"She ain't been living here long, Mr. Crooks," volunteered another woman from her doorstep. "Her husband's no work, and this morning she were a-sending her four children to school without a bite, so I calls 'em in here, and shared out wot we was having for breakfast." "And what was that?" asked the Professor. The woman seemed to resent the question from a well-dressed stranger. "It weren't ham and eggs," she said, curtly. "Tell my friend here what you gave them, Mrs. B----" Crooks requested. "Well, it's just like this here, Mr. Crooks," she said apologetically. "My man's out of work hisself, and we on'y had one loaf, so I cuts it up between her children and mine." "Why is she crying now?" "She ain't been used to it like some of us, and it's all along of her wondering where the children's next meal is a-coming from." As the two men came away, "I'm proud of the poor," said Crooks. "And I declare it's a dirty insult for outsiders to say that these people are degraded by the feeble efforts I make as a Guardian to give bread to the hungry. It's nothing to what they do for each other. That woman sharing her last loaf with another woman's children is typical of what you'll find in every street and corner of Poplar where the pinch of hunger is felt." The Professor walked on silently. "What are we to do for them?" resumed the Labour man. "Sometimes people as badly off as these we have just seen come to my house in the early morning, begging me as a Guardian to give their children bread before they send them to school. Sometimes they bring their children with them as though to prove by their hungry eyes the truth of what they tell me. "And I say to them, 'You shouldn't come to me; you should go to the relieving officer.'" "And they reply, 'But what are you Guardians for? We've been to the Mayor, and he refers us to the Guardians. We go to the Guardians, and they refer us to the relieving officer. We go to the relieving officer, and he tells us to attend the relief committee. We inquire about the relief committee, and find it doesn't meet for two or three days. Meanwhile, what are our children to do for bread?' "Do you think," Crooks went on to ask the Professor, "that I can finish my own breakfast, or that any other man could with a spark of feeling in him, after being called to the door to listen to these pleadings morning after morning? Do you think, after these daily experiences, that I care how the outside public and the Press attack us because we as Guardians dare to spend public money in saving these people from starvation?