hippersnapper lied about her. Because she's a baby he won't
bother," stormed Farr. "I'll ransack this town for doctors--I'll find
one who knows his business." He tiptoed to the bed and laid tender palm
against the child's cheek. "I say her face isn't as hot as it was," he
persisted. "Where can I find a doctor with gray whiskers, Etienne? That
young fool doesn't know."

"There are many wise old docteurs in the long street named Western
Boulevard--they live in the big houses--but they don't come to the
tenement folks."

"One of them will come this time even if I have to lug him on my back."

He began to search for his hat, not remembering where he had tossed it
in the haste and eagerness of his arrival at the good woman's house. He
did not find it readily and he rushed out bareheaded.

"The sun and the air they do no good! It is the poison water--and the
poor folks of the tenements they do not know!" muttered the old man.
"That is what he say?" He went to the kitchen sink and unscrewed the
faucet. He sniffed and made a wry face, then he ran his thin finger into
the valve-chamber. He hooked and brought forth stringy slime, held it
near his nose, and groaned. "The poor folks do not know. They who ask
for the votes of the slashers, the weavers, the beamers--the men of the
mills--they who ask votes do not want the poor folks to know, because
the votes would not be given to them who sell poison in the water," he
told the astonished good woman who had watched his act.

"I am careful about my kitchen--I am neat--I wash everything, Etienne,"
she assured him, sniffing at the slime in the sink, overcome by
confusion, her housewife's reputation at stake.

"Yes, but you cannot wash the souls of them dam' scoundrels who send
that water through the pipes to the poor people who can buy no other,"
he raged. "This is not your blame--you did not know." He pointed his
finger, quivering, dripping with the slime, at the child on the bed.
"They have murder her! With this!" He slatted his finger with the
gesture of one who throws off a noisome serpent.

"But I drink the water--it hasn't made me sick," she protested.

"You--me--odders that are all dry up--tough old fools--we ought to die
and we don't," he raged, stamping back and forth across the kitchen,
waving his arms. "We have been poison so much we do not notice. But the
poor little childs--the young folks that die--die in these tenements all
the time--and we see the white ribbons h