When she saw the boys playing in the mud puddle in the one vacant lot, she thought of her own little boy, on whom she had lavished every care, every luxury. So with these working-girls, she thought how easily she might have been one of them going from the rooming-house in Church Street to shop or factory, as many women of better Puritan families than hers had done. It was pure accident, she could see, why she and her child had been saved from such a lot--due neither to her own ability nor that of any of her Clark forbears! It was a humbling perception. "Hell!" her cousin was saying explosively, "these people are no better 'n cattle. At least they ought to give 'em a trough to wash in and a place where they could buy decent food." "A few other things, too, perhaps," the judge added with his gentle smile. "But who will do it? The city is already badly debt-ridden. The owners of the land pay so much in taxes and interest, due to the high price of the land here, that they probably make a bare eight per cent net on their investment." He looked inquiringly at the young man. "It's all wrong," the mason retorted heatedly, forgetting that he had hoped to become one of these "owners of the land," and returning to his incipient rebellion at the state of society in which he lived. "Somebody ought to be made to do such things." The judge smiled finely, merely remarking in a casual tone,-- "It is a very perplexing question, all that, my young friend!" "But you don't think it's right so," the mason persisted belligerently, thinking to challenge a supporter of things as they are. "There's very little that is quite right in this world, my boy," the judge replied simply. "Well, we'd better set out now to make it nearer right," the young man grumbled. "Oh, yes, that is perfectly sound doctrine.... And shall we begin with Clark's Field?" he asked, turning to Adelle with one of his playful, kindly smiles. "It needs it," she said simply. "Yes, I think it needs it!" "Sure!" the mason asserted resoundingly. A little while afterwards the judge said to the driver,-- "I think that we will go home now, John." XLIX