She looked at the nurse. To Francie, all women were mamas like her own mother...

She looked at the nurse. To Francie, all women were mamas like her own mother and Aunt Sissy and Aunt Evy. She thought the nurse might say something like:
"Maybe this little girl's mother works and didn't have time to wash her good this morning," or, "You know how it is, Doctor, children will play in dirt." But what the nurse actually said was, "I
know. Isn't it terrible? I sympathize with you, Doctor. There is no excuse for these people living in filth."
A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the boot-strap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it
and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel up climb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she lacked the
courage to be otherwise.