"Well, why don't you answer? Why don't you work now? Tell me--did you get tired--or do you think begging a better trade?"
Cram glanced at me as though to say, "You see."
"Sick? and what is your disease? Lazyo-mania?"
"No, I am sick," the woman said, her eyes swimming with tears.
"I am sick. I can't tell you what sickness. I worked at pants--an operator--and now I am sick. I have pains all over and I can't work. I can't--I won't mind it for me--but my children go to bed without supper and go to school without breakfast. And I can't stand it--I can't--I never applied to charities--"
"Enough, enough," Cram interrupted. "Never applied to charity! I know that gag. You shouldn't have applied now. A strong woman like you should be ashamed--ashamed to come here with the other beggars," sweeping his hand towards the others. "Go to work. You won't get a cent from here."
"And my children?" sobbed the poor mother.
"Well, then, what do you want? A pension of $200 a month, a trip abroad, a palace, a country house? Say--say quickly what do you want? I have no time. You will get everything immediately. It's a fine job, Mr. Baer, is it not?"
"I want to be helped out until I am well enough to work. My children are hungry. They have had no breakfast to-day and there isn't any supper for them either."
"That's the real stuff--her children. The more kids, the easier the money. I tell you, some class to them, my friend."
Cram looked at her and then at the application, and after a moment's thought he wrote on top of it, in blue pencil:
"Go home, I say. We'll take care of it. That's all, don't stay here any longer, don't get me angry."
"But I told you my children are hungry and cold--"
"I am not a groceryman--go home. I have no time. There are others--also sick and with dead husbands and hungry children. Move on--good-day."
"But, Mr.--to-night my children have no supper and it's bitter cold."
"All right. We'll take care of that. Go home." And as the woman tried to speak again: "Now go home and don't bother me."
Again he busied himself at the desk. The woman looked at him and then at me. Big, heavy tears rolled down her careworn cheeks and she seemed to me the very personification of suffering, the suffering of a mother who sees her children tortured by gnawing hunger. She went away.