“You think so,” Denton returned. “How much should you say the average laboring-man with a family could save out of his chances of wages?” Hughes caught at the word save, and emerged with it from his revery. “Frugality is one of the vices we must hope to abolish. It is one of the lowest forms of selfishness, which can only be defended by reference to the state of Ishmaelitism in which we live.” “Oh, but surely, father,” Mrs. Denton mocked, “you want street beggars to save, don’t you, so they can have something to retire on?” “No; let them take their chance with the rest,” said the old man, with an imperfect hold of her irony. “There are so many of them,” Ray suggested, “they couldn’t all hope to retire on a competency. I never go out without meeting one.” “I wish there were more,” said Denton, passionately. “I wish they would swarm up from their cellars and garrets into all the comfortable streets of the town, till every rich man’s door-step had a beggar on it, to show him what his wealth was based on.” “It wouldn’t avail,” Hughes replied. “All that is mere sentimentality. The rich man would give to the first two or three, and then he would begin to realize that if he gave continually he would beggar himself. He would harden his heart; he would know, as he does now, that he must not take the chance of suffering for himself and his family by relieving the suffering of others. He could put it on the highest moral ground.” “In the Family,” said Peace, speaking for the first time, “there was no chance of suffering.” “No. But the community saved itself from chance by shutting out the rest of the world. It was selfish, too. The Family must include the whole world,” said her father. “There is a passage bearing upon that point in what I have been writing to-day. I will just read a part of it.” He pushed back his chair, but Peace said, “I’ll get your manuscript, father,” and brought it to him. The passage was a long one, and Hughes read it all with an author’s unsparing zest. At that rate Ray saw no hope of being able to read his poem, and he felt it out of taste for Hughes to take up the time. When he ended at last and left the table, Peace began to clear it away, while Mrs. Denton sat hearing herself talk and laugh. The twins had fallen asleep in their chairs, and she let their father carry them off and bestow them in the adjoining room. As he took them tenderly up from their chairs, he pressed his face close upon their little slumbering faces, and mumbled their fingers with his bearded lips. The sight of his affection impressed Ray, even in the preoccupation of following the movements of Peace, as she kept about her work. “Is he as homesick as ever?” Ray asked Mrs. Denton, when he was gone. “Yes; he’s worse,” she answered lightly. “He hasn’t got father’s faith in the millennium to keep him up. He would like to go back to-morrow, if there was anything to go back to.”