ut a disorderly neighbor in their tenement, a cripple from
the mines to talk over his career, whether it should be pencils or shoe
strings, or a hand organ, or some attempt at handicraft; the head of a
local labor union paying some pittance to Laura, voted by the men to
help her with her work; a shy foreign woman with a badly spelled note
from her neighbor, asking for flower seeds and directions translated by
Laura into the woman's own language telling how to plant the seeds; a
belated working mother calling for the last little tot in the nursery
and explaining her delay. Laura heard them all and so far as she could,
she served them all. The Doctor was vastly proud of the effective way in
which she dispatched her work.

It was six o'clock, but the summer sun still was high and the traffic in
the street was thick. For a time, while a woman with a child with
shriveled legs was talking to Laura about the child's education, the
Doctor sat gazing into the street. When the room was empty, he
exclaimed, "It's a long weary way from the sunshine and prairie grass,
child! How it all has changed with the years! Ten years ago I knew 'em
all, the men and the employers. Now they are all newcomers--men and
masters. Why, I don't even know their nationalities; I don't even know
what part of the earth they come from. And such sad-faced droves of
them; so many little scamps, underfed, badly housed for generations. The
big, strapping Irish and Germans and Scotch and the wide-chested little
Welshmen, and the agile French--how few of them there are compared with
this slow-moving horde of runts from God knows where! It's been a long
time since I've been down here to see a shift change, Laura. Lord--Lord
have mercy on these people--for no one else seems to care!"

"Amen, and Amen, father," answered the daughter. "These are the people
that Grant is trying to stir to consciousness. These are the people
who--"

"Well, yes," he turned a sardonic look upon his daughter, "they're the
boys who voted against me the last time because Tom and Dan hired a man
in every precinct to spread the story that I was a teetotaler, and that
your mother gave a party on Good Friday--and all because Tom and Dan
were mad at me for pushing that workingmen's compensation bill! But now
I look at 'em--I don't blame 'em! What do they know about workingmen's
compensation!" The Doctor stopped and chuckled; then he burst out: "I
tell you, Laura, when a man gets enough sense