Billy Stark had thrown one of his short legs over the other, and held it with his well-kept hand.
"He is a renegade," he said. "He began to write, and stopped writing. You can't expect a publisher to condone that."
Madam Fulton was having a strange pang of liking and envy as she looked at the girl, one such as she never felt over Electra. Rose for her, too, had youth, beautiful and pathetic also. As the girl only smiled without answering, she said kindly,—
"Your father got very much interested in people, didn't he, my dear? the working classes?"
"Labor," said Electra, as if it were a war-cry.
Madam Fulton glanced at her involuntarily, with a satirical thought. Electra had a maternal attitude toward her servants, shown, her grandmother thought, chiefly by interfering in their private lives. She worked tirelessly at clubs to raise money for labor, and she listened to the most arid talks on the situation of the day. But did Electra love her fellowman? Madam Fulton did not know. She had seen no sign of it. But Rose was returning one of her vague answers that always seemed significant, and, to any partial ear, quite adequate.
"My father founded what he calls the Brotherhood. He speaks for it. He works for it. But you know that already."
Stark nodded.
"I know," he said. "It is tremendous. He says to this man 'Come,' and he cometh, and so on. I should think it would make him lie awake o' nights."
"No," said Rose, smiling brilliantly in a way she had when the smile had no honest mirth in it, "my father never lies awake. Responsibility is the last thing he fears."