emed to attract his attention when he heard
their sound. "I've given between five and six thousand pounds to London
hospitals within the present year," he added, straightening himself. "I
wonder you didn't see it. It was in all the papers."

"Hospitals!"

It was impossible to exaggerate the scorn which her voice imported into
the word. He looked at her with unfeigned surprise, and then took in the
impression that she was upon a subject which exceptionally interested
her. Certainly the display of something approaching animation in her
glance and manner was abnormal.

"I said 'do some GOOD with your money,'" she reminded him, still with a
vibration of feeling in her tone. "You must live in the country, if
you think London hospitals are deserving objects. They couldn't fool
Londoners on that point, not if they had got the Prince to go on his
hands and knees. And you give a few big cheques to them," she went on,
meditatively, "and you never ask how they're managed, or what rings are
running them for their own benefit, or how your money is spent--and you
think you've done a noble, philanthropic thing! Oh no--I wasn't talking
about humbug charity. I was talking about doing some genuine good in the
world."

He put his leg over the high stool, and pushed his hat back with a
smile. "All right," he said, genially. "What do you propose?"

"I don't propose anything," she told him, after a moment's hesitation.
"You must work that out for yourself. What might seem important to
me might not interest you at all--and if you weren't interested you
wouldn't do anything. But this I do say to you, Joel--and I've said it
to myself every day for this last year or more, and had you in mind all
the time, too--if I had made a great fortune, and I sat about in
purple and fine linen doing nothing but amuse myself in idleness and
selfishness, letting my riches accumulate and multiply themselves
without being of use to anybody, I should be ASHAMED to look my
fellow-creatures in the face! You were born here. You know what London
slums are like. You know what Clare Market was like--it's bad enough
still--and what the Seven Dials and Drury Lane and a dozen other places
round here are like to this day. That's only within a stone's throw.
Have you seen Charles Booth's figures about the London poor? Of course
you haven't--and it doesn't matter. You KNOW what they are like. But you
don't care. The misery and ignorance and filth and hopelessness of two