"I can't do that," replied he regretfully. "I could not come to your father's house and continue free. I must be able to say what I honestly think, without any restraint."
"I understand," said she. "And I want you to say and to write what you believe to be true and right. But—we'll see each other again. I'm sure we are going to be friends."
His expression as he bade her good-by told her that she had won his respect and his liking. She had a suspicion that she did not deserve either; but she was full of good resolutions, and assured herself she soon would be what she had pretended—that her pretenses were not exactly false, only somewhat premature.
At dinner that evening she said to her father:
"I think I ought to do something beside enjoy myself. I've decided to go down among the poor people and see whether I can't help them in some way."
"You'd better keep away from that part of town," advised her father. "They live awful dirty, and you might catch some disease. If you want to do anything for the poor, send a check to our minister or to the charity society. There's two kinds of poor—those that are working hard and saving their money and getting up out of the dirt, and those that haven't got no spunk or get-up. The first kind don't need help, and the second don't deserve it."
"But there are the children, popsy," urged Jane. "The children of the no-account poor ought to have a chance."
"I don't reckon there ever was a more shiftless, do-easy pair than my father and mother," rejoined Martin Hastings. "They were what set me to jumping."
She saw that his view was hopelessly narrow—that, while he regarded himself justly as an extraordinary man, he also, for purposes of prejudice and selfishness, regarded his own achievements in overcoming what would have been hopeless handicaps to any but a giant in character and in physical endurance as an instance of what any one could do if he would but work. She never argued with him when she wished to carry her point. She now said:
"It seems to me that, in our own interest, we ought to do what we can to make the poor live better. As you say, it's positively dangerous to go about in the tenement part of town—and those people are always coming among us. For instance, our servants have relatives living in Cooper Street, where there's a pest of consumption."