"Well, my dear, that's a fine speech. But when I asked you
about Grant I was rising to a sort of question of personal privilege. I
thought perhaps I would mix around at his meeting to-night! If you think
I should, just kind of stand around to give him countenance--and," he
chuckled and squeaked: "To bundle up a few votes!"

"Do, father--do--you must!"

"Well," squeaked the little voice, "so long as I must I'm glad to know
that Tom made it easy for me, by turning all of Harvey and the Valley
over to Grant at the riot last night. Why, if Tom tried to stop Grant's
meeting to-night Market Street itself would mob Tom--mob the very Temple
of Love." The Doctor chuckled and returned to his own affairs. "Being on
the winning side isn't really important. But it's like carrying a potato
in your pocket for rheumatism: it gives a feller confidence. And after
all, the devil's rich and God's poor have all got votes. And votes
count!" He grinned and revived his pipe.

He was about to speak again when Laura interrupted him, "Oh,
father--they're not God's poor, whose ever they are. Don't say that.
They're Daniel Sands's poor, and the Smelter Trust's poor, and the Coal
Trust's poor, and the Glass and Cement and Steel company's poor. I've
learned that down here. Why, if the employers would only treat the
workers as fairly as they treat the machines, keeping them fit, and
modern and bright, God would have no poor!"

The Doctor rose and stretched and smiled indulgently at his daughter.
"Heigh-ho the green holly," he droned. "Well, have it your way. God's
poor or Dan's poor, they're my votes, if I can get 'em. So we'll come to
the meeting to-night and blow a few mouthfuls on the fires of
revolution, for the good of the order!"

He would have gone, but his daughter begged him to stay and dine with
her in South Harvey, before they went to the meeting. So for an hour the
Doctor sat in his daughter's office by the window, sometimes giving
attention to the drab flood of humanity passing along the street as the
shifts changed for evening in the mines and smelters, and then listening
to the day's stragglers who came and went through his daughter's office:
A father for medicine for a child, a mother for advice, a breaker boy
for a book, a little girl from the glass works for a bright bit of
sewing upon which she was working, a woman from Violet Hogan's room with
a heartbreak in her problem, a group of women from little Italy with a
complaint abo