Lucas Randall became meditative.
“The church work, now,” he asked, “does she seem interested?”
“At first I think she was. I took her on some of my regular poor people calls. She seemed interested—too interested. Why, one day I lost her in a tenement on Kosciusko street. I had to come home without her, half wild with anxiety. She rushed in an hour later and when I questioned her as to where she had been she replied that she had found a poor Scotch family and had been so interested that she had forgotten me. ‘Forgotten’—that’s the very word she used. She said she had been ‘seeking the causes of poverty.’ I told her poverty came from people being poor, but that did not seem to satisfy her. She asked me why they were poor. I answered that often it was because they were shiftless. ‘Not always,’ she replied, ‘these Scotch people, aunt, dear, were strangely like you and me.’ She spoke as if I were the one who did not understand.”
“And since then?”
“Well, she has seemed to prefer going alone.” Mrs. Randall paused on the verge of a new confession. “Luke, dear,” she went on hurriedly, “Mary goes into sections of the city you have warned me not to visit!”
“Not the Levee?”
“Good Lord,” ejaculated Mr. Randall, “surely she doesn’t go alone?”
“Yes, except for her maid.”
“That girl she took from the Refuge?”