little boy explained, a beautiful lady; and
she wanted to know all about him, and whether he got the garbage for
chickens, and why he walked with a broomstick, and why Ona had died, and
how Jurgis had come to go to jail, and what was the matter with Marija,
and everything. In the end she had asked where he lived, and said that
she was coming to see him, and bring him a new crutch to walk with. She
had on a hat with a bird upon it, Juozapas added, and a long fur snake
around her neck.

She really came, the very next morning, and climbed the ladder to the
garret, and stood and stared about her, turning pale at the sight of
the blood stains on the floor where Ona had died. She was a "settlement
worker," she explained to Elzbieta--she lived around on Ashland Avenue.
Elzbieta knew the place, over a feed store; somebody had wanted her to
go there, but she had not cared to, for she thought that it must have
something to do with religion, and the priest did not like her to have
anything to do with strange religions. They were rich people who came
to live there to find out about the poor people; but what good they
expected it would do them to know, one could not imagine. So spoke
Elzbieta, naively, and the young lady laughed and was rather at a loss
for an answer--she stood and gazed about her, and thought of a cynical
remark that had been made to her, that she was standing upon the brink
of the pit of hell and throwing in snowballs to lower the temperature.

Elzbieta was glad to have somebody to listen, and she told all their
woes--what had happened to Ona, and the jail, and the loss of their
home, and Marija's accident, and how Ona had died, and how Jurgis could
get no work. As she listened the pretty young lady's eyes filled with
tears, and in the midst of it she burst into weeping and hid her face on
Elzbieta's shoulder, quite regardless of the fact that the woman had on
a dirty old wrapper and that the garret was full of fleas. Poor Elzbieta
was ashamed of herself for having told so woeful a tale, and the other
had to beg and plead with her to get her to go on. The end of it was
that the young lady sent them a basket of things to eat, and left a
letter that Jurgis was to take to a gentleman who was superintendent in
one of the mills of the great steelworks in South Chicago. "He will get
Jurgis something to do," the young lady had said, and added, smiling
through her tears--"If he doesn't, he will never marry me."

The ste