Quite after the maddening fashion of men the doctor did not answer until he had consumed, and appreciatively, the last of the roll he was eating.  And then—­

“I’ve been here quite as long as you have, Miss Thompson,” he remarked, a shade too gently.

The Superintendent raised tired eyes from her plate.  She was little and slim and gray, this Superintendent; it seemed almost as though the slums had drained from her the life and colour.

“When you’ve been working in this section for twenty years,” she said slowly, “you’ll realize that nobody can ever understand.  You’ll realize that we all have animal traits—­to a certain extent.  And you’ll realize that quarrelling isn’t ever worth while.”

“But”—­Rose-Marie was inclined to argue the point—­“but Dr. Blanchard talks as if the people down here are scarcely human!  And it’s not right to feel so about one’s fellow-men.  Dr. Blanchard acts as if the people down here haven’t souls!”

The Young Doctor helped himself nonchalantly to a second roll.

“There’s a certain sort of a little bug that lives in the water,” he said, “and it drifts around aimlessly until it finds another little bug that it holds on to.  And then another little bug takes hold, and another, and another.  And pretty soon there are hundreds of little bugs, and then there are thousands, and then there are millions, and then billions, and then—­”

The Superintendent interrupted wearily.

“I’d stop at the billions, if I were you,” she said, “particularly as they haven’t any special bearing on the subject.”

“Oh, but they have” said the doctor, “for, after a while, the billions and trillions of little bugs, clinging together, make an island.  They haven’t souls, perhaps,” he darted a triumphant glance at Rose-Marie, “but they make an island just the same!”

He paused for a moment, as if waiting for some sort of comment.  When it did not come, he spoke again.

“The people of the slums,” he said, “the people who drift into, and out of, and around this Settlement House, are not very unlike the little bugs.  And, after all, they do help to make the city!”

There was a quaver in Rose-Marie’s voice, and a hurt look in her eyes, as she answered.

“Yes, they are like the little bugs,” she said, “in the blind way that they hold together!  But please, Dr. Blanchard, don’t say they are soulless.  Don’t—­”

All at once the Young Doctor’s hand was banging upon the table.  All at once his voice was vehemently raised.

“It’s the difference in our point of view, Miss Thompson,” he told Rose-Marie, “and I’m afraid that I’m right and that you’re—­not right.  You’ve come from a pretty little country town where every one was fairly comfortable and fairly prosperous.  You’ve always been a part of a community where people went to church and prayer-meeting and Sunday-school.  Your neighbours