“Father will be rejoiced to see you,” I said.  “We live only a stone’s throw away.

“I can’t,” he said, “I must be going.  Good-by.”

He looked apprehensively about him, as though dreading discovery, and made an attempt to walk on.

“Tell me where you live, and I shall call later,” he said, when he saw that I walked beside him and that it was my intention to stick to him now that he was found.

“No,” I answered firmly.  “You must come now.”

He looked at the potatoes spilling on his arm, and at the small parcels on his other arm.

“Really, it is impossible,” he said.  “Forgive me for my rudeness.  If you only knew.”

He looked as if he were going to break down, but the next moment he had himself in control.

“Besides, this food,” he went on.  “It is a sad case.  It is terrible.  She is an old woman.  I must take it to her at once.  She is suffering from want of it.  I must go at once.  You understand.  Then I will return.  I promise you.”

“Let me go with you,” I volunteered.  “Is it far?”

He sighed again, and surrendered.

“Only two blocks,” he said.  “Let us hasten.”

Under the Bishop’s guidance I learned something of my own neighborhood.  I had not dreamed such wretchedness and misery existed in it.  Of course, this was because I did not concern myself with charity.  I had become convinced that Ernest was right when he sneered at charity as a poulticing of an ulcer.  Remove the ulcer, was his remedy; give to the worker his product; pension as soldiers those who grow honorably old in their toil, and there will be no need for charity.  Convinced of this, I toiled with him at the revolution, and did not exhaust my energy in alleviating the social ills that continuously arose from the injustice of the system.

I followed the Bishop into a small room, ten by twelve, in a rear tenement.  And there we found a little old German woman—­sixty-four years old, the Bishop said.  She was surprised at seeing me, but she nodded a pleasant greeting and went on sewing on the pair of men’s trousers in her lap.  Beside her, on the floor, was a pile of trousers.  The Bishop discovered there was neither coal nor kindling, and went out to buy some.

I took up a pair of trousers and examined her work.

“Six cents, lady,” she said, nodding her head gently while she went on stitching.  She stitched slowly, but never did she cease from stitching.  She seemed mastered by the verb “to stitch.”

“For all that work?” I asked.  “Is that what they pay?  How long does it take you?”

“Yes,” she answered, “that is what they pay.  Six cents for finishing.  Two hours’ sewing on each pair.”

“But the boss doesn’t know that,” she added quickly, betraying a fear of getting him into trouble.  “I’m slow.  I’ve got the rheumatism in my hands.  Girls work much faster.  They finish in half that time.  The boss is kind.  He lets me take the work home, now that I am old and the noise of the machine bothers my head.  If it wasn’t for his kindness, I’d starve.