“Yes,” replied Kate. “It isn’t pleasant to take out the horses now. The streets are full of men out of work, and they blame us for it, and to see us drive about seems to make them angry. I suppose it’s a natural enough feeling; but the boys pelted our coachman with snowballs the other day, while my sister and I were driving, and the men on the corner all laughed and encouraged them. But if I walk nobody molests me.” The young lady, as she said this with an air of modest courage, had never looked so beautiful before in Jessica’s eyes, or appealed so powerfully to her liking and admiration. But the milliner was conscious of an invasion of other and rival feelings which kept her face smileless and hardened the tone of her voice. “Yes, the men feel very bitterly,” she said. “I know that from the girls. A good many of them--pretty nearly all, for that matter--have stopped coming here, since the lockout, because _your_ money furnished the Resting House. That shows how strong the feeling is.” “You amaze me!” There was no pretence in Miss Kate’s emotion. She looked at Jessica with wide-open eyes, and the astonishment in the gaze visibly softened and saddened into genuine pain. “Oh, I _am_ so sorry!” she said. “I never thought of _that_. Tell me--what can be done? How can we get that cruel notion out of their heads? I did so _truly_ want to help the girls. Surely there must be some way of making them realize this. The closing of the works, that is a business matter with which I had nothing to do, and which I didn’t approve; but this plan of yours, _that_ was really a pet of mine. It is only by a stupid accident that I did not come here often, and get to know the girls, and show them how interested I was in everything. When Mr. Tracy spoke of you yesterday, I resolved to come at once, and tell you how ashamed I was.” Jessica’s heart was deeply stirred by this speech, and filled with yearnings of tenderness toward the beautiful and good patrician. But some strange, undefined force in her mind held all this softness in subjection. “The girls are gone,” she said, almost coldly. “They will not come back--at least for a long time, until all this trouble is forgotten.” “They hate me too much,” groaned Kate, in grieved self-abasement. “They don’t know _you!_ What they think of is that it is the Minster money; that is what they hate. To take away from the men with a shovel, and give back to the girls with a spoon--they won’t stand that!” The latent class-feeling of a factory town flamed up in Jessica’s bosom, intolerant and vengeful, as she listened to her own words. “I would feel like that myself, if I were in their place,” she said, in curt conclusion.