At the desk Mrs. Rider, the clerk, and the two agents of the society were interrogating a woman. The woman was tall and slender, and her pale face had some trace of prettiness left; her clothing was better than that of the others, though it had remained over from some easier circumstance of the summer.
The woman was hungry, and she was sick. She had reported her condition to the agent of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, but as this man could think of nothing better than to arrest somebody and have somebody punished, he had had the woman’s husband sent to the workhouse for six months, thus removing the only hope she had.
To Elizabeth it seemed that the three inquisitors were trying, not so much to discover some means of helping this woman, as to discover some excuse for not helping her; they took turns in putting to her, with a professional frankness, the most personal questions,--questions that made Elizabeth blush and burn with shame, even as they made the woman blush. But just then a middle-aged woman appeared, and Elizabeth instantly identified her when Mrs. Rider pleasantly addressed her by a name that appeared frequently in the newspapers in connection with deeds that took on the aspect of nobility and sacrifice.
"I’m so glad you dropped in, Mrs. Norton," said Mrs. Rider. "We have a most perplexing case."
The clerk lifted her eyebrows expressively, and somehow indicated to Mrs. Norton the woman she had just had under investigation. Mrs. Norton glanced at the hunted face and smiled.
"You mean the Ordway woman? Exactly. I know her case thoroughly. Mr. Gleason ’phoned me from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty and I looked her up. You should have seen her room--the filthiest place I ever saw--and those children!" She raised her hands, covered with gloves, and her official-looking reticule slid up her forearm as if to express an impossibility. "The woman was tired of farm life--determined to come to town--fascinated by city life--she complained of her husband, and yet--what do you think?--she wanted me to get him out of the work-house!"
Mrs. Norton stopped as if she had made an unanswerable argument and proved that the woman should not be helped; and Mrs. Rider and the two agents seemed to be relieved. Presently Mrs. Rider called the woman, and told her that her case was not one that came within the purview of the society’s objects, and when the hope was dying out of the woman’s face Mrs. Norton began to lecture her on the care of children, and to assure her the city was filled with pitfalls for such as she. The woman, beaten into humility, listened a while, and then she turned and dragged herself toward the door. The eyes of the waiting paupers followed her with the same impersonal curiosity they had shown in the entrance of Mrs. Russell and Elizabeth and Mrs. Norton.