"
"I know where you've been,"--a severe light coming into her eyes; "you've
been down to the South End, and if I was you I'd be ashamed of
myself! I know how you fellows go on down there. Sallie Calkins goes,
and she told me all about it. She said that she was ashamed to live on
the same street with any of you, and that none of the folks in the
Mission knew what to do with you, and the next thing you knew you would
all be marched off to the lockup."
"Let them try it," muttered Dirk, his face growing darker; "we'd make
that street too hot to hold them in short order if they played at any
such game as that, and I guess they know it."
"Well, anyhow, I wouldn't be meaner and lower down than I had to be,
Dirk Colson! It is bad enough as it is,--a drunkard for a father, and we
nothing more than beggars! But I'd behave myself half-way decent when I
went among folks that wanted to be good to me, or else I'd stay away."
"Look here, you keep your preaching for them that wants to hear it; I
don't. A fellow can't come home without having a row; if it isn't of one
kind, it's another. I wonder I ever come home at all."
Dirk was angry now, and his dark, thin face looked fierce with passion.
His sister kept the curiously composed tone and manner with which she
had said all her exasperating things.
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