ous degree.

"I suppose _your_ idea is," she said, and it showed her courage that she
could say it, "that a factory ought to be a--a sort of _marble palace_!"

"No. Oh, no. No--"

"But it _is_ your idea, is it not, that it's my father's duty to take
his money and build a perfectly gorgeous _new_ factory, full of all
sorts of comforts and luxuries for his work-girls? That _is_ your idea
of his duty to the poor, is it not?..."

There it was, the true call: what ear could fail to catch it? Out they
came running from the city again, the old scribes with new faces;
pouring and tumbling into the wilderness to ask a lashing from the grim
voice there.... Only, to-day, it must have been that he did not hear
their clamors. Surely there was no abhorrence in these eager
young eyes....

"Well--personally, I don't think of any of those things just as a--a
duty to the poor--exactly."

"Oh! You mean it's his duty to himself, or something of that sort? That
sounds like the catechism.... That _is_ what you meant, is it not?"

"Well, I only meant that--I think we might all be happier--if ..."

An uproar punctuated the strange sentence. Mr. Beirne's butler had
chosen to-day to take in coal, it seemed; a great wagon discharged with
violence at precisely this moment. Two shovelers fell to work, and an
old negro who was washing the basement windows at the house next door,
the Carmichaels', desisted from his labors and strolled out to watch. It
was the most interesting thing happening on the block at the moment, and
of course he wanted to see it.

Carlisle stared at Mr. Beirne's nephew, caught by his word.

"Oh!..." said she. "So you think my father would be much happier if he
stripped himself and his family to provide Turkish baths and--and
Turkish _rooms_ for his work-girls? I must say I don't understand that
kind of happiness. But then I'm not a _Socialist_!"

She said Socialist as she might have said imp of darkness. However, the
young man seemed unaware of her bitter taunt. He leaned the hand which
did not hold the cards against a pilaster in the vestibule-side, and
spoke with hurried eagerness:

"I don't mean that exactly, and I--I _really_ don't mean to apply
anything to your father, of course. I only mean--to--to speak quite
impersonally--that it seems to me the reason we all follow money so
hard, and hold to it so when we have it, is that we believe all along
it's going to bring us happiness, and that ... After all--isn'