Margaret, clear, sparkling, watching them with her humorous grin, as if she had staged a vaudeville act. Amy Spurgeon, slight, dark, her lean, high-cheekboned face sallow and taciturn over the collar of her squirrel coat, a flange of stiff hair black under the soft brim of her gray fur hat. Catherine nibbled at her in swift glances as they sat down in the living room. Margaret had talked about her. "Amy has to have a passion for something." She looked it, with the criss-crosses of fine lines at the corners of her black eyes, and the deep straight lines from nostrils past her mouth. Militant suffragist, pacifist—"She had a passion for the Hindus last winter. Now she has one for me. I can't be a cause, exactly, but she finds plenty of causes on the side." She looks like an Indian, decided Catherine, a temperamental, rather worn and fiery Indian.
Margaret and Charles were sparring; they couldn't even telephone each other without crossing points.
"If they are feeble-minded, why bother with them? You can't change them. Sentimental bosh, this coddling of idiots."
"But they work better, I tell you! Is that sentimental? They make more money for their bosses. That should appeal to your male sense of what is sensible."
"Even if they didn't work better"—Amy's voice shot in, a deep throaty tone, flexible with emotion—"Every human being has a right to happiness and comfort."
"Even human beings with brains have some difficulty cashing in on that right," said Catherine. If Amy and Charles started in on society with the vox populi stop out, they would fight all night! Amy stared at her with deliberate inspection.
Presently Catherine told them about Flora. Flora had, since the afternoon, pressed so closely to the surface of her thoughts that she was bound to come out.
"You shouldn't have gone into a nigger tenement alone!" said Charles.
"Why not?" demanded Amy. "Aren't negroes people?"
"I did feel queer, with the house oozing excitement along with smells." Catherine smiled at Charles. "But it wasn't dangerous. Only unpleasant."