“To where she belongs, I hope. Child, you must never, never do such a thing again.”
“But, Cousin Margaret, I didn’t do it. It was Buster, poor fellow, who was scared almost to death by those upstairs trains and the automobiles. Why, they scare me, too, they sound so like a flock of wild geese coming right down on your head. I hate them. I don’t see why people ride in them when there are so many horses.”
“For once I agree with you. I also detest them, the modern, disagreeable things. But that’s begging the question. I refer to your disobedience in visiting that tenement house.”
“Why—But, Cousin Margaret! I didn’t know—you hadn’t really forbidden; you’d only said I needn’t ever know anything about poor Avenue A and the folks live on it, and I wouldn’t have known only Buster made me. My mother says nothing happens by accident and that everything leads to something else. Like this, seems if: If Buster hadn’t thrown poor Sophy down, I’d never have know how poor she was and had the chance to be good to her. I’m going to write my mother soon as I can and tell her; and that’s the first time I ever was glad I was going to be an ‘heiress.’ Heiresses have lots of money and oh! dear! It will take all we can ever dig out of that copper mine to take care of all the poor folks in Avenue A. I shall ask my mother to have you, or Mr. Hale, or whoever ’tis that keeps the money, to give me some right away. I can’t bear to think of any nice old lady, like Granny Briggs, living in a tiny room with only a bed and two chairs and a weeny, tiny stove in the corner. She was so busy she couldn’t even stop to talk to me a minute. It made me feel real tired just to look at her. I’m going to spend my whole life helping poor Avenue A people, or others like them, and I’m going to begin with Sophy and her grandmother. I just can’t forget them, nor—nor the poor smell! I should hate that worse of all, that poor smell. Wouldn’t you?”
Mrs. Dalrymple had listened in silence while her small relative thus unburdened her soul, and now replied with considerable satisfaction:
“That’s the Waldron in you. I have tried, and once Gabriella did, faithfully, to do what is known as ‘slumming;’ but the ‘poor smell’ conquered us both. I trust it will you, and certainly you have made a good beginning, to detect it so instantly. Now, sit down and listen to me. You are going to be a rich young woman but you are not yet. You are but a very inexperienced child, who has just caught her first glimpse of the ‘seamy side’ of life. It isn’t a pleasant side, and to you it isn’t a necessary one. There are numberless organized charities to provide for the wants of the poor and I subscribe to many of them. I will have your name put down upon one or two lists and it must then content you to know that you are helping, through others, those who need. Personally, you can have nothing to do with the abjectly poor. It isn’t fitting and it cannot be. So the next time you are tempted to visit any such tenement as that of to-day please to remember that you are under my authority and I forbid.
“Now, that is a longer lecture than I often give and I shall not repeat it. You must remember and obey. Now go, ask Barnes to make a hot bath ready for you and send everything you have on to the laundry. Except your habit, which, of course, must go to a professional cleaner. I feel as if you had brought that ‘poor smell’ into this very house!”
“Oh! no, Cousin Margaret, it isn’t that. It’s just the ordinary smell-y kind of air is in here. I noticed it the moment I got here and Barnes never opens the windows like she ought. My mother says that the more outdoor air we get into the house the sweeter it is. Why, Cousin Margaret, we never close the windows at Sobrante, except in the rainy season and even then not many of them.
“And I’m sorry not to go right away as you want, but there’s something been forgot. We left the bundle of sewing in that carriage and I promised Sophy this frock. I couldn’t break my word, you know, so I will have to go just the once more and after I find the carriage. Is it in the street here, still?”
“Oh! you tiresome girl! What next? I did not for a moment suppose that in inviting you to my house I was going to have its peace so disturbed. Here have I been fretting away half the afternoon, about your disappearance, instead of enjoying my drive in the park as I should. Then when you do come home you do it bringing some probable infection with you. Those tenements are never free from some contagious disease, I’ve read, and I expect you’ll come down with scarlet fever, or diphtheria, or some other terrible thing. That would mean a health officer visiting and fumigation and other miserable annoyances.