ht to mine. Well, I've done some changing, too. Every time that Sue
or you have taken up a new idea I've taken up a Mrs. Bealey. I did the
same thing in the strike. I went with Nora Ganey into the very poorest
of all the tenements down by the docks. I saw the very worst of it
all--and I tried to do what I could to help. But I felt like a drop in
the ocean. And that's how I've changed. Things are so wrong in the
tenements that big reforms are needed. I don't know what they are and
I'm not sure anyone else does. But I'm sure that if any reforms worth
while are to be made, we've got to see just where we are. And that means
that quite a number of people--you for instance--have got to tell the
truth exactly as they see it. So I'd rather put our money in that and
let old Mrs. Bealey forget our address. That's another reason for
moving.

"There's nothing noble about it at all," she said as she threaded her
needle. "I mean to be perfectly comfortable. I saw this coming long ago,
and since the strike was over I've spent weeks picking out a nice place
where we can get the most for our money. About thirty thousand babies,
I'm told, are to be born in the city this summer--and their mothers
aren't going first to the mountains or even for a walk in the Park. I
don't see why I shouldn't be one. As a matter of fact I won't be one, my
baby won't be born until Fall, and I'll have a clean, comfortable flat
with one maid instead of a dirty tenement with all the cooking and
washing to do. You'll probably find magazines who'll pay enough
honorariums to make a hundred dollars a month, which is just about three
times as much as Mrs. Bealey lives on. So that's settled and we move
this week."

We moved that week.

CHAPTER V

One night about a month later, when we had ensconced ourselves for the
evening out on the roof of our new home, where the summer's night was
cooled by a slight breeze from the river, our maid came up and told me
there was a strange gentleman below. I went down and brought him up, I
was deeply pleased and excited. For he was the English novelist whom I
most admired these days. He had come to me during the strike and had
been deeply interested in the great crowd spirit I had found. He was
going back to England now.

"I'm curious," he told me, "to see how much your striker friends have
kept of what they got in the strike--what new ideas and points of view.
How much are they really changed? That, I should think, is