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"So I want to tell you what the women of this town mean to do." "Hear! Hear! Listen at the suffragette!" "First, we mean to clean up the Kentwood district. You all know how awful those cottages are." "Sure; we live in 'em!" "We intend to force the landlords to tear them down and improve all that district." "Much obliged, lady, and where do we go?" demanded one of her listeners.
"I'll talk to Allen," said George with an affectation of easy dismissal of the subject. But Genevieve's mind appeared to have grown suddenly persistent. At dinner she again brought up the subject, this time directing her troubled gaze and troubling words at her guest. "Alys," she said abruptly, "I really think you ought to go out to Kentwood to see about your property out there, I mean." Mrs.
South Kentwood, 'Stinktown'; North Kentwood, 'Swilltown'?" He grinned, pulled at his hip pocket and, extracting a flat glass flask, took a prolonged swig and replaced the bottle with a leer. The two incongruous visitors were already negotiating the muddy thoroughfare between the dilapidated dwellings. Presently these gave place to roughly knocked together structures for two and three families.
"Penny," asked George suddenly, "what has Pat Noonan got in this game I mean against the agitation by the women and this investigation of conditions in Kentwood? Why should he agonize over it?" "Is he fussing about it?" "Is he? Do you think I'd tie his name up in a public speech with Martin Jaffry if Pat wasn't off the reservation? You could see him swell up like a pizened pup when I did it!
"Very well, we'll walk on up. This is North Kentwood, isn't it?" "Ain't much choice," he shrugged, "but it is. You can smell it a mile. Say, you lady owner there" he laughed at his own astuteness in not being taken in "you know the monikers, don't you?
But it's their husbands' and fathers' fault, and not their own. Anyhow, that isn't the reason I wouldn't take those cottages. "It was the cottages themselves, and not the woman who owned them, that decided me. That whole Kentwood district is a disgrace to civilization. The sanitary conditions are filthy; have been for years.
"But, Penny, why this agonizing of Noonan? What has he to lose by the better conditions in Kentwood? Why should he "
"The fact is that Allen knows more about the Kentwood district and the factory values than any one else, and I feel it my duty to advise Alys to leave her affairs in his hands. I'll see him for you in the morning." He turned to Alys with a return of tolerantly protective inflection in his voice. Geneviève shrugged, a faint ghost of a shrug.
The widow's one instinct had seemed to be to fight E. Eliot and the health officer for their interference. Stranger still, the tenants did not want to be moved out, driven on. The whole situation was confused, but in it at least one thing stood out clearly: Geneviève realized, during the sleepless night after her visit to Kentwood, that she hated Cousin Alys!
"Are ye aimin' to answer them voiceless questions?" Pat inquired. Silence. "Plannin' to tear down Kentwood and enforce them factory laws?" demanded Wes' Norton. Still no answer. "I'm jest callin' yer attention to the fact that this election is gittin' nearer every day." "What am I to do with her? I can't afford to show we're afraid of her." "Huh." "I can't bribe her to stop."
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