“Don’t be afraid,” Merry smiled at the little French girl. “These are harmless, kindly people. They are poor, to be sure. But in this world, ninety out of every hundred are poor and probably always will be.
“Some of these people have a few poor things to sell. The others hope to purchase them at a bargain; which indeed they often do.
“So you see,” she ended, “like other places in the world, Maxwell Street deserves its place in the sun, for it serves the poor of this great city. What could be nobler?”
“Ah, yes, What could be nobler?” the little French girl echoed.
“How strange!” she murmured as they walked along. “There is no order here. See! There are shoes. Here are cabbages. And here are more shoes. There are chickens. Here are more shoes. And yonder are stockings to go with the shoes. How very queer.”
“Yes,” Florence sighed, “there is no order in the minds of the very poor. Perhaps that is why they are poor.”
“Come!” Merry cried impatiently. “We must find the shops of our friends. They are on Peoria Street. Two blocks up.”
“Lead the way.” Petite Jeanne motioned her friends to follow.
As they wedged their way through the throng, Petite Jeanne found her spirits drooping. “How sad it all seems!” she thought to herself. “There is a little dried up old lady. She must be eighty. She’s trying to sell a few lemons. And here is a slip of a girl. How pinched her face is! She’s watching over a few wretched stockings. If you whistled through them they’d go into rags.
“And yet,” she was ready to smile again, “they all seem cheerful.”