Page:His Family Poole, Ernest.djvu/100



SHE told him the next morning her night school closed for the summer that week.

"I think I should like to see it," her father said determinedly. She gave him an affectionate smile:

"Oh, dearie. Haven't you had enough?"

"I guess I can stand it if you can," was his gruff rejoinder, "though if I ran a school like yours I think by night I'd have schooled enough. Do most principals run night schools too?"

"A good many of them do."

"Isn't it taxing your strength?" he asked.

"Don't you have to tax your strength," his daughter replied good humoredly, "to really accomplish anything? Don't you have to risk yourself in order to really live these days? Suppose you come down to-morrow night. We won't go to the school, for I doubt if the clubs and classes would interest you very much. I'll take you through the neighborhood."

They went down the following evening. The night was warm and humid, and through the narrow tenement streets there poured a teeming mass of life. People by the thousands passed, bareheaded, men in shirt sleeves, their faces glistening with sweat. Animal odors filled the air. The torches on the pushcarts threw flaring lights and shadows, the peddlers shouted hoarsely, the tradesmen in the booths and stalls joined in with cries, shrill peals of mirth. The mass swept onward, talking, talking, and its voice was a guttural roar. Small boys and girls with piercing yells kept darting under elbows, old women dozed on door-