Once as a very fat and perspiring
German-American began to fight the crowd in the endeavor to turn
around and leave the car, his slowly revolving bulbous bulk pushed her
so smotheringly into the broad back of a negro ahead of her that she
felt faint. As they left the car, she said vehemently: "Oh, Mother,
this makes me sick! Why couldn't we have taken a cab? Aunt Victoria
always does!"
Her mother laughed. "You little country girl! A cab for as far as this
would cost almost as much as the ticket back to La Chance."
"I don't see why we came, then!" cried Sylvia. "It's simply awful! And
this is a _horrid_ part of town!" She suddenly observed that they were
walking through a very poor, thickly inhabited street, such as she
had never seen before. As she looked about her, her mother stopped
laughing and watched her face with a painful attention. Sylvia looked
at the tall, dingy houses, the frowzy little shops, the swarms of
dirty-nosed children, shrill-voiced, with matted hair, running and
whooping in the street, at the slatternly women yelling unobeyed
orders to them out of half-glimpsed, cheerless interiors, smelling of
cabbage and dishwater. It was Sylvia's first sight of the life of city
poor, and upon her face of disgust and revulsion her mother bent a
stern and anxious eye.
"See here, Sylvia!" she said abruptly, "do you know what _I_ was
thinking about back there in the crowd on the elevated? I was thinking
that lots of girls, no older than _my_ girl, have to stand that twice
a day, going to earn their livings.
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