and education a gentleman. Are you ready, with your aristocratic
notions, to recognize chiefly Miss Brown's title to position? What
could her coat-of-arms be but the dollar symbol and the beer-barrel?"

"Come, remember she is our hostess."

"You are right; I should not speak so here; but my indignation gets
the better of me."

"Would you invite him to your house?"

"Certainly. I have asked him; and what is more, he has promised to
come. Supposing that he is poor, are not many of your noblemen as poor
as poverty? My parlors shall be haunted only by men of ability and
character."

"You are not going to shut out this little heathen," said Christine,
putting her arm about her friend.

"Never!" said Miss Winthrop, returning the embrace with double warmth.
Then she added, sadly: "You are not an unbeliever from conviction and
knowledge, Christine, but from training and association. While I admire
and honor your father as a splendid and gifted man, I regret his and
your scepticism more deeply than you can ever know."

"Well, Susie," said Christine, with a smile, "if they shut out such
as you from your Paradise, I do not wish to go there."

"If, with my clear knowledge of the conditions of entrance, I _shut
myself out_, I shall have no right to complain," said Miss Winthrop,