"If you would allow me to leave a mere trifle of money for you to use for the baby, I don't--it is only--" began Gertrude; but the ready hand had reached out for the money and a quick "Thanky mum; much obliged" had ended the transaction. "I shall not tell mamma _that"_, thought Gertrude, and she did not look at John Martin. It was her first glimpse into a grade of life to which all things, even birth and death, take on a strictly commercial aspect; where not only the edge of sentiment is dulled by dire necessity, but where the sentiment itself is buried utterly beneath the incrustations of an ignorance that is too dumb and abject to learn, and a poverty that is too insistent to recognize its own ignorance and degradation. "Won't you set down?" inquired Mrs. Spillini, as with a sudden movement she slid the small corpse onto the floor under the edge of the table. "I'd a' ast you before, but--" "O, don't!" exclaimed the girl; but before her natural impulse to stoop and gather up the small bundle had found action possible, John Martin had placed it on the table. "Oh, Lord; don't!" exclaimed the woman, in sudden dismay. "The boarders'd kick if they was to see it _there_. Boarders is different from the family. We could ate affen the table afther, but boarders--boarders'd kick." "Could--do you think of anything else we could do for you?" inquired Gertrude, faintly, as she held open the door and tried to think she was not dizzy and sick from the dreadful, polluted air, and the shock of the revelation, with all that it implied, before her. Four dirty faces, and as many ragged bodies, were too close to her for comfort. There was a vile stew cooking on the stove. The air was heavy and foul with it Gertrude distinctly felt the greasy moisture on her kid gloves as they touched each other. "No, I don't know's they's anything _more_ you can do," replied the passive, hopeless wreck of what it was almost sacrilege to call womanhood. "I don't know's they's anything more you could _do_ unless you could let the boarders come in now. They ain't got but a little over ten minutes to eat in an' dinner's ready," she replied, as she lifted the pot of steaming stuff into the middle of the table and laid two tin plates, a large knife and a bunch of iron forks and spoons beside it. "Turn that chair to the wall," she added sharply to one of the children, who hastened to obey the command. "They'll _all_ have to stand up to it this time. I ain't a goin' to shift that baby round no more till it's buried, now that I _kin_ bury it. Take this side of the table, Pete. I don't feel like eatin.' You kin have my place 'n the ole man ain't here. Let go of that tin cup, you trillin' young one. All the coffee they is, is in that. Have a drink, Mike?" she asked, passing the coveted cup to the second boarder. Gertrude was half-way down the dark hallway, and John Martin held her arm firmly lest she step into some unseen trap or broken place in the floor.