or a tall one? He just mentioned it to me this
morning, _en passant_, and says I must help him raise the million--"

"I suppose you didn't know that one of his grand schemes was to write a
terrible article in the paper attacking papa and the Works?"

"Oh!" said Hen, plucking a thread from her old black skirt. "Oh, that
letter in the 'Post,' long ago, you mean? Yes, I--knew about that; I
wanted to speak to you about it at the time. Did you read it, Cally?"

"I glanced at it," said Cally, shortly.

Full of the interest of thundering feet as the week had been since
Willie and mamma had given her the connecting link, Carlisle had in fact
made a point of getting hold of a copy of the old paper containing that
particular piece. Not being at all familiar with Works and newspapers,
she had found the process involved with considerable perplexity and
trouble, but she had felt amply rewarded in the end. The piece came to
her hand like a weapon, against any possible remeeting with its
remembered author.

Now she regarded Hen with steadily rising annoyance.

"What was your friend's idea in writing such outrageous stuff, do you
know? Is he really crazy, as they say, or is he just an ordinary
notoriety seeker?"

Colorless Hen looked rather hard at her pretty cousin. She allowed a
perceptible pause to fall before she said:

"I thought you said you knew him."

"No; I said that I barely spoke to him once."

"If you only said good-morning to him--if you only _looked_ at him once,
on the street--I don't see how you could possibly imagine.... Why,
Cally, he's about the least self-seeking human being that ever lived.
He's so absolutely un-self-seeking that he gives away every single thing
he's got, to anybody that comes along and wants it. In the first place,
he's giving away his life.... Some of his ideas may be visionary or
mistaken, but--"

"I should think so, after glancing at his article. What _was_ his
object, then, my dear?"

"Well, that's simple, I should think. He went to the Works, and thought
that conditions there were bad, and being what would be called the
reformer type, I suppose he thought it his duty to tell people so, so
that the conditions would be corrected--"

"Well, really, Hen! Don't you know, if conditions _were_ bad at the
Works,--whatever that may mean, and I for one have never felt that
working-girls were entitled to Turkish baths and manicures,--don't you
_know_ papa would correct what was wrong wit