"Yes, it's me," sighed the woman, dragging herself across the room to a chair. "What time did Nellie leave here?"
The woman's face contracted with a sharp spasm of pain.
"She wa'n't within half a mile of the mill when I met her, yet she was pantin' an' all out o' breath then. She'll be late, 'course, an' you know what that means."
"Yes, I know," sighed Mrs. Durgin, sympathetically. "She--she hadn't orter gone."
Across the room Mrs. Magoon's head came up with a jerk.
"Don't ye s'pose I know that? The child's sick, an' I know it. But what diff'rence does that make? She works, don't she?"
For a moment Mrs. Durgin did not speak. Gradually her eyes drifted back to Maggie and the little pile of coins on the table.
"Mis' Magoon, see," she cried eagerly, "what the lady give Maggie. They was in one o' them 'nauty-mobiles,' as Maggie calls 'em, an' Maggie felled down in the road. She wa'n't hurt a mite--not even scratched, but they give her all this money."
The woman on the other side of the room sniffed disdainfully.
"Well, what of it? They'd oughter give it to her," she asserted.
"But they wa'n't ter blame, an' they didn't hurt her none--not a mite," argued the other.
"No thanks ter them, I'll warrant," snapped Mrs. Magoon. "For my part, I wouldn't tech their old money." Then, crossly, but with undeniable interest, she asked: "How much was it?"
"Never you mind," she retorted, as she gathered up the coins from the table; "but thar's enough so's I'm goin' ter get them cough-drops fur Nellie, anyhow. So!" And she turned her back and pretended not to hear the faint remonstrances from the woman over by the window. Later, when she had bought the medicine and had placed it in Mrs. Magoon's hands, the remonstrances were repeated in a higher key, and were accompanied again with an angry snarl against the world in general and automobiles in particular.
"But why do ye hate 'em so?" demanded Mrs. Durgin, "--them autymobiles? They hain't one of 'em teched ye, as I knows of."
"I don't believe ye knows yerself," declared the questioner then; and at the taunt the other raised her head.
"Mebbe I don't," she flamed, "an' 'tain't them I hate, anyway--it's the folks in 'em. It's rich folks. I've allers hated 'em anywheres, but 'twa'n't never so bad as now since them things came. They look so--so comfortable--the folks a-leanin' back on their cushions; an' so--so _free_, as if there wa'n't nothin' that could bother 'em. 'Course I knew before that there was rich folks, an' that they had fine clo's an' good things ter eat, an' shows an' parties, an' spent money; but I didn't _see_ 'em, an' now I do. I _see_ 'em, I tell ye, an' it makes me realize how I ain't comfortable like they be, nor Nellie ain't neither!"