Alfred laughed.

"Not always. I know several quite well-to-do fellows in whom he keeps
a careful oversight; but he is grandly interested in the poor. He is
taking rank as one of the most successful physicians in the city, and,
of course, he is pressed for time; yet he is so continually at the call
of the poor that people begin to speak of him as the poor man's doctor.
He told me he was proud of that title."

At this point the musicians were appealed to to come to the front
parlor, and Gracie had opportunity for a nearer study of the man whom
she could not help but admire. He was not likely to suffer from a nearer
view; at least, not while Gracie was in the mood that then possessed
her. He greeted her cordially, and at once brought her into the
conversation by appealing to her for a decision, seeming to take it for
granted that she was of the same spirit with himself.

This young lady was taking lessons of life that were designed to be
helpful to her if she would but let them. A thoroughly well-educated and
cultured gentleman, well fitted to take high rank in society, not in the
ministry, and yet thoroughly absorbed in what she had hitherto almost
unconsciously set down as ministers' work was a mystery to her.
Moreover, for the second time that evening, she felt a curious sense of
satisfaction in being classed among the energetic workers of the world.
The pretty school-girl, who had lived all her young life in a
neighborhood where she was "Gracie Dennis," looked up to, indeed, by her
set, and having a decided influence of her own, yet felt it to be a
novel experience to hear herself addressed in a clear, firm voice after
this manner:--