Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/179

Rh "Let them go down," his mother said. "It is the survival of the fittest; blow the seed, and the chaff will fly in the wind. They are the drifts, the unfitted, the people who had not the strength to keep strong; idleness, weakness, disease, all have brought them to the earth. They are the parasites of the world. Stamp them out if you can; keep them from multiplying."

"You are wrong, mother. Give them their chance, and they will show you that you are wrong. It's education, money, peace, beauty, they want to regain their self-respect. They are human beings, people like you and me, with all our emotions, only played upon by a rougher hand. Fate has been kind to us. If I had been reared amongst their surroundings, I should have shuffled, thieved, sinned too."

Lady Osborne rose with a low, bitter laugh. "Most probably, most probably."

The young man's face flushed at her tone. "You are cruel and hard!" he said excitedly. "Yet I tell you this. It's the vulgarity alone you notice, for in society I have met refined liars, immorality, bitter cruelty, brutality, aye, even thieves too, for people who have no