As she told her stories of New York needy and suffering, I mentally added my poor people at Magnolia, and began to wonder with myself, was all the world so? Were these two spots but samples of the whole? I got into a brown study, and was waked out of it by Miss Cardigan's "What is it, my dear?"
"Ma'am?" I said.
"Ye are studying some deep question," she said, smiling. "Maybe it's too big for you."
"So it is," said I, sighing. "Is it so everywhere, Miss Cardigan?"
"So how, my bairn?"
"Is there so much trouble everywhere in the world?"
Her face clouded over.
"Jesus said, 'The poor ye have always with you, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good.'"
"But that is what I don't understand about," I said. "How much ought one to do, Miss Cardigan?"