But Katie was not going to let him get away.  If she could help it, Katie was not going to let any one get away who she thought could tell her anything about the things which were perplexing her—­all those things pressing closer and closer upon her.

“Do many of these men go to church?” she asked.

He appeared startled.  Katie’s gown did not suggest a possible tract concealed about it.

“Why yes, some of them,” he laughed.  “I don’t think the majority of them do.”

Then she came right out with it.  “What would you say they look upon as the most important thing in life?”

He looked startled again, but in more interested way.  “Higher wages and shorter hours,” he said.

“Are you a socialist?” she demanded.

It came so unexpectedly and so bluntly that it confused him.  “Why, Katie,” laughed her brother, “what do you mean by coming over here and interviewing men on their politics?”

“What made you think I was a socialist?” asked Ferguson.

“Because you had such a quick answer to such a big question, and seemed so sure of yourself.  I’m reading a book about socialists.  They don’t seem to think there is a particle of doubt they could put the world to rights, and things are so intricate—­so confused—­I don’t see how they can be so sure they’re saying the final word.”

“I don’t know that they claim to be saying the final word, but they do know they could take away much of the confusion.”

Katie was thinking of the story she had heard the night before.  “Do you think socialism’s going to remove all the suffering from the world?  Reach all the aches and fill all the empty places?  Get right into the inner things that are the matter and bring peace and good will and loving kindness everywhere?”

She had spoken impetuously, and paused with an embarrassed laugh.  The young mechanic was looking at her gravely, but his look was less strange than Wayne’s.

“I don’t think they’d go that far, Miss Jones.  But they do know that there’s a lot of needless misery they could wipe out.”

“They’re out and out materialists, aren’t they?  Everything’s economic—­the economic basis for everything in creation.  They seem very cocksure that getting that the way they want it would usher in the millennium.  You said the most important thing in life to these men was higher wages and shorter hours.  I don’t blame them for wanting them—­I hope they get them—­but I don’t know that I see it as very promising that they regard it as the most important thing in life.  To do less and get more is not what you’d call a spiritual aspiration, is it?” she laughed.  “This is what I mean—­it’s not the end, is it?”

“Socialists wouldn’t call it the end.  But it’s got to be the end until it can become the means.”

“Yes, but if you get in the habit of looking at it as an end, will there be anything left for it to be a means to?”