notoriety seeker?"
Colorless Hen looked rather hard at her pretty cousin. She allowed a
perceptible pause to fall before she said:
"I thought you said you knew him."
"No; I said that I barely spoke to him once."
"If you only said good-morning to him--if you only _looked_ at him once,
on the street--I don't see how you could possibly imagine.... Why,
Cally, he's about the least self-seeking human being that ever lived.
He's so absolutely un-self-seeking that he gives away every single thing
he's got, to anybody that comes along and wants it. In the first place,
he's giving away his life.... Some of his ideas may be visionary or
mistaken, but--"
"I should think so, after glancing at his article. What _was_ his
object, then, my dear?"
"Well, that's simple, I should think. He went to the Works, and thought
that conditions there were bad, and being what would be called the
reformer type, I suppose he thought it his duty to tell people so, so
that the conditions would be corrected--"
"Well, really, Hen! Don't you know, if conditions _were_ bad at the
Works,--whatever that may mean, and I for one have never felt that
working-girls were entitled to Turkish baths and manicures,--don't you
_know_ papa would correct what was wrong without being called a homicide
by--by eccentric medical men?"
Hen hesitated, and then began: "Well, business is hard, Cally, and men
in business--"
"Why doesn't your friend try attending to his own, then, the medical
business, instead of interfering all the time with other people's?"
The Cooney answered quite easily: "You see, he'd say this _was_ his
business." Then she smiled a little, thoughtfully, and said: "He'd say,
Cally, that the world's all one family, and everybody's responsible for
everybody else. The cute part about it is that he absolutely believes
it.... And it worries him that people aren't as happy as they ought to
be, the poor because they haven't anything to be happy with, the rich
because they have too much. He and Mr. Beirne argue about that for
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