tment to her. Let's talk of something else.
Where have you been to-day, and what have you been doing?"

He was not blind to her tact, counting it to her credit for the future,
and asked abruptly if she knew Fay, the gardener.

"Fay, the gardener?" she echoed. "I know who he is." She went more
directly to the point in saying, "I know his daughter."

"Well, she's having a hard time."

"Is she? I should think she might."

His face grew keener. "Why do you say that?"

"Oh, I don't know--she's that sort. At least, I should judge she was
that sort from the little I've seen of her."

"How much have you seen of her?"

"Almost nothing; but little as it was, it impressed itself on my mind. I
went to see her once at Mr. Whitney's suggestion."

"Whitney? He's the rector at St. John's, isn't he? What had he to do
with her? She doesn't belong to his church?"

Lois explained. "It was when we established the branch of the Girl's
Friendly Society at St. John's. Mr. Whitney thought she might care to
join it."

"And did she?"

"No; quite the other way. When I went to ask her, she resented it. She
had an idea I was patronizing her. That's the difficulty in approaching
girls like that."

He looked at her with a challenging expression. "Girls like what?"

"I suppose I mean girls who haven't much money--or who've got to work."

He still challenged her, his head thrown back. "They probably don't
consider themselves inferior to you for that reason. It wouldn't be
American if they did."

"And it wouldn't be American if I did; and I don't. They only make me
feel so because they feel it so strongly themselves. That's what's not
American; and it isn't on my part, but on theirs. They force their
sentiment back on me. They make me patronizing whether I will or no."

"And were you patronizing when you went to see Miss Fay?"

To conceal the slightly irritated attentiveness with which he waited for
her reply he began to light his motor lamps. Condescension toward Rosie
Fay suddenly struck him as offensive, no matter from whom it came.

"I'm sure I don't know," she replied, indifferently. "There was
something about her that disconcerted me."

"She's as good as we are," he declared, snapping the little door of one
of the lanterns.

"I don't deny that."

"A generation or two ago we were all farming people together. The
Willoughbys and the Brands and the Thorleys and the Fays were on an
equal footing. They worked for one another