There isn’t a doubt in the world that Charles Michael Haworth would have starved himself to death at this time but for Mrs. Temple. Without a word of remonstrance or fault-finding she simply took things as they came and hustled about to do what she could. Sometimes she was able to induce a grocer or market man to give a little more credit. Failing that, she’d go home to her lodgings (a small room in a tenement building of forbidding aspect) and pull a battered old trunk from under the bed. After looking about to satisfy herself that no spectators were present, she’d reach in under the clothing which partly filled it, and bring up a cigar box, from which the old woman would surreptitiously and with a snatching motion, take out a dollar or two, quite in the manner of one engaged in a robbery of some kind. Very well she knew that this little hoard had been put by for a rainy day, and nearly always she’d mumble to herself, “Well if this ain’t one, what is it I’d like to know!” as she pilfered it. The money was quickly exchanged for groceries. She brought his food to him in the basement, putting the dishes on an upturned barrel near the little room where he was working. Then she’d call to him that it was there and at once hurry away upstairs again. He wouldn’t open the door while she was in the basement. For sleep he took what little he got like a Chinese laundryman, dropping down where he was when exhausted and resuming his hectic labor the instant consciousness returned. There was only one outside interruption during the time Haworth was driving to finish the apparatus or device he was working on, and that a brief one. Two young men came to the house one morning, and so impressed old Mrs. Temple (who answered the bell) with the importance of their errand—assuring her that instead of being after money they wanted to pay Mr. Haworth some—that she went down and talked to him through the partition about it. It resulted in his finally putting on his coat and going up to see what they wanted. He found them on the front portico. Although Mrs. Temple had asked them in, they seemed, for some reason, to prefer waiting outside.