"You know nothing at all about it," she declared, with spirit. "In trying to make things better you're content to spin theories, while we put something into practice."
He snapped the door of the second lamp with a little bang. "Put something into practice, with the result that people resent it."
"With the result that Rosie Fay resented it; but she's not a fair example. She's proud and rebellious and intense. I never saw any one just like her."
"You probably never saw any one who had to be like her because they'd had her luck. Look here, Lois," he said, with sudden earnestness, "I want you to be a friend to that girl."
She opened her eyes in mild surprise at his intensity. "There's nothing I should like better, if I knew how."
"But you do know how. It's easy enough. Treat her as you would a girl in your own class—Elsie Darling, for instance."
"It's not so simple as that. When Elsie Darling came back after five or six years abroad mamma and I drove into town and called on her. She wasn't in, and we left our cards. Later, we invited her to lunch or to dinner. I should be perfectly willing to go through the same formalities with Miss Fay—only she'd think it queer. It would be queer. It would be queer because she hasn't got—what shall I say?—she hasn't got the social machinery for that kind of ceremoniousness. The machinery means the method of approach, and with people who have to live as she does it's the method of approach that presents the difficulty. It's not as easy as it looks."
"Very well, then; let us admit that it's hard. The harder it is the more it's the job for you."
There was an illuminating quality in her smile that atoned for lack of beauty. "Oh, if you put it in that way—"
"I do put it in that way," he declared, with an earnestness toned down by what was almost wistfulness. "There are so many things in which I want help, Lois—and you're the one to help me."