tick on
their feet. And when the teachers and visitors followed these children into
their homes they found bare, dirty, chilly rooms where the little folk
shivered and wailed for food and the mothers looked distracted, gaunt and
sullen and half crazed. Over three hundred thousand workers were idle in
the city. Meanwhile, to make matters worse, half the money from uptown
which had gone in former years into work for the tenements was going over
to Belgium instead. And the same relentless drain of war was felt by the
tenement people themselves; for all of them were foreigners, and from their
relatives abroad, in those wide zones of Europe already blackened and laid
waste, in endless torrents through the mails came wild appeals for money.

In such homes her children lived. And Deborah had set her mind on vigorous
measures of relief. Landlords must be made to wait and the city be
persuaded to give work to the most needy, food and fuel must be secured. As
she spoke of the task before her, with a flush of animation upon her bright
expressive face at the thought that in less than an hour she would be
facing thousands of people, the gloom of the picture she painted was
dispelled in the spirit she showed.

"These things always work out," she declared, with an impatient shrug of
her shoulders. And watching her admiringly, young Betsy thought, "How
strong she is! What a wonderful grown-up woman!" And Roger watching
thought, "How young."

* * * * *

"What things?" It was Edith's voice at the door, and among those at the
table there was a little stir of alarm. She had entered unnoticed and now
took her seat. She was looking pale and tired. "What things work out so
finely?" she asked, and with a glance at Deborah's gown,

"Where are you going?" she added.

"To a meeting," Deborah answered.

"Oh." And Edith began her soup. In the awkward pause that followed, twice
Deborah started to speak to her sister, but checked herself, for at other
dinners just like this she had made such dismal failures.

"By the way, Edith," she said, at last, "I've been thinking of all that
furniture of yours which is lying in storage." Her sister looked up at her,
startled.

"What about it?" she asked.

"There's so much of it you don't care for," Deborah answered quietly. "Why
don't you let a part of it go? I mean the few pieces you've always
disliked."

"For what purpose?"

"Why, it seems such a pity not to have H