“I’m sure it’s very kind.” Helen murmured in bewilderment.
“Well,”—Mrs. Campbell drew a long breath and plunged—“I suppose you know the sort of person this Kittie Brown, she calls herself, is? I suppose you know she’s a bad woman?”
A wave of blackness went through the girl’s mind.
“Everybody in town knows what she is,” Mrs. Campbell continued. “Everybody knows—” She went on, her voice growing more bitter. Helen, half hearing the words, choked back a sick impulse to ask her to stop talking. She felt that everything about her was poisoned; she wanted to escape, to hide, to feel that she would never be seen again by anyone. When the hard voice had stopped it was an effort to speak.
“But—what will I do?”
“Do? I should think you’d want to get out of here just as quick as you could.”
“Oh, I do want to. But where can I go? I—my rent’s paid. I haven’t any money.”
Mrs. Campbell considered.
“Well, you will have money, won’t you? Your folks don’t expect you to live here on nothing, do they? If it’s only a day or two, I could take you in myself rather than leave you in a place like this. There’s plenty of decent places in town.” She became practical. “The first thing to do’s to pack your things right away. How long is your rent paid? Can’t you get some of it back?”
She waited while Helen packed. She did not stop talking, and Helen tried to answer her coherently and gratefully. She felt that she should be grateful. They went down the stairs, and Mrs. Campbell waited outside the restaurant while Helen went in to ask Mrs. Brown to refund the week’s rent.
It was noon, but there were only one or two people in the restaurant. Mrs. Brown’s smile faded when Helen stammered that she was leaving.
“You are? What’s wrong? Anybody been bothering you?” Her glance fell upon the waiting Mrs. Campbell, and her sallow face whitened. “Oh, that’s it, is it?”
“No,” Helen said hastily. “That is, it’s been very nice here, and I liked it, but a friend of mine—she wants me to stay with her. I’m sorry to leave, but I haven’t much money.” She struggled against feeling pity for Mrs. Brown. She choked over asking her to refund the rent.
Mrs. Brown said she could not do it. She offered, however, to give Helen something in trade, two dollars’ worth. They both tried to make the transaction commonplace and dignified.
Helen, at a loss, pointed out a heap of peanut candy in the glass counter. She had often looked at it and wished she could afford to buy some. Mrs. Brown’s thin hands shook, but she was piling the candy on the scale when Mrs. Campbell came in.
“What’s she doing?” Mrs. Campbell asked Helen. “You buying candy?”
“I don’t know what business it is of yours, coming interfering with me!” Mrs. Brown broke out. “I never did her any harm. I never even talked to her. You ask her if I ever bothered her. You ask her if I didn’t leave her alone. You ask her if I ain’t keeping a decent, respectable, quiet place and doing the best I can and minding my own business and trying to make a square living. You ask her what I ever did to her all the time she’s been here.” Her voice was high and shrill. Tears were rolling down her face. Mechanically she went on breaking up the candy and piling it on the scales. “I don’t know what I ever did to you that you don’t leave me alone, coming poking around.”
“I didn’t come here to talk to you,” said Mrs. Campbell. “Come on out of here,” she commanded Helen.
“I wish to God you’d mind your own business!” Mrs. Brown cried after them. “If you’d only tend to your own affairs, you good people!” She hurled the words after them like a curse, her voice breaking with sobs. The door slammed under Mrs. Campbell’s angry hand.
Helen, shaking and quivering, tried not to be sorry for Mrs. Brown. She was ashamed of the feeling. She knew that Mrs. Campbell did not have it. Hurrying to keep pace with that furious lady’s haste down the street, she was overwhelmed with shame and confusion. The whole affair was like a splash of mud upon her. Her cheeks were red, and she could not make herself meet Mrs. Campbell’s eyes.
Even when they were on the streetcar, safely away from it all, her awkwardness increased. Mrs. Campbell herself was a little disconcerted then. She looked at Helen, at the bulging telescope-bag, the shabby shoes, and the faded sailor hat, and Helen felt the gaze like a burn. She knew that Mrs. Campbell was wondering what on earth to do with her.
Pride and helplessness and shame choked her. She tried to respond to Mrs. Campbell’s efforts at conversation, but she could not, though she knew that her failure made Mrs. Campbell think her sullen. Her rescuer’s impatient tone was cutting her like the lash of a whip before they got off the car.
Mrs. Campbell lived in splendor in a two-story white house on a complacent street. The smoothness of the well-kept lawns, the immaculate propriety of the swept cement walks, cried out against Helen’s shabbiness. She had never been so aware of it. When she was seated in Mrs. Campbell’s parlor, oppressed by the velvet carpet and the piano and the bead portieres, she tried to hide her feet beneath the chair and did not know what to do with her hands.
She answered Mrs. Campbell’s questions because she must, but she felt that her last coverings of reticence and self-respect were being torn from her. Mrs. Campbell offered only one word of advice.
“The thing for you to do is to go home.”
“No,” Helen said. “I—I can’t—do that.”
Mrs. Campbell looked at her curiously, and again the red flamed in Helen’s cheeks. She said nothing about the mortgage. Mrs. Campbell had not asked about that.
“Well, you can stay here a few
