“Nothing of the sort—goose! I didn't say he said it. I said he indicated it. It was his manner. Verbally he was polite enough. Said he didn't believe in charity.” Cyrus the Gaunt snorted.
“Gave his reasons too. He said he doesn't believe in charity because it makes the recipient think too ill of himself, which is bad, and the giver think too well of himself, which is worse.”
“Something in that,” grudged the Little Red Doctor.
“Isn't there! I tried to explain the usefulness of the Legal Aid Society, but he said that people who got into court were fools and people who hired lawyers to lie for them were knaves. Then”—the Bonnie Lassie dimpled—“he caught me sniffing at his musty old house and asked me what was the matter, and I asked him if it had ever been dusted and aired, and he said that he was afraid he'd have to get a housekeeper and if I'd get him one—the right kind of a one—an old, respectable, honest woman who'd do all the work while he was away so that he'd never have to see her, he'd contribute to our fund”—the Bonnie Lassie paused for effect—“ten dollars.”
When the assembled council had finished expressing its various emotions the speaker continued:—“I've got a month to do it in. So I made him make out the check and hold it, unsigned.”
“What's the idea, Lassie?” asked MacLachan the Tailor.
“The leak-in-the-dike principle,” she explained profoundly. “The ten dollars is just the first trickle. If we ever get him started, Heaven help him before we let him stop. I'm going to get that ten dollars if I have to take the position myself.” But she was not driven to that length. It is a recognized fact in Our Square that when the Bonnie Lassie determines to get anything done, Providence, with rank favoritism, invariably steps in and does it for her. This powerful and unfailing ally it was that brought Molly Dunstan to Our Square, white-faced, hot-eyed, and with a gnawing fire of despair at her heart, plunging blindly against the onset of a furious March wind, until the lights of Schoenkind's drug store guided her to harbor. In the absence of Schoenkind, who was dining late at the Elite Restaurant, young Irvy Levinson was keeping shop, and as Young Irvy is of a cheerful, carefree, and undiscriminating disposition he made no bones of selling the wind-beaten customer a bottle of a certain potent drug which has various properties and virtues back of its skull-and-crossbones label, one of the latter being that it is prompt though painful. With her purchase, Molly plunged back into the storm, turned toward the dim park space, and bumped violently into the Little Red Doctor. Gently releasing her, he caught a glimpse of her face. Its aspect was not reassuring. Young women who come blundering out of drug stores with that expression and make for the nearest quiet spot not infrequently cause needless trouble to the busy authorities. Opening Schoenkind's door, the Little Red Doctor thrust into the aperture his earnest face and this no less earnest query: “What did that last customer buy?”
“Carbolic,” replied Young Irvy light-heartedly. “For a dog. Ast if it hurt much.”
The door slammed with much the effect of an oath, and the questioner sprinted for the park. Being wise in the way of human misery, he knew that mysterious instinct of suicides which guides them, no matter what their chosen method of self-destruction, toward water. Therefore he took the shortest route for Our Fountain.
Young Irvy's customer sat huddled on a bench at the water's edge. The bottle was in her hand, uncorked. She had just made a trial of the liquid on her hand, and was crying softly because it burned. As the Little Red Doctor's grip closed on her wrist, she gasped and sought to raise the drug to her lips.