"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: