pinched white face staring up at me as though just begging for a clean bed."
"What's the matter with it?"
"Matter with it? It's a wonder it isn't dead and buried. The district nurse came in while I was there and told me,"—she shuddered—"that they'd been feeding it on macaroni cooked in greasy gravy. And it isn't six months old yet."
"No wonder it looked white," I said, remembering how we had discussed for a week the wisdom of giving Dick the coddled white of an egg at that age.
"Why the conditions down there are terrible," cried Ruth. "Michele must be very, very poor. The floor wasn't washed, you couldn't see out of the windows, and the clothes—"
She held up her hands unable to find words.
"That does sound bad," I said.