dd to the work of the world that you may live in it, is not of any
great importance; it is for the toilers in the vineyard that I plead.
The girls and young men in this town cannot dance and drink and play all
night and do the constructive work of the community in the daytime. If
Luella May Spain falls asleep or nods at her typewriter and fails to get
out the telegram to you or Nickols which Mr. Tate has shouted to her
off the keys, do you excuse her because she has been fatiguing herself
until midnight trying to learn some new dance that Billy Harvey has
brought down to the Last Chance from your Country Club? You would not!
She would be fired on your complaint."

"But are we responsible for how the girls and men in the Settlement
spend their evenings?" I demanded with a fine show of indignation, but
with a thrill of fear in my heart. There has always been something in
Luella May Spain's shy and admiring glances that drew me and I have
always lingered to chat with her a few minutes if business called me
into the station. The last time I had spoken to her, not a week before,
she had seemed pale and listless and had answered me with indifference.

"You and your class are the ones in power and what you do and what you
think is a moral influence that reaches and permeates every soul in this
town. You are not about your Father's business; and those less powerful
of brain and character follow you in by-paths from the straight road.
They are his Little Ones and you lead their feet into brambles. Oh,
Charlotte!" And Mother Spurlock stretched out her hands to me in
entreaty.

"I'm not a leader," I denied her. "I don't see a foot ahead of me. I'm
not worth anything. I'm just living and trying to have a good time doing
it. You have got a leader, there over the hedge; why don't they follow
him and not me?"

"Before you came Gregory Goodloe had services three times a week at your
Country Club, at which the Settlement met the Town. You were not willing
that even those few hours should be given over to the learning of the
Father's will from one whose mind and soul are ready to teach, and you
swept away his pews and his influence. And your dance tunes, to which
even I yielded, ring in the ears of his flock to drown out the echoes of
God's hymns. And now those who had begun to lean on him and to follow
him are turning to persecute him. When Jacob Ensley is drunk he openly
charges him with inveigling Martha away and hiding her. He was