It was noon, and she was hungry. She
went out to the wagon, got the lunch she had brought, and took it
into the grocery to eat it-where she could get a drink of water.
The grocer gave the baby a stick of candy and handed the mother
an apple.
"It'll kind o' go down with your doughnuts," he said. After eating
her lunch she got up and went out. She felt ashamed to sit there
any longer. She entered another dry-goods store, but when the
clerk came toward her saying, "Anything today, Mrs.-?" she
answered, "No, I guess not," and turned away with foolish face.
She walked up and down the street, desolately home-less. She did
not know what to do with herself. She knew no one except the
grocer. She grew bitter as she saw a couple of ladies pass, holding
their demitrains in the latest city fashion. Another woman went by
pushing a baby carriage, in which sat a child just about as big as
her own. It was bouncing itself up and down on the long slender
springs and laughing and shouting. Its clean round face glowed
from its pretty fringed hood. She looked down at the dusty clothes
and grimy face of her own little one and walked on savagely.
She went into the drugstore where the soda fountain was, but it
made her thirsty to sit there, and she went out on the street again.
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