“We had them in Alder Street,” she said.  “We might have been there yet, if we hadn’t been foolish.  It’s a pretty street, sir—­perhaps you know it—­you take the Fanshawe Avenue cars to Sherman Heights.  The air is like the country there, and all the houses are new, and Dicky had a yard to play in, and he used to be so healthy and happy in it. . .  We were rich then,—­not what you’d call rich,” she added apologetically, “but we owned a little home with six rooms, and my husband had a good place as bookkeeper in a grocery house, and every year for ten years we put something by, and the boy came.  We never knew how well off we were, until it was taken away from us, I guess.  And then Richard—­he’s my husband—­put his savings into a company—­he thought it was so safe, and we were to get eight per cent—­and the company failed, and he fell sick and lost his place, and we had to sell the house, and since he got well again he’s been going around trying for something else.  Oh, he’s tried so hard,—­every day, and all day long.  You wouldn’t believe it, sir.  And he’s so proud.  He got a job as porter, but he wasn’t able to hold it—­he wasn’t strong enough.  That was in April.  It almost broke my heart to see him getting shabby—­he used to look so tidy.  And folks don’t want you when you’re shabby.” . . .

There sprang to Hodder’s mind a sentence in a book he had recently read:  “Our slums became filled with sick who need never have been sick; with derelicts who need never have been abandoned.”

Suddenly, out of the suffocating stillness of the afternoon a woman’s voice was heard singing a concert-hall air, accompanied by a piano played with vigour and abandon.  And Hodder, following the sound, looked out across the grimy yard—­to a window in the apartment house opposite.

“There’s that girl again,” said the mother, lifting her head.  “She does sing nice, and play, poor thing!  There was a time when I wouldn’t have wanted to listen.  But Dicky liked it so . . . .  It’s the very tune he loved.  He don’t seem to hear it now.  He don’t even ask for Mr. Bentley any more.”

“Mr. Bentley?” the rector repeated.  The name was somehow familiar to him.

The piano and the song ceased abruptly, with a bang.

“He lives up the street here a way—­the kindest old gentleman you ever saw.  He always has candy in his pockets for the children, and it’s a sight to see them follow him up and down the sidewalk.  He takes them to the Park in the cars on Saturday afternoons.  That was all Dicky could think about at first—­would he be well enough to go with Mr. Bentley by Saturday?  And he was forever asking me to tell Mr. Bentley he was sick.  I saw the old gentleman on the street to-day, and I almost went up to him.  But I hadn’t the courage.”

The child moaned, stirred, and opened his eyes, gazing at them feverishly, yet without seeming comprehension.  She bent over him, calling his name . . . .  Hodder thrust the fan into her hand, and rose.