"Do you mean that Mr. Dunn hasn’t any work at all?" exclaimed Peggy. "Do you have to live on what those two children earn?" Mrs. Dunn plainly expanded under the sympathetic interest. "This is gettin’ to be such a country that a man can’t earn an honest living," she said. "Mr. Dunn’s an awful smart man. He can turn his hand to most anything, but these Eytalians and other furren folks is comin’, and takin’ away all the jobs. The doctor told me last week that I’d ought to get some medicine to make my complication a little easier, but I haven’t had a cent to spare for it. Seems as if it took all Jimmy and Francesca make to keep us in coal, and pay the rent." She looked thoughtfully in the direction of Peggy’s pocket-book, which had a somewhat plump appearance owing to Peggy’s habit of cutting recipes and poems out of the newspaper and tucking them away in her pocketbook to show the other girls. What embarrassing turn the conversation might have taken next it is impossible to say for it was interrupted suddenly by the entrance of a young woman. She was a trim and business-like young woman who betrayed no surprise at the social aspect of Mrs. Dunn’s kitchen, and who declined Peggy’s offer of a chair, with a pleasant little smile. "Can’t stay long enough to sit down," she said briskly. "I’ve been down to the works, Mrs. Dunn, and I find that Mr. Dunn hasn’t been there since a week ago Monday." Mrs. Dunn turned so darkly red that Peggy wondered if the mysterious and dread disease "complication" could by any chance be allied to apoplexy. "The work down there’s too hard for him," she said sharply. "He ain’t as strong as he looks, Mr. Dunn ain’t. And the foreman’s always picking on him." The young woman shook her business-like head. "Come, Mrs. Dunn," she said, "the worst of Mr. Dunn’s troubles is laziness, and the reason he had difficulty with the foreman was that he wouldn’t attend to business. Now we are ready to help you, if you show a disposition to help yourselves, but there will be no more relief till Mr. Dunn goes back to work." Peggy and Priscilla were feeling out of place. They rose murmuring something which might have been an apology for their abrupt departure, or a promise to come again. Mrs. Dunn paid little attention to their going, and it was the red-haired girl who ushered them to the door. "That’s the charity lady," she explained, with evident satisfaction in her superior knowledge. "She’s all the time comin’ to the Dunns. She don’t never come to our home, ’less somebody’s sick or dies, or something like that. My pa he sticks to his job, and Mr. Dunn don’t, that’s why." "I wonder what that is," Peggy cried, losing interest in the red-haired girl’s explanation, as she caught sight of something resembling a football scrimmage at the entrance to Glen Echo Avenue.