Before we could express our appreciation of the hospitality offered, the door at which we had knocked was opened cautiously, and at its aperture a head was seen.  There was a moment’s hesitancy and then the door opened more widely.

“Is this Mrs. Gibbons?”

Bettina asked the question, and at its answer called to the woman still leaning out of the upstairs window, “She’s home.”  Then she introduced me.

“This is Miss Heath.  Miss Dandridge Heath, Mrs. Gibbons; and I’m Bettina Woll.  We’ve come to see you.  Can we come in?”

Mrs. Gibbons, who had nodded imperceptibly in my direction as Bettina called my name, motioned limply toward a room on my right, and as I entered it I looked at her and saw at once that she, too, belonged to the unqualified and unfit.  She must once have been a pretty woman, but her hair and eyes were now a dusty black, her skin the color of putty, and her mouth a drooping curve that gave to her face the expression of one who was about to cry.  Life had apparently for some time been more than she was equal to, and, incapable of battling further with it, she radiated a helplessness that was pitiable and yet irritating.  Thin and flat-chested, her uncorseted figure in its rusty black dress straightened for half a minute, then again it relaxed.

“Take a seat, won’t you?” Her voice was as listless as her eyes.  “It’s warmer in the kitchen.  Maybe you’d better come back there.  My little girl’s in there.  She’s sick.”

As we turned to leave the room I glanced around it.  The windows were down, the shutters closed, but by the light which came through the broken slats and cheap lace curtains, whose ends were spread expansively on the bare floor, I saw its furnishings.  A bed, covered with a white spread and with pillow-shams embroidered in red cotton, was against the side of the wall facing the windows, and close to it was a table on which lay a switch of coarse black hair.  A crepe-paper lambrequin decorated the mantel-shelf, whose ornaments were a cup and saucer, a shaving-set, and a pair of conch-shells; while between the windows was a wash-stand obviously kept for ornamental purposes, as there was no water in the pitcher and the basin was cracked.  Pinned on the soft plastering of the walls were florid advertisements of various necessities and luxuries of life, together with highly colored Scripture texts, and over the mantel hung a crayon of the once head of the house.  The room was cold and damp.  The air in it had not been changed for some time, and as Mrs. Gibbons stopped and picked up the baby, who at the sound of voices had crawled into the room, I did not wonder at its croupy cough.

Down the dark and narrow passageway Bettina and I followed our hostess, and at its end I would have stumbled over a step had I not been warned in time.  The noise made by a box overturned by Bettina gave the latter opportunity to give me one more injunction.