‘No, I can’t say I do. I’m only telling you that her bad luck isn’t unexampled. It’s very fortunate for her that she has good-natured relatives.’
Amy had taken a seat apart. She sat with her head leaning on her hand.
‘Why don’t you go and see Reardon?’ John asked of his mother.
‘What would be the use? Perhaps he would tell me to mind my own business.’
‘By jingo! precisely what you would be doing. I think you ought to see him and give him to understand that he’s behaving in a confoundedly ungentlemanly way. Evidently he’s the kind of fellow that wants stirring up. I’ve half a mind to go and see him myself. Where is this slum that he’s gone to live in?’
‘We don’t know his address yet.’
‘So long as it’s not the kind of place where one would be afraid of catching a fever, I think it wouldn’t be amiss for me to look him up.’
‘You’ll do no good by that,’ said Amy, indifferently.
‘Confound it! It’s just because nobody does anything that things have come to this pass!’
The conversation was, of course, profitless. John could only return again and again to his assertion that Reardon must get ‘a decent berth.’ At length Amy left the room in weariness and disgust.