We passed over to Fifth Avenue, and proceeded uptown at a pace which
reminded me of the active gait of my youth. My footsteps had grown
unwontedly light, and we covered the first ten blocks in about three
minutes.
"We don't seem to be headed for the slums," I panted.
"Indeed, we are not," she retorted. "There is no need of carrying coals
to Newcastle on this occasion. This isn't a slum case. It's far more
acute than that."
A tear came forth from her eye and trickled down over the mackintosh.
"It is a peculiarity of modern effort on behalf of suffering humanity,"
she went on, "that it is concentrated upon the relief of the misery of
the so-called _sub_merged, to the utter neglect of the often more
poignant needs of the _e_merged. We have workers by the thousand in the
slums, doing all that can be done, and successfully too, to relieve the
unhappy condition of the poor, but nobody ever seems to think of the
sorrows of the starving hundreds on upper Fifth Avenue."
"See here, madam," said I, stopping suddenly short under a lamp-post in
front of the Public Library, "I want to tell you right now that if you
think you are going to take me into any of the homes of the hopelessly
rich at this hour of the morning, you are the most mightily mistaken
creature that ever wore a psyche-knot. Why, great heavens, my dear lady,
suppose the owner of the house were to wake up and demand to know what I
was doing there at this time of night? What could I say?"
"You have gone on slumming parties, haven't you?" she demanded coldly.
"Often," said I. "But that's different."
"Why?" she asked, with a simplicity that baffled me. "Is it any worse
for you to intrude upon the home of a Fifth Avenue millionaire than it
is to go unasked into the small, squalid tenement of some poor sweatshop
worker on the East Side?"
"Oh, but it's different," I protested. "I go there to see if there is
anything I can do to relieve the unhappy condition of the persons who
live in the slums."
"No doubt," said she. "I'll take your word for it, but is that any
reason why you should neglect the sufferers who live in these marble
palaces?"
As she spoke, she hooked hold of my arm once more, and in a moment we
were climbing the front door steps of a palatial residence. The house
showed a dark and forbidding front at that hour in the morning despite
its marble splendors, and I was glad to note that the massive grille
doors of wrought iron were heavily barred.
"It's useless, you see. We're locked out," I ventured.
"Indeed?" she retorted, with a sarcastic smile, as she seized my hand in
her icy grip and literally pulled me after her through the marble front
of the dwelling. "What have we to do with bolts and bars?"
"I don't know," said I ruefully, "but I have a notion that if I don't
bolt I'll get the bars all right."