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“What is it?” asked a woman, opening the door only an inch or two, and peering cautiously out.

“We’re from St. Andrew’s Church,” said Florence; “and we came to find out whether there is anything they could do to help Mrs. Trawle.”

“Come in,” said the woman, grudgingly, widening the crack only sufficiently to allow the girls to enter singly.

The room presented a most unattractive appearance; even in the dim light of the drawn shades, both girls could see that what furniture there was was disreputable. Soiled clothing and threadbare towels hung about on the chairs, and one small frayed piece of carpet about the size of a window-frame was the only floor covering. In a darkened corner a woman lay on an untidy bed—a woman too sick even to notice the entrance of the strangers.

“That’s her in bed,” said the other, who had admitted the girls; “but she’s that sick she don’t know her own baby.”

“Why doesn’t she go to a hospital?” asked Florence, rather unsympathetically.

“She keeps talkin’ in her delirium about dyin’, and the poor baby a goin’ to an orphan asylum, and somehow she connects that with a hospital. But if she dies, which she probably will, that’s what’s got t’happen, for none of us neighbors could take care of ’er!”