"About as frightened as the man is who stands to his gun in the front," said Dakie Thayne. "You never flinched."
"They would have thought it was from what I had said," Ruth answered. "And that was another thing from the saying."
"You had something to say, Leslie. It was just on the corner of your lip. I saw it."
"Yes; but Ruth said it all in one flash. It would have spoiled it if I had spoken then."
"I'm always sorry for people who don't know how," said Ruth. "I'm sure I don't know how myself so often."
"That is just it," said Leslie. "Why shouldn't these girls come up? And how will they ever, unless somebody overlooks? They would find out these mistakes in a little while, just as they find out fashions: picking up the right things from people who do know how. It is a kind of leaven, like greater good. And how can we stand anywhere in the lump, and say it shall not spread to the next particle?"
"They think it was pushing of them, to come here to live at all," said Ruth.
"Well, we're all pushing, if we're good for anything," said Leslie. "Why mayn't they push, if they don't crowd out anybody else? It seems to me that the wrong sort of pushing is pushing down."
"Only there would be no end to it," said Dakie Thayne, "would there? There are coarse, vulgar people always, who are wanting to get in just for the sake of being in. What are the nice ones to do?"
"Just be nice, I think," said Leslie. "Nicer with those people than with anybody else even. If there weren't any difficulty made about it,—if there weren't any keeping out,—they would tire of the niceness probably sooner than anything. I don't suppose it is the fence that keeps out weeds."