“But this neighborhood!” he expostulated, and the sternest of his Puritan ancestors could not have crowded more deprecation into the three words.
“I know,” she nodded. “But you remember the old saying—that beggars mustn’t be choosers. We were glad enough to find shelter anywhere. And the people ... they are not what they ought to be, perhaps; but they are kind to us. Won’t you let me thank you again and say good-night?”
Since there was nothing else to be done, he did it; though he waited until after she had disappeared up the unlighted stair before he turned to walk away, still shocked and dismayed at the thought of two unprotected women and two young girls living—being obliged to live—in such surroundings. It shouldn’t be permitted; it must not be permitted. Surely he and Bromley together could hatch up some plan by means of which Jean and her family could be helped; some plan which they could accept without becoming objects of charity.
It was at the Sixteenth Street corner that he came suddenly upon Middleton. The former tonnage cleric, clean shaven as to the beard, dapper and well fed, was standing in a dark doorway, fingering his mustaches and apparently waiting for some one.
“Hello, Philly!” he called. “Little off your beat down here,—what?”
With no definite reason for so doing, Philip began to bristle inwardly. Though he had worked with Middleton and roomed with him, he had never been quite able to conquer an ingrained aversion to the man.
“It is a public street, isn’t it?” he suggested.
“That is the trouble with it; it is too public for a truly good young man like yourself. Or perhaps you are not so truly good as you used to be. How about it?”
With the instinctive antagonism to prompt it, there was a sharp reply on the end of Philip’s tongue. But he suppressed it.
“I like to ramble around a little now and then in the evenings,” he substituted; and Middleton laughed.