“There are a dozen arguments against keeping it,” returned the nasal voice of old Joseph G. Clark. “The chief one is the necessity of making a large investment in these new tenements.”
The Reverend Smith Boyd rose again, shutting the light from the red robe of the Good Shepherd out of quietly concentrated Jim Sargent’s eyes.
“I object to this entire discussion,” he stated. “We have a moral obligation which forbids us to discuss matters of investment and profit within these walls as if we were a lard trust. We have neglected our moral obligation in Vedder Court, until we are as blackened with sin as the thief on the cross.”
Shrewd old Rufus Manning looked at the young rector curiously. He was puzzled over the change in him.
“Don’t swing the pendulum too far, Doctor Boyd,” Manning reminded him, with a great deal of kindliness. These two had met often in Vedder Court. “Our sins, such as they are, are more passive than active.”
It was, of course, old Nicholas Van Ploon who fell back again on the stock argument which had been quite sufficient to soothe his conscience for all these years.
“We give these people cheaper rent than they can find anywhere in the city.”
“We should continue to do so, but in cleaner and more wholesome quarters,” quickly returned the rector. “This is the home of all these poverty stricken people whom Market Square Church has taken under its shelter, and we have no right to dispose of it.”
“That’s what I say,” and Nicholas Van Ploon nodded his round head. “We should not sell the property.”
“We can not for shame, if for nothing else,” agreed the rector, seizing on every point of advantage to support his intense desire to lift the Vedder Court derelicts from the depth of their degradation. “We lie now under the disgrace of having owned property so filthy that the city was compelled to order it torn down. The only way in which we can redeem the reputation of Market Square Church is to replace those tenements with better ones, and conduct them as a benefit to the people rather than to our own pockets.”