Lively advised.

"I won't go there and wait round like a beggar, and have them ask me a
million of prying questions, and all for somebody's old clothes," Mrs.
Lively declared.

"Now, my dear," her husband remonstrated, "I have been a great deal
in the relief-rooms, and I believe there are no unnecessary questions
asked--only such as are imperative to prevent imposition."

"The things don't belong to them any more than they do to me."

"Perhaps not as much. They were sent to the destitute, such as you, so
you shouldn't mind asking for your own," the doctor argued.

"Think what a mean little story I should have to tell! I do wish you'd
bought that house. If we'd lost fifty thousand!--but a few bed-quilts
and those old frogs and bugs and dried leaves of yours! The most
miserable Irish woman on DeKoven street can tell as big a story of
losses as we can."

"I'll go to the relief-rooms and get some clothes for you," said the
doctor decidedly: "I'm not ashamed."

"I won't wear any of the things if you bring them," said Mrs. Lively.

"Oh, wife," said the doctor, his face pallid and grieved, "you are
wrong, you are wrong. Are you to get no kind of good out of this
calamity? Is the chastisement to exasperate only? to make you more
perverse, more bitter?"