in her mind,
rather than any conclusions she had reached. "We defend ourselves by
trying to believe that they must have friends of their own, or that they
would think us patronizing, and wouldn't like being made the objects of
social charity; but they needn't really suppose anything of the kind."

"I don't imagine they would," said Beaton. "I think they'd be only too
happy to have you come. But you wouldn't know what to do with each other,
indeed, Miss Vance."

"Perhaps we shall like each other," said the girl, bravely, "and then we
shall know. What Church are they of?"

"I don't believe they're of any," said Beaton. "The mother was brought up
a Dunkard."

"A Dunkard?"

Beaton told what he knew of the primitive sect, with its early Christian
polity, its literal interpretation of Christ's ethics, and its quaint
ceremonial of foot-washing; he made something picturesque of that. "The
father is a Mammon-worshipper, pure and simple. I suppose the young
ladies go to church, but I don't know where. They haven't tried to
convert me."

"I'll tell them not to despair--after I've converted them," said Miss
Vance. "Will you let me use you as a 'point d'appui', Mr. Beaton?"

"Any way you like. If you're really going to see them, perhaps I'd better
make a confession. I left your banjo with them, after I got it put in
order."

"How very nice! Then we have a common interest already."

"Do you mean the banjo, or--"

"The banjo, decidedly. Which of them plays?"

"Neither. But the eldest heard that the banjo was 'all the rage,' as the
youngest says. Perhaps you can persuade them that good works are the
rage, too."

Beaton had no very lively belief that Margaret would go to see the
Dryfooses; he did so few of the things he proposed that he went upon the
theory that others must be as faithless. Still, he had a cruel amusement
in figuring the possible encounter between Margaret Vance, with her
intellectual elegance, her eager sympathies and generous ideals, and
those girls with their rude past, their false and distorted perspective,
their sordid and hungry selfishness, and their faith in the omnipotence
of their father's wealth wounded by their experience of its present
social impotence. At the bottom of his heart he sympathized with them
rather than with her; he was more like them.

People had ceased coming, and some of them were going. Miss Vance said
she must go, too, and she was about to rise, when the host came up with