Emeline was genuinely shocked by the evidences of actual want inside.  May was a thin, bent, sickly looking woman now, her graying hair hanging in a loose coil over her cotton wrapper.  Floors everywhere were bare, a few chairs were here and there, a few beds running over with thin bedding, a table in the kitchen was covered with scattered dishes, some dirty and some clean.  Ashes drifted out of the kitchen stove, and in the sink was a great tin dish-pan full of cool, greasy water.  The oldest child, a five-year-old girl, had followed these dazzling visitors in, and now mounted a box and attacked this dish-pan with pathetic energy.  The two younger children sat on the floor, apathetically staring.  May made only a few smiling apologies.  They “could see how she was,” she said, limping to a chair into which she dropped with a sigh of relief.  They had had a “fierce” time since Ed—­Ed was the husband and father—­had lost his job a year ago.  He had not been able to get anything permanent since.  Ed had been there just a minute ago, she said—­and indeed the odour of tobacco was still strong on the close air—­but he had been having a good deal of stomach trouble of late, and the children made him nervous, and he had gone out for a walk.  Poor May, smiling gallantly over the difficulties of her life, drew her firstborn to her knees, brushed back the child’s silky, pale hair with bony, trembling fingers, and prophesied that things would be easier when mamma’s girlies got to work:  Evelyn was going to be a dressmaker, and Marguerite an actress.

“She can say a piece out of the Third Reader real cute—­the children next door taught her,” said May, but Marguerite would not be exploited; she dug her blonde head into her mother’s shoulder in a panic of shyness; and shortly afterward the Pages went away.  Uncle George gave each child a dime, Julia kissed her little cousins good-bye, and Emeline felt a sick spasm of pity and shame as May bade the children thank them, and thanked them herself.  Emeline drew her sister to the door, and pressed two silver dollars, all she happened to have with her, into her hand.

“Aw, don’t, Em, you oughtn’t,” May said, ashamed and turning crimson, but instantly she took the money.  “We’ve had an awful hard time—­or I wouldn’t!” said she, tears coming to her eyes.

“Oh, that’s all right!” Emeline said uncomfortably, as she ran down the steps.  Her heart burned with sympathy for poor May, who had been so pretty and so clever!  Emeline could not understand the change!  May had graduated from High School with honours; she had held a good position as a bookkeeper in a grocery before her marriage, but, like Emeline, for the real business of life she had had no preparation at all.  Her own oldest child could have managed the family finances and catered to sensitive stomachs with as much system and intelligence as May.

On the boat Emeline spoke of her little money gift to her sister, and George roused himself from a deep study to approve and to reimburse her.  They did not speak again of moving to the country, and went straight from the boat to a French table d’hote dinner, where Julia, enchanted at finding herself warm and near food after the long cold adventures of the day, stuffed herself on sardines and sour bread, soup and salad, and shrimps and fried chicken, and drank tumblers of claret and sugar and ice water.