Before any one had gained presence of mind enough to explain things, the door had clanked. The “friendly visitor” had vanished. “Pfui!” Hanneh Breineh snatched up her glass and drained its contents. “What will she do now? Will we get no more dry bread from the charities because once we ate cake?” “What for did she come?” asked Sophie. “To see that we don’t over-eat ourselves!” returned Hanneh Breineh. “She’s a ‘friendly visitor’! She learns us how to cook cornmeal. By pictures and lectures she shows us how the poor people should live without meat, without milk, without butter, and without eggs. Always it’s on the end of my tongue to ask her, ‘You learned us to do without so much, why can’t you yet learn us how to eat without eating?’” The children seized the last crumbs of cake that Shmendrik handed them and rushed for the street. “What a killing look was on her face,” said Sophie. “Couldn’t she be a little glad for your gladness?” “Charity ladies--gladness?” The joy of the grape-wine still rippled in Hanneh Breineh’s laughter. “For poor people is only cornmeal. Ten cents a day--to feed my children!” Still in her rollicking mood Hanneh Breineh picked up the baby and tossed it like a Bacchante. “Could you be happy a lot with ten cents in your stomach? Ten cents--half a can of condensed milk--then fill yourself the rest with water!... Maybe yet feed you with all water and save the ten-cent pieces to buy you a carriage like the Fifth Avenue babies!...” The soft sound of a limousine purred through the area grating and two well-fed figures in seal-skin coats, led by the “friendly visitor,” appeared at the door. “Mr. Bernstein, you can see for yourself.” The “friendly visitor” pointed to the table. The merry group shrank back. It was as if a gust of icy wind had swept all the joy and laughter from the basement. “You are charged with intent to deceive and obtain assistance by dishonest means,” said Mr. Bernstein. “Dishonest?” Shmendrik paled. Sophie’s throat strained with passionate protest, but no words came to her release. “A friend--a friend”--stammered Shmendrik--“sent me the holiday eating.” The superintendent of the Social Betterment Society faced him accusingly. “You told us that you had no friends when you applied to us for assistance.” “My friend--he knew me in my better time.” Shmendrik flushed painfully. “I was once a scholar--respected. I wanted by this one friend to hold myself like I was.” Mr. Bernstein had taken from the bookshelf a number of letters, glanced through them rapidly and handed them one by one to the deferential superintendent. Shmendrik clutched at his heart in an agony of humiliation. Suddenly his bent body straightened. His eyes dilated. “My letters--my life--you dare?”