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"Any better?"
"How can he be better," returned the woman grimly, "when all he does is
to walk the streets until he's fit to drop, and then drag himself home
and sit there like that for hours, too worn out even to lift his eyes
from the floor. This is the last coffee I've got. I've been saving it
since Christmas, but I made it for him because he seems more down than
usual to-night." Then a nervous spasm shook her thin figure, and she
added in a fierce whisper: "He's sick, that's the matter with him. He
ain't sick enough to be in a government hospital, but he'd be better off
if he was. Even when he gets work he ain't able to stick to it. The
folks that hire him don't have any patience. As long as he was over
yonder in France it looked as if every woman in America was knitting for
him; and now since he's back here he can't get a job to keep him and the
children alive."
"How have you fed the children?"
"On what I could get cheapest. You see how sickly and peaked they look,
and it's been awful damp in these rooms sometimes.


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