Ellen Goodrich had always led a lonely life and didn’t feel lack of a real family. But once she was ready to open all her heart to some unfamiliar boys, who had knocked at her door. It was the first time in her pitiful life when she really began to doubt whether her way of living was right. These children woke something tender in her soul. They had a chance to change all her life, but they didn’t want to take it. In their blind thirst for money they didn’t notice these important changes, which were going to happen there. Even the fact that if they used them for the benefit of themselves they would gain in future much more than they got at the moment couldn’t defeat the smell of money direct in their hands. The most regrettable thing is that their betrayal strengthened her initial position and convinced her of the truth of her views on the world and human relations.

The idea of the story is that sometimes being lonely is better than communicating with some representatives of humanity. The protagonist of the story didn’t feel happy; she knew that something was wrong in her life, though she couldn’t find the reason for her misery. Unfortunately the answer to her questions took shape of two Italian boys who had come to rob her. This tragic case made her heart coarsen, but it doesn’t mean it was right.

As for me, I can’t imagine my life absolutely without people to talk with. And I don’t believe the author of the story can. We often mix two arts of being alone: loneliness and solitude. When we say be like being alone at home when nobody disturbs us from our thoughts about the life around, it just means that we don’t know what the real loneliness is. When we are proud of our solitude we are insane. Once Lisa Simpson told a brilliant thing: “Solitude never hurts anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone, and she wrote some of the most beautiful poetry the world has ever known... then went crazy as a loon“. I think it is a wonderful proof of what I am trying to say.