"'That kind of people,'" yelled the old man. "And what's the matter with that kind of people? You come creeping out of the milk-and-water East, all pink and perfumed up, and when you get into a bacon-and-beans country where people sweat instead of perspiring you wrinkle your nose like a calf and whine about the kind of people you find. What do you know about people, anyhow? Did you ever want to steal?"
"Of course not," said Prosser, who kept his temper.
"Did you ever want to drink whisky so bad you couldn't stand it?"
"No."
"Did you ever want to kill a man?"
"No."
"Were you ever broke and friendless and hopeless?"
"Why, I can't say I ever was."
"And you've never been downright hungry, either, where you didn't know if you'd ever eat again, have you? Then what license have you got to blame people for the condition you find them in? How do you know what brought this girl where she is?"
"Oh, I pity any woman who is adrift on the world, if that's what you mean, but I won't make a pet out of her just because she is friendless. She must expect that when she chooses her life. Her kind are bad—bad all through. They must be."