“Well,” asked Karl Metzerott as he rose from the table, “have you finished your inspection? or do you want that boy of mine again this afternoon?” “Thanks, I think we have seen everything,” replied the guest in his courteous manner; “I hope the interruption has not been a serious annoyance to you!” “Well, good workmen don’t grow on trees, and we have plenty of work on hand,” said the shoemaker. “Ah!” affirmatively, yet somehow conveying to the shoemaker that he had been a bear. “I assure you the morning has been one both of pleasure and profit to me; but I want to ask you just one question. Are you a Socialist?” “I’m a Socialist bred and a Socialist born, and when I’m dead there’s a Socialist gone,” replied the shoemaker with grim humor. “And you would like to see the United States of America one great commune?” “I _intend_ to see it.” “Then don’t you see that such institutions as ‘Prices,’ by making the workingman more contented, and his life an easier one, are really defeating your own object?” “_He_ don’t,” said Father McClosky, indicating Mr. Clare, whose blue eyes suddenly flamed up; “but, then, he never argues.” “It depends upon what Mr. Metzerott’s object is,” said the carpenter parson quietly. “As I understand it, ‘Prices’ took its rise in the endeavor to make life not only easier but possible to those whose name it bears. If the Commune come, or _when_ it comes, ‘Prices’ will be found to have done good work in training citizens for it; meanwhile, life _is_ made easier for hundreds.” “Didn’t I say so?” cried the priest triumphantly. “He never argues, he only convinces.” “Yet I am sorry to say that I am still unconvinced,” said the rich man, smiling. “History is against you, Mr. Clare. A people never rebel until their wrongs have become unbearable; take the French Revolution, for example, or even our own, a hundred years ago. I hope you don’t pretend that the American workingman is oppressed as the French peasant was.” “My friend has told you that I never argue,” replied Ernest Clare, smiling, “certainly not here, with you, and on that subject.” “I see no objection,” was Mr. Randolph’s reply, “for I consider the American workingman exceptionally well off. And as to wrong”— “Oh, papa, what does it matter? Rights or wrongs, who cares?” cried Pinkie despairingly; “you have smothered me with bales of cloth, and stifled me with barrels of sugar and bags of coffee, all the morning; but when it comes to the American workingman, I can stand it no longer; _my_ wrongs become unbearable and I rebel.” “So you take no interest in working-people?” asked Karl Metzerott meaningly. Rosalie Randolph looked at him with eyes of haughty surprise. “Not the slightest,” she said distinctly.