After allowing a sufficient time for the party in the dining-car to finish breakfast, Hal went down to the tracks, and induced the porter to take in his name to Percy Harrigan. He was hoping to persuade Percy to see the village under other than company chaperonage; he heard with dismay the announcement that the party had arranged to depart in the course of a couple of hours. “But you haven't seen anything at all!” Hal protested.
“They won't let us into the mine,” replied the other. “What else is there we can do?”
“I wanted you to talk to the people and learn something about conditions here. You ought not to lose this chance, Percy!”
“That's all right, Hal, but you might understand this isn't a convenient time. I've got a lot of people with me, and I've no right to ask them to wait.”
“But can't they learn something also, Percy?”
“It's raining,” was the reply; “and ladies would hardly care to stand round in a crowd and see dead bodies brought out of a mine.”
Hal got the rebuke. Yes, he had grown callous since coming to North Valley; he had lost that delicacy of feeling, that intuitive understanding of the sentiments of ladies, which he would surely have exhibited a short time earlier in his life. He was excited about this disaster; it was a personal thing to him, and he lost sight of the fact that to the ladies of the Harrigan party it was, in its details, merely sordid and repelling. If they went out in the mud and rain of a mining-village and stood about staring, they would feel that they were exhibiting, not human compassion, but idle curiosity. The sights they would see would harrow them to no purpose; and incidentally they would be exposing themselves to distressing publicity. As for offering sympathy to widows and orphans—well, these were foreigners mostly, who could not understand what was said to them, and who might be more embarrassed than helped............