ittle child who
mounted your steps--even suppose she got that far," Nan said.

"What would happen to her?" demanded the wondering Bess, while Walter
looked thoughtful.

"If she got into the street at all (there is always a policeman on fixed
post at the corner) one of the men at the house, the butler or the
footman, would drive her away.

"You notice that beggars never come through that street. They are a
nuisance and wealthy people don't want to see people in rags about
their doorsteps. Even the most charitable people are that way, I
guess," added Nan.

"Your mother is so generous, Walter, that if beggars had free access to
the street and the house, she could never go out of an afternoon without
having to push her way through a throng of the poor and diseased to reach
her carriage."

"Oh, mercy!" cried Bess.

"I guess that is so," admitted Walter. "You've got mother sized up
about right."

"I know it's so," said Nan, quickly. "Do you know, I think your mother,
Walter, would have made a good chatelaine of a castle in medieval times.
Then charitably inclined ladies were besieged by the poor and miserable
at their castle gates. The good lady gave them largess as she stepped
into her chariot. Their servants threw silver pennies at a distance so
that the unfortunates would scramble for the coins and leave a free
passage for miladi.

"In those days," pursued Nan, quite in earnest, "great plagues used to
destroy a large portion of the population--sweeping through the castles
of the rich as well as the hovels of the poor. That was because the
beggars hung so upon the skirts of the rich. Wealth paid for its
cruelty to poverty in those days, by suffering epidemics of disease
with the poor."

"Goodness, Nan! I never thought of that," said Walter. "What a
girl you are."

"She reads everything," said Bess, proudly; "even statistics."

Nan laughed heartily. "I did not get _that_ out of a book of statistics,
Bess. But that is why we have so many hospitals and institutions for
housing poor and ill people. Society has had to make these provisions for
the poor, to protect itself."

"Now you sound like a regular socialist or anarchist or something," said
Bess, somewhat vaguely.

"You'd have heard it all before, if you'd listened to some of Dr.
Beulah's lectures in the classroom," Nan said. "But we're far off the
subject of Inez. I wish we could find her; but there seems no way."

"Oh, Nan! are you sure? Put on your th