"Oh!" She dragged at his arm.
"Aw, come on, Sweetness; nothing but a lot of T.B.'s."
"Let's--let's go in. See, it's free. Looka! it's all lit up and all;
see, pictures and all."
"Say, ain't I enough of a dead one without dragging me in there? Free! I
bet they pinch you for something before you get out."
"Come on, Charley. I never did see a place like this."
"Aw, they're all over town."
He followed her in surlily enough and then, with a morbid interest,
round a room hung with photographs of victims in various emaciated
stages of the white plague.
"Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful? Ain't it awful? Read them symptoms. Almost with
nothing it--it begins. Night--sweats and losing weight and coughing,
and--oh--"
"Look! Little kids and all! Thin as matches."
"Aw, see, a poor little shaver like that! Look! It says sleeping in
that dirty room without a window gave it to him. Ugh! that old
man! Self-indulgence and intemperance.' Looka that girl in the
tobacco--factory. Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful! Dirty shops and stores, it
says; dirty saloons and dance-halls--weak lungs can't stand them."
"Let's get out of here."
"Aw, look! How pretty she is in this first picture; and look at her
here--nothing but a stack of bones on a stretcher. Aw! Aw!"
"Come on!"
"Courage is very important, it says. Consumptives can be helped and many
are cured. Courage is--"
"Come on; let's get out of this dump. Say, it's a swell night for a
funeral."
She grasped at his coat sleeve, pinching the flesh with it, and he drew
away half angrily.
"Come on, I said."
"All right!"
A thin line filed past them, grim-faced, silent. At the far end of the
room, statistics in red inch-high type ran columnwise down the wall's
length. She read, with a gasp in her throat:
1. Ten thousand people died from tuberculosis in the city of New
York last year.
2. Two hundred thousand people died from tuberculosis in the United
States last year.
3. Records of the Health Department show 31,631 living cases of
tuberculosis in the city of New York.
4. Every three minutes some one in the United States dies from
consumption.
"Oh, Charley, ain't it awful!"
At a desk a young man, with skin as pink as though a strong wind had
whipped it into color, distributed pamphlets to the outgoing visitors--a
thin streamlet of them; some cautious, some curious, some afraid.
"Come on; let's hurry out of here, Sweetness. My lung's hurting this
minute."
They hurried past the desk; but the young man with the clear, pink skin
reached over the heads of an intervening group, waving a long printed
booklet toward the pair.
"Circular, missy?"
Sara Juke straightened, with every nerve in her body twanging like a
plucked violin-string, and her eyes met the clear eyes of the young
clerk.
Like a doll automaton she accepted the booklet from him; like a doll
automaton she followed Charley Chubb out into the street, and her limbs
were trembling so she could scarcely stand.
"Gotta hand it to you, Sweetness. Even made a hit on the fellow in the
lung-shop! He didn't hand me out no literachure. Some little hit!"
"I gotta go home now, Charley."
"It's only ten."
"I better go, Charley. It ain't Saturday night."
At the stoop of her rooming-house they lingered. A honey-colored moon
hung like a lantern over the block-long row of shabby-fronted houses. On
her steps and to her fermenting fancy the shadow of an ash-can sprawled
like a prostrate human being.
"Charley!" She clutched his arm.
"Whatcha scared about, Sweetness?"
"Oh, Charley, I--I feel creepy to-night."
"That visit to the morgue was enough to give anybody the blind
staggers."