Allerton smiled. “That sounds to me as if it might be dangerous doctrine.”
“What excuses the poor’ll often seem dyngerous doctrine to the rich, Mr. Rash. Our kind is awful afryde of their kind gettin’ a little bit of what they’re longin’ for, and especially ’ere in America. When we’ve took from them most of the means of ’aving a little pleasure lawful, we call it dyngerous if they tyke it unlawful like, and we go to work and pass laws agynst them. Protectin’ them agynst theirselves we sye it is, and we go at it with a gun.”
“But we’re talking of––”
“Of the young lydy, sir. Quite so. It’s on ’er account as I’m syin’ what I’m syin’. You arsk me if 158 I think she’ll go to the bad in cyse we turn ’er out, and I sye that––”
Allerton started. “There’s no question of our turning her out. She’s sick of it.”
“Then that’d be my point, wouldn’t it, sir? If she goes because she’s sick of it, why, then, natural like, she’ll look somewhere else for what—for what she didn’t find with us. You may call it goin’ to the bad, but it’ll be no more than tryin’ to find in a wrong wye what life ’as denied ’er in a right one.”
Allerton, who had never in his life been asked to bear moral responsibility, was uneasy at this philosophy, changing the subject abruptly.
“Where did she get the clothes?”
“Me and ’er, Mr. Rash, went to Margot’s this mornin’ and bought a bunch of ’em.”
“The deuce you did! And you used my name?”