“Why?” I said gently.
“I don’t know. I feel as if she’d insulted me. She does lie, doesn’t she?”
“I didn’t notice it,” I said, but I knew he meant her shirking, her shuffling of her life.
“And you think of those poor devils under the bridge—and then of her and them frittering away themselves and money in that idiocy——”
He spoke with passion.
“You are quoting Longfellow,” I said.
“What?” he asked, looking at me suddenly.
“‘Life is real, life is earnest——’”
He flushed slightly at my good-natured gibe.
“I don’t know what it is,” he replied. “But it’s a pretty rotten business, when you think of her fooling about wasting herself, and all the waste that goes on up there, and the poor devils rotting on the embankment—and——”