She was on her wedding journey when I left the house in which for
many years we had lived together, and, knowing it would spoil her
trip did I tell of what I had done, I did not tell. Two days ago she
got back, and over the telephone I gave her my new address.
"But I can't understand--" During most of her visit Kitty was
crying. She cries easily and well. "I can't take it in, can't even
glimpse why you want to live in such a horrid old place. It's awful!"
"Oh no, it isn't. It's a very nice place. Look how the sun comes
through those little panes of glass in those deep windows and chirps
all over the floor. I never knew before how much company sunshine
could be; how many different things it could do, until I came to
Scarborough Square. This is a very interesting place, Kitty."
"It's fearful!" Kitty shuddered. "The sun shines much better on the
Avenue, and you might as well be dead as live in this part of the
town. When people ask me where you are I'm--"
"Ashamed to tell them?" I laughed. "Don't tell them, if the telling
mortifies you. Those who object to visiting me in my new home will
soon forget I'm living. Those to whom it does not matter where I
live will find where I am without asking you. I wouldn't bother."
"But what must I say when people ask me why you've come down here?
why you've made this awful change from living among the best people
to living among these--I don't know what they are. Nobody knows."
"They are perfectly good people." I took a pin out of Kitty's hat
and tried the latter at a different angle. "The man on the corner is
named Crimm. He's a policeman. The girl next door makes cigarettes,
and her friend around the corner works at the Nottingham Overall
factory. The cigarette-girl has a beau who walks home with her every
evening. He's delicate and can't take a job indoors. Just at
present he's an assistant to the keeper of Cherry Hill Park."
Kitty stared at me as if not sure she heard aright. The tears in her
big blue eyes disappeared and into them came incredulity. "Do you
know them--the cigarette-girl, and the overall-girl, and the
policeman?" Her voice was thin with dismay and unbelief. "Do you
really know people like that?"
"I do." I laughed in the puzzled and protesting face, kissed it.
"To every sort of people other people not of their sort are 'people
like that.' Our customs and characteristics and habits of thought
and manner of life separate us into our particular groups, but in
many ways all people are dreadfully alike, Kitty. To the little
cigarette-girl you're a 'person like that.' Did you ever wonder what
she thought of you?"
"Why should I wonder? It doesn't matter what she thinks. I don't
know her, never will know her. I can't understand why you want to
know her, to know people who--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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