'For people situated just as you are, my dear, it is. Now tell me— don't you want all these people—I mean, everybody in general—to visit you?' 'Ambiguous again,' said Dane smiling at last a little. 'Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we do!' 'Then why not pay them the customary compliment of telling them so?' 'But suppose, on the other hand, that we do not?' 'Why you certainly know,' replied Mrs. Coles with some asperity, 'whether you want them. Do you? or don't you?' 'I think I might say,' answered Dane demurely, 'we do,—and we do not.' 'But that is nonsense, Dane.' 'Is it?' 'You ought to want them.' 'Well—I have told you; we do.' 'Then _are_ you going, when a suitable time comes, are you going to invite all these neglected people and give them a good Reception? you and Hazel?' 'We will give them a good reception if they come,' said Dane with provoking want of enthusiasm. 'O I never can get anything out of you!' said the lady discomfited. 'I might have known it. Papa, do _you_ think it is well to set all the institutions of society at defiance?' 'Why Prue,' said Dr. Maryland somewhat astonished, 'you speak as if Society were monarch of the realm. I believe we live in a republic.' 'What do you mean by Society?' asked Primrose. 'Why!—You know.' 'I do not, indeed.' 'It means,' said Dane, 'in this country, all people in general who have incomes above a certain limit; them, and those whom their powerful hands lift from a subjacent platform to the freedom of their own.' 'All people who are rich enough to invite you as you invite them,' said Dr. Arthur.—'Prim, where is your comprehension? How can you put your feet under a man's mahogany, if he happens to have none?' 'Is it different in other countries?' asked Mrs. Coles. 'Yes. Birth counts there, and breeding, and what a man happens to have inside his head.' 'And does not birth count for something here?' cried Mrs. Coles. 'I have no doubt it does.' 'But not with you?' 'I speak of things as I find them,' said Dane smiling slightly. 'And in generalities.' 'Well, think what you like of society; are you not going to regard it at all?' Dane turned to the Bible which still lay upon the table, and opened it. 'What do you say to this, Prudentia?'— ' "When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee." ' 'Then you will live alone, I suppose, and make Hazel live so.' 'Not at all,' said Rollo coolly; 'that does not follow. The words I was reading go on—"But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just." ' 'But my dear Dane!' said Mrs. Coles breathlessly; 'you don't mean to say that you take all that literally?'