"Well, I don't see any use, anyway, in chasing after people of that class to get them into the Church. There's plenty of material to be worked on in our own grade of society. There are enough irreligious persons in our own social set to crowd the church if they could all be induced to attend the services. Mr. Farrar, why don't you and Ruth get after some of the upper-class derelicts? You might start with Effingham G. Tracy."
Mr. Tracy, sitting at the head of the table, smiled faintly but made no response. He did not seem to be in the least concerned about his wife's opinion of him.
"Very good, Mrs. Tracy!" exclaimed Barry. "Very good, indeed! I think, myself, that Mr. Tracy would be a proper subject for evangelization."
Mr. Tracy's smile broadened, but still he did not respond. Like another celebrated character, he could be silent in seven languages. Then Mr. Farrar replied to Mrs. Tracy's question.
"We feel," he said, "that those who have not had the advantages of wealth and education and culture are entitled to our first efforts. The Christian message is primarily to the humble and the poor."
"There you go again," she responded. "'The humble and the poor,' 'equality in the Church' and all that. Upon my word, Mr. Farrar, if you and Ruth had your way we should be hobnobbing to-night with the élite of Factory Hill."
"And why not?" The rector's voice was gentle enough, but there was not one of the company who did not feel the earnest thrill of it, the ring of determination in it, not one, save Barry. He simply noticed that no one else replied to the rector's question, and he considered that it was quite his duty to make a response.
"Oh, now, look here, Farrar," he said. "You don't mean that. Why should we make companions of the kind of people who live on Factory Hill?"
"Because Jesus Christ did."
