Not that she knew, in so many words, that she, the little, frail bit of dust and ashes that she was, was her own idol, and that she appeared before her Maker, in those solemn walls, to draw to herself the homage and the attention that was due to God alone; but yet it was true that, for years and years, Lillie’s unconfessed yet only motive for appearing in church had been the display of herself, and the winning of admiration.

But is she so much worse than others?—­than the clergyman who uses the pulpit and the sacred office to show off his talents?—­than the singers who sing God’s praises to show their voices,—­who intone the agonies of their Redeemer, or the glories of the Te Deum, confident on the comments of the newspaper press on their performance the next week?  No:  Lillie may be a little sinner, but not above others in this matter.

“Lillie,” said John to her after dinner, assuming a careless, matter-of-course air, “would you like to drive with me over to Spindlewood, and see my Sunday school?”

“Your Sunday school, John?  Why, bless me! do you teach Sunday school?”

“Certainly I do.  Grace and I have a school of two hundred children and young people belonging to our factories.  I am superintendent.”

“I never did hear of any thing so odd!” said Lillie.  “What in the world can you want to take all that trouble for,—­go basking over there in the hot sun, and be shut up with a room full of those ill-smelling factory-people?  Why, I’m sure it can’t be your duty!  I wouldn’t do it for the world.  Nothing would tempt me.  Why, gracious, John, you might catch small-pox or something!”

“Pooh!  Lillie, child, you don’t know any thing about them.  They are just as cleanly and respectable as anybody.”

“Oh, well! they may be.  But these Irish and Germans and Swedes and Danes, and all that low class, do smell so,—­you needn’t tell me, now!—­that working-class smell is a thing that can’t be disguised.”

“But, Lillie, these are our people.  They are the laborers from whose toils our wealth comes; and we owe them something.”

“Well! you pay them something, don’t you?”

“I mean morally.  We owe our efforts to instruct their children, and to elevate and guide them.  Lillie, I feel that it is wrong for us to use wealth merely as a means of self-gratification.  We ought to labor for those who labor for us.  We ought to deny ourselves, and make some sacrifices of ease for their good.”

“You dear old preachy creature!” said Lillie.  “How good you must be!  But, really, I haven’t the smallest vocation to be a missionary,—­not the smallest.  I can’t think of any thing that would induce me to take a long, hot ride in the sun, and to sit in that stived-up room with those common creatures.”

John looked grave.  “Lillie,” he said, “you shouldn’t speak of any of your fellow-beings in that heartless way.”