"I don't think I have," replied James.
"Well, that shows what the League is trying to do better than I can.... It's had its results, too. The thing has been running about a year, and already the number of arrests for certain kinds of offenses has fallen off over fifty per cent. Keeping them off the streets alone is enough to make us feel proud and satisfied...."
"I should think so," said James, blushing hotly. He had never heard a young woman make such a remark before, and was at a loss how to take it. But there was something at once fearless and modest in the way Madge made it that not only put him at his ease but set him thinking. "Good Lord, why can't we live in a world where every one talks like that?" he suddenly asked himself.
Madge went on to give him a fuller account of the purposes and methods of the League, outlining some of its difficulties and indicating, as far as she knew it, the path of its future development. She paid him the compliment of asking him several questions, and he was displeased to find that he had either to bluff answers for them or confess ignorance.
"I wish I could do something of this sort," he said presently, in a musing sort of way.
"Why don't you? There's plenty of chance in New York, I should say."
"Oh, New York, yes. I hadn't thought of that. I don't know what use I could be, though."
"No difficulty about that, I should think. What about athletics? You'd work among boys, I presume?"
"Yes, I suppose so." Somehow the prospect did not attract him particularly. Then he thought of Stodger; of what Stodger's evenings would have been but for him. What did he do to illuminate Stodger's evenings under actual conditions, now that he come to think of it?
"You'll find there are plenty of things you can do for them. Practically every one who knows anything at all can conduct an evening class. Even I—I have a class in hat trimming! One of the few subjects I can truthfully say I have practical knowledge in."