s fearful!" Kitty shuddered. "The sun shines much better on the
Avenue, and you might as well be dead as live in this part of the
town. When people ask me where you are I'm--"

"Ashamed to tell them?" I laughed. "Don't tell them, if the telling
mortifies you. Those who object to visiting me in my new home will
soon forget I'm living. Those to whom it does not matter where I
live will find where I am without asking you. I wouldn't bother."

"But what must I say when people ask me why you've come down here?
why you've made this awful change from living among the best people
to living among these--I don't know what they are. Nobody knows."

"They are perfectly good people." I took a pin out of Kitty's hat
and tried the latter at a different angle. "The man on the corner is
named Crimm. He's a policeman. The girl next door makes cigarettes,
and her friend around the corner works at the Nottingham Overall
factory. The cigarette-girl has a beau who walks home with her every
evening. He's delicate and can't take a job indoors. Just at
present he's an assistant to the keeper of Cherry Hill Park."

Kitty stared at me as if not sure she heard aright. The tears in her
big blue eyes disappeared and into them came incredulity. "Do you
know them--the cigarette-girl, and the overall-girl, and the
policeman?" Her voice was thin with dismay and unbelief. "Do you
really know people like that?"

"I do." I laughed in the puzzled and protesting face, kissed it.
"To every sort of people other people not of their sort are 'people
like that.' Our customs and characteristics and habits of thought
and manner of life separate us into our particular groups, but in
many ways all people are dreadfully alike, Kitty. To the little
cigarette-girl you're a 'person like that.' Did you ever wonder what
she thought of you?"

"Why should I wonder? It doesn't matter what she thinks. I don't
know her, never will know her. I can't understand why you want to
know her, to know people who--"

"I want to know all sorts of people." Again I tilted Kitty's hat,
held her off so as to get a better effect. "You see, I've wondered
sometimes what they thought of us--these people who haven't had our
chance. Points of view always interest me."

"What difference does it make what they think? You're the queerest
person I've ever known! You aren't very religious. You never did go
to church as much as I did. Are you going in for slums?