Downtown they went, to Washington Square, where they dismounted, to wander off at random. All at once they were in another world. It was like an Alice in Wonderland adventure. They stepped out of the quiet of the green, shady quadrangle into a narrow street, swarming with life. Innumerable children, everywhere, shrieking and running at games. Fat mothers and babies along the curb, bargaining with pushcart men. A wheezing hurdy-gurdy, with every other note gone to the limbo of lost chords, rasped and leaked jerky tunes. All the shops had foreign names on the windows--not even an "English spoken here" sign. The fresh wind blew down the dirty street, and peppered everything with dust. Newspapers increased their circulation in a most irritating manner under foot. The place was hideous, lifting its raucous cry to the fair spring sky. Jarvis looked at Bambi, silenced, for once. Her face registered a loud protest. "Well?" he challenged her. "Oh, I hate ugliness so. It's like pain. Is it very weak of me to hate ugliness?" she begged. "It's very natural, and no doubt weak." "I wouldn't mind the thought of poverty so much--not hunger, nor thirst, nor cold--but dirt and hideousness--they are too terrible." "This is life in the raw. You like it dressed for Fifth Avenue better," he taunted. "Do you prefer this?" "Infinitely." She looked about again, with a sense of having missed his point. "Because it's fight, hand-to-throat fight?" "Yes. You can teach these people. They don't know anything. They are dumb beasts. You can give them tongue. It's too late to teach your Upper End." A woman passed close, with a baby, covered with great sores. Bambi caught at Jarvis's sleeve and tottered a step. "I feel a little sick," she faltered. He caught her hand through his arm, and hurried her quickly back the way they had come. As they mounted the stage, he looked at her white face. "We will have to expurgate life for you, Miss Mite." "No, no. I want it all. I must get hardened." Back at the club, she hurried into her hot bath, with a vague hope of washing off all traces of that awful street. But their talk at dinner was desultory and rather serious. Jarvis talked for the most part, elaborating schemes of social reform and the handling of our immigrant brothers. They started off to the theatre, with no definite plan. Bambi's spirits rose to the lights of Broadway, like a trout to a silver shiner. There is a hectic joyousness on Broadway, a personification of the "Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die" spirit which warms you, like champagne, or chills you, like the icy hand of despair, according to your mood. Bambi skipped along beside Jarvis, twittering gayly. "People are happy, aren't they?" "Surface veneer." "Jarvis, you old bogie-man, hiding in the dark, to jump out and say 'Boo!'" "That's my work--booing frauds. Let's go in here," he added. "'Damaged Goods,'" Bambi read on the theatre poster. "Do you know anything about it?"