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38 "They are really in need of sympathy and help, then?"

"How's that?" demanded Mr. Chumley, with his cupped hand to his ear as though he could not believe his own hearing.

The lady repeated her remark.

"There you go! You're another of them folks that waste their substance. I could see that by your keerless handlin' of money," croaked Mr. Chumley. "The Widder Morse don't need help—she needs sense, I tell ye."

"And do you know what you need, Mr. Chumley?" asked the lady, suddenly, and with some asperity.

"Heh?"

"You need charity! We all need it. And we've gossiped enough about our neighbors, I declare! Good night, Mr. Chumley," she added, and turned off through the side street toward her own home, leaving the old man to wend his own way homeward, wagging his head and muttering discourteous comments upon "all fool women."

Mrs. Prentice was a widow herself. But she had no mawkish sentimentality. She had lived in the world too many years for that. She was not given to charities of any kind. But the thought of Jess Morse and her widowed mother