"They don't look to me as though it ever occurred to them to be afraid
of anything," Gracie said; but Alfred Ried, who had studied deeper into
this problem of the different classes of society, was ready with his
answer.

"Yes they are; they can be awed, and made to feel uncomfortable to the
degree that they will resolve not to appear in that region again.
One cannot judge from their behavior in Sabbath-school. Some way they
recognize a mission school as being in a sense their property, and
behave accordingly; but in a man's own house, surrounded by things of
which they do not even know the name, he has them at a disadvantage, and
can easily rouse within them the feeling that they are 'trapped.' Than
which there is nothing those fellows dread so much, I believe."

"But they were not afraid of Flossy last week, even surrounded by the
elegances of her parlors and dining-room."

"Ah!" he said, his eyes alight, "she has a wisdom born of God, I think,
for managing these and all other concerns. She is unlike everybody
else."

Whereupon Gracie Dennis laughed; not a disagreeable laugh, but there
came to her just then a sense of the strangeness of thinking that pretty
Flossy Shipley, whom she had known all her life, and half-scorned from
the heights of her childhood because she was a silly little thing, who
could not do her problems in class, should have a wisdom unlike any
others. Yet, almost immediately her laugh was stayed, because the change
in Flossy was so great that she, too, recognized it as born of God.
Sometimes it came with force to this proud young girl that if God could