Only he took long rests every day while he went to Grace’s, on Elm Street, and stretched himself on the old sofa, and sat in his mother’s old arm-chair, and told Grace how very elegant their house was, and how much taste the architect had shown, and how much Lillie was delighted with it.

But this silent walk of John’s, up and down his brilliant apartments, opened his eyes to another troublesome prospect.  He was a Christian man, with a high aim and ideal in life.  He believed in the Sermon on the Mount, and other radical preaching of that nature; and he was a very honest man, and hated humbug in every shape.  Nothing seemed meaner to him than to profess a sham.  But it began in a cloudy way to appear to him that there is a manner of arranging one’s houses that makes it difficult—­yes, well-nigh impossible—­to act out in them any of the brotherhood principles of those discourses.

There are houses where the self-respecting poor, or the honest laboring man and woman, cannot be made to enter or to feel at home.  They are made for the selfish luxury of the privileged few.  Then John reflected, uneasily, that this change in his house had absorbed that whole balance which usually remained on his accounts to be devoted to benevolent purposes, and with which this year he had proposed to erect a reading-room for his work-people.

“Lillie,” said John, as he walked uneasily up and down, “I wish you would try to help me in this thing.  I always have done it,—­my father and mother did it before me,—­and I don’t want all of a sudden to depart from it.  It may seem a little thing, but it does a great deal of good.  It produces kind feeling; it refines and educates and softens them.”

“Oh, well, John! if you say so, I must, I suppose,” said Lillie, with a sigh.  “I can have the carpets and furniture all covered, I suppose; it’ll be no end of trouble, but I’ll try.  But I must say, I think all this kind of petting of the working-classes does no sort of good; it only makes them uppish and exacting:  you never get any gratitude for it.”

“But you know, dearie, what is said about doing good, ’hoping for nothing again,’” said John.

“Now, John, please don’t preach, of all things.  Haven’t I told you that I’ll try my best?  I am going to,—­I’ll work with all my strength,—­you know that isn’t much,—­but I shall exert myself to the utmost if you say so.”

“My dear, I don’t want you to injure yourself!”

“Oh!  I don’t mind,” said Lillie, with the air of a martyr.  “The servants, I suppose, will make a fuss about it; and I shouldn’t wonder if it was the means of sending them every one off in a body, and leaving me without any help in the house, just as the Follingsbees and the Simpkinses are coming to visit us.”

“I didn’t know that you had invited the Follingsbees and Simpkinses,” said John.

“Didn’t I tell you?  I meant to,” said Mrs. Lillie, innocently.