“Stand by; that’s all, I guess.”
“You couldn’t tell me a little more about it, could you?”
“No, I couldn’t, Dick.”
“I’m not even to guess?”
“You couldn’t guess. It’s the kind of thing that’s entirely outside of—of the probabilities. I think it’s outside of the range of your understanding, Dick. I don’t think you know that there is exactly that kind of trouble in the world.”
“And you think you’d better not enlighten me?”
“I couldn’t, Dick, even if I wanted to. Funny you happened to be in this part of town to-night just when I really needed you.”
He smiled. Every night of his life he followed her, watching over her, dodging down dark alley ways, waiting at squalid entrances until she came out. To-night he had ventured to speak to her only because he knew her to be in need of actual physical assistance.
“Awfully glad to be anywhere around when you need me,” he said; “still I hope you don’t 283 mind my suggesting that this is a Gehenna of a place for either of us to be in.”
“Haven’t you any feeling for the downtrodden?” Nancy asked, with a faint reflection of what Billy referred to as her “older and better manner.”