“Yes,” Hodder forced himself to go on, and it came to him that he had repeated virtually the same words to Mr. Parr, “it is at our very doors, a continual reproach.  There is real poverty in those rooming houses, and I have never seen vice so defiant and shameless.”

“It’s a shifty place, that,” McCrae replied.  “They’re in it one day and gone the next, a sort of catch-basin for all the rubbish of the city.  I can recall when decent people lived there, and now it’s all light housekeeping and dives and what not.”

“But that doesn’t relieve us of responsibility,” Hodder observed.

“I’m not denying it.  I think ye’ll find there’s very little to get hold of.”

Once more, he had the air of stopping short, of being able to say more.  Hodder refrained from pressing him.

Dalton Street continued to haunt him.  And often at nightfall, as he hurried back to his bright rooms in the parish house from some of the many errands that absorbed his time, he had a feeling of self-accusation as he avoided women wearily treading the pavements, or girls and children plodding homeward through the wet, wintry streets.  Some glanced at him with heavy eyes, others passed sullenly, with bent heads.  At such moments his sense of helplessness was overpowering.  He could not follow them to the dreary dwellings where they lodged.

Eldon Parr had said that poverty was inevitable.

THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

By Winston Churchill

Volume 2. 
V. The rector has more food for thought. 
Vi.  “Watchman, what of the night”
VII.  The kingdoms of the world
VIII.  The line of least resistance.

CHAPTER V

THE RECTOR HAS MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I

Sunday after Sunday Hodder looked upon the same picture, the winter light filtering through emblazoned windows, falling athwart stone pillars, and staining with rich colours the marble of the centre aisle.  The organ rolled out hymns and anthems, the voices of the white robed choir echoed among the arches.  And Hodder’s eye, sweeping over the decorous congregation, grew to recognize certain landmarks:  Eldon Parr, rigid at one end of his empty pew; little Everett Constable, comfortably, but always pompously settled at one end of his, his white-haired and distinguished-looking wife at the other.  The space between them had once been filled by their children.  There was Mr. Ferguson, who occasionally stroked his black whiskers with a prodigious solemnity; Mrs. Ferguson, resplendent and always a little warm, and their daughter Nan, dainty and appealing, her eyes uplifted and questioning.