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."