"You talk like a foolish child, Connie. I can tell you beforehand that you won't succeed in getting the woman into any respectable household in Denver, unless you do it under false pretenses."
"So much the worse for our Christianity, then," Connie asserted stoutly. "If people won't help, they'll have it to answer to One who wasn't afraid to take a much worse woman by the hand. That's all I have to say about it."
Mrs. Calmaine smiled benignantly. She had daughters of her own, and knew how to make allowances for youthful enthusiasm.
"You will get over it, after a while, and then you'll see how foolish it is to try to reform the world single-handed," she rejoined. "You might as well try to move Pike's Peak as to think you can remodel society after your own enthusiastic notions. And when the reflective after-time comes, you'll be glad that society didn't let you make a martyr of yourself at its expense.
"And, Connie, dear; there is another side of the question which you should consider," she continued, going to the door with her visitor. "It's this: since society as a unit insists upon having this particular kind of reformative work turned over to organizations designed for the purpose, there must be a sufficient reason for it. You are not wiser than the aggregated wisdom of the civilized centuries."
Constance went her way, silenced, but by no means convinced; and she added three more failures to her long list before going home to luncheon. In the afternoon, she laid hold of her courage yet once again, and went to her minister, good Dr. Launceston, pastor of St. Cyril's-in-the-Desert. Here, indeed, she found sympathy without stint, but it was hopelessly void of practical suggestion.
"It is certainly most pitiful, Miss Elliott, pitiful to a degree; but I really don't see what is to be done. Had you any plan in view that, ah"—
"It is because all my plans have come to grief that I am here," said Connie.
"Dear, dear! and those cases are so very hard to deal with. Now, if it were a question of money, I dare say we could manage it quite easily."
Constance had some very clear ideas on reformative subjects, and one of them was that it was not less culpable to pauperize than to ignore.