"Yes. Do you see those pale, pinched-faced girls with the pink-cotton frocks on, sitting at the end of that farthest bench, and these two boys just in front with clothes several sizes too large?"
He stood silently regarding them for some time, and then said: "The world is strangely divided. It is one of the reasons that makes me doubt the existence of a beneficent All-Father."
"But these may get safely into the light and fullness of Heaven."
"Yes," he said, thoughtfully; "but how few of them will live up to the requirements of admittance to that perfect place?"
"The rich have as many shortcomings as the poor. Sometimes I think they have even more."
"You are very democratic."
"Is that a serious charge against me? The one perfect Being our world has seen chose poverty, and a lot among the lowly. When the world grows older, and men get wiser, possibly they will make the same choice."
"There have been solitary instances of the like along the ages—men of whom the world was not worthy—but the most of us are not such stuff as heroes are made of."
I turned to him with kindling eyes: "Wouldn't you like to be one of them, Mr. Bovyer?"
He gave me a look that some way I did not care to meet, and turned my eyes away quickly to a restless black-eyed little girl who was stretching eager hands to a pink-cheeked dollie.