A confused silence greeted this speech. The company did not really take in the meaning of his words, for the reason that any identification of themselves with the proletariat--what they would have called the lower classes--seemed to them simply fantastic. Though they were continually readjusting their social standing with each other, they no more doubted their general superiority to the rest of humanity than they doubted the fact of the skies being above the earth. Mr. Barnsell, who had had more practice than most of them in adapting himself to his surroundings, spoke first. Getting up, with his hands in his pockets, he said coolly: "Oh, come, my dear fellow! This is ridiculous. This is un-American--extremely un-American. There are no class-distinctions in this country. We all in a sense belong to the proletariat." "Speak for yourself," said Mrs. Grey. Mrs. Torby bent over to her next-door neighbor and whispered, "Exactly what do they mean by proletariat?" with the manner of one who, being about to be elected to a club, would like to know what the organization signified. "You will have to offer proof of your assertions," said the delegate in a more threatening tone. "A leisure class is a criminal class, and its wealth will be confiscated for the common good. Are you or are you not members of a leisure class?" At this the company, which had so far shown a good deal of courage, in face of one of the most terrifying agencies in the world,--an angry mob,--began to show evidence of panic. A threat to human life, even their own, seemed to them less horrible than this danger to the existing order of society. The right of property--not their own property, but the divine right of property in general--seemed worth defending at great cost. A babel of voices arose, out of which Mr. McFarlane's soared like a lark: "I did, I did," he was saying. "I used to help my father pick the beets and the rose-bugs. My father was a gardener. This lady"--indicating Mrs. Grey--"knows that what I say is true. My father was her father's gardener." "Is this true?" asked the delegate. "Yes," answered Mrs. Grey, "and a very coarse, uneducated man too, as I remember him." "Thank you--oh, thank you," said Mr. McFarlane warmly; and his wife, raising her tiara-ed head, added: "Yes, and as a girl I used to take in plain--" "Hush, Maria!" said her husband. "It is unnecessary. A wife always takes the rank of her husband in any society." Mrs. McFarlane caught the idea at once, and leaning back with folded hands, she looked about patronizingly on those whose position under the new order was less solidly founded than her own.