Lynn looked at him with suddenly arrested attention: "I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't mean to be rude. But possibly you've
come to the heart of the matter. I am not of your world. You know
there's a great deal in not being able to get another's point of view.
I hope I haven't done you an injustice. I haven't meant to. But you're
wrong in saying I don't know who you are or anything about you. You are
the son of William J. Shafton--the only son, isn't that so? Then you
are the one I mean. There can't be any mistake. And I do know something
about you. In fact I've been very angry at you, and wished I might meet
you and tell you what I thought of you."
"You don't say!" said Laurie getting up excitedly and moving over to a
chair next to hers regardless of his lame ankle, "This certainly is
interesting! What the deuce have I been doing to get myself in your bad
graces? I better repent at once before I hear what it is?"
"You are the one who owns the block of warehouses down on ---- street and
won't sell at any price to give the little children in all that region
a place to get a bit of fresh air, the grass and a view of the sky. You
are the one who won't pull down your old buildings and try new and
improved ways of housing the poor around there so that they can grow up
decently clean and healthy and have a little chance in this world. Just
because you can't have as many apartments and get as much money from
your investment you let the little children crowd together in rooms
that aren't fit for the pigs to live in, they are so dark and airless,
and crowded already. Oh, I know you keep within the law! You just skin
through without breaking it, but you won't help a little bit, you won't
even let your property help if someone else is willing to take the
bother! Oh, I've been so boiling at you ever since I heard your name
that I couldn't hardly keep my tongue still, to think of that great
beautiful car out there and how much it must have cost, and to hear you
speak of one of your other cars as if you had millions of them, and to
think of little Carmela living down in the basement room of Number 18
in your block, growing whiter and whiter every day, with her great blue
eyes and her soft fine wavy hair, and that hungry eager look in her
face. And her mother, sewing, sewing, all day long at the little cellar
window, and going blind because you won't put in a bigger one; sewing
on coarse dark vests, putting in pockets and buttonholes for a living
for her and Carmela, and you grinding her down and running around in
cars like that and taking it out of little Carmela, and little
Carmela's mother! Oh! How can I help feeling aloof from a person like
that?"