Ruth made no answer to this question, but sat with earnest, thoughtful look fixed on her pastor's face.
"Who follows that pattern?" she asked, at last.
"My dear friend, is not our concern rather to decide whether you and I shall try to do it in the future?"
Someway this brought the talk to a sudden lull. Ruth seemed to have no more to say.
"There is another way of work that I have been intending to suggest to some of you young ladies," Dr. Dennis said, after a thoughtful silence. "It is something very much neglected in our church—that is the social question. Do you know we have many members who complain that they are never called on, never spoken with, never noticed in any way?"
"I don't know anything about the members," Ruth said. "I don't think I have a personal acquaintance with twenty of them—a calling acquaintance, I mean."
"That is the case with a great many, and it is a state of things that should not exist. The family ought to know each other. I begin to see your work clearer; it is the young ladies, to a large extent, who must remedy this evil. Suppose you take up some of that work, not neglecting the other, of course. 'These ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone,' I am afraid will be said to a good many of us. But this is certainly work needing to be done, and work for which you have leisure."
He hoped to see her face brighten, but it did not. Instead she said:
"I hate calling."
"I dare say; calling that is aimless, and in a sense useless. It must be hateful work. But if you start out with an object in view, a something to accomplish that is worth your while, will it not make a great difference?"