I endeavored to smile. "That's very plain talk, isn't it?"
"Of course it's plain talk, because it's a perfectly plain situation. It isn't a new thing to me to see people who've been going without food. At the Settlement—"
I still kept up the effort to smile. "If I'd been going without food there are a dozen places—"
"Where they'd give you a meal, after they'd satisfied themselves that you hadn't been drinking. I know all about that. But would you go? Would you rather drop dead of starvation first? And what good would it do you in the end, just one meal, or two meals, when everything else is lacking? It's the whole thing—"
"But how would you tackle that, the whole thing? It seems to me that if I can't do it myself no one else—"
"I'll tell you as straightforwardly as you ask the question. I should give you, lend you, as much money as you wanted, so that you should have time to reorganize your life."
"And suppose I couldn't, that I spent your money and was just where I was before?"
"Then my conscience would be clear."
"But your conscience must be clear in any case."
"It isn't. When all you ask for is to help—"