"Diagnosticate, please."
"Oh, I thought you preferred the other."
"No, it sounds undignified, now that I know there's a larger word. Where
was I?"
"The personal bearing of the question whether life isn't more and more
complicated?"
"How did you know it had a personal bearing?"
"I suspected as much."
"Yes, it has. I mean that within the last four or five months--since I've
been in Hatboro'--I seem to have lost my old point of view; or, rather, I
don't find it satisfactory any more. I'm ashamed to think of the simple
plans, or dreams, that I came home with. I hardly remember what they were;
but I must have expected to be a sort of Lady Bountiful here; and now I
think a Lady Bountiful one of the most mischievous persons that could
infest any community."
"You don't mean that charity is played out?" asked the doctor.
"In the old-fashioned way, yes."
"But they say poverty is on the increase. What is to be done?"
"Justice," said Annie. "Those who do most of the work in the world ought to
share in its comforts as a right, and not be put off with what we idlers
have a mind to give them from our superfluity as a grace."
"Yes, that's all very true. But what till justice _is_ done?"
"Oh, we must continue to do charity," cried Annie, with self-contempt that
amused him. "But don't you see how much more complicated it is? That's what
I meant by life not being simple any more. It was easy enough to do charity
when it used to seem the right and proper remedy for suffering; but now,
when I can't make it appear a finality, but only something provisional,
temporary--Don't you see?"
"Yes, I see. But I don't see how you're going to help it At the same time,
I'll allow that it makes life more difficult."
For a moment they were both serious and silent. Then she said: "Sometimes I
think the fault is all in myself, and that if I were not so sophisticated
and--and--selfish, I should find the old way of doing good just as
effective and natural as ever. Then again, I think the conditions are all
wrong, and that we ought to be fairer to people, and then we needn't be so
good to them. I should prefer that. I hate being good to people I don't
like, and I can't like people who don't interest me. I think I must be very
hard-hearted."