Alec Morrison, the sleep gone entirely from his eyes, his face a little red after shaving, came downstairs to the breakfast-room. Ellen Keenans was sitting on the sofa, a book in her hand.
“Up already, dear?” asked Morrison, and bent to kiss the girl. She laid down the book which she had been reading and met the kiss with her lips.
“The country life is so quiet, so refreshing; one cannot have too much of it,” she said, drumming idly with her fingers on the edge of the sofa.
“What are you reading, dear?” the young man asked.
“Kautsky’s _Ethics of Materialist Conception of History_.”
“Rather a big thing to tackle before breakfast.”
She cast a look of reproof at the young man, lifted the book from the table, then, as if something occurred to her, laid it down again.
“You haven’t read it, I bet,” she said; then before he could answer: “You promised last night to let me see some queer people--”
“An old man and woman,” said Morrison. “A quaint pair they are, stunted and seedy. They seem to have no souls, but I suppose deep down within them there is some eternal goodness, some fundamental virtue.”
“Who are you quoting?” asked the girl, getting to her feet. “Where are these two people?”
“In an outhouse near by,” he told her. “It’s terrible the abyss to which some people sink,” he went on. “How many of these derelicts might be saved if some restraining hand was reached out to help them, if some charitable soul would take pity on them.”
“When did you begin to look upon charity as a means of remedying social evils?” asked the girl almost fiercely. “Charity is a bribe paid to the maltreated so that they may hold their tongues.”
Morrison, as was his custom when the girl spoke in that manner, became silent.
“In here,” he said when they arrived at the dilapidated door of the pig-sty.
“In there?” questioned the girl and looked at Morrison.
Morrison entered with rather an important air; he was showing a new world to his fair companion. The girl hesitated for a moment on the threshold, then followed the young man into the dark interior.
Donal and Jean were seated at the fire drinking tea from the same can. On a small and dirty board which lay on the ground between them a chunk of dry bread and a little lump of butter could be seen. The two occupants of the sty took very little notice of the visitors; the man said “Good-morning” gruffly, the woman looked critically at the girl’s dress then went on with her meal.