A Philanthropist | Page 7

October. Well, I've just thought, Why not get the Rooms all ready, and the reading-room moved over there, and have lemonade and sandwiches and sarsaparilla, and Kitty Waters to begin to serve right away, as she's beginning to run the streets again, and Annabel Riley with her? Then the Civic Club can have its headquarters there, and people will begin to be used to it before cold weather."
"And I am to serve sarsaparilla and sandwiches with Kitty and Annabel? Really, dear Miss Gould, if you knew how horribly ill sarsaparilla is certain to make me--I have loathed it from childhood--"
"Oh, no, no, no!" she interrupted, with her sweet, tolerant smile. She smiled at him as if he had been a child.
"You know I never meant that you should work all day, Mr. Welles. It isn't at all necessary. I have always felt that an hour or two a day of intelligent, cultivated work was fully equal to a much longer space of manual labor that is more mechanical, more tiresome."
"Better fifty years of poker than a cycle of croquet!" her lodger murmured. "Yes, I have always felt that myself."
"And somebody must be there from ten to twelve, say, in the mornings, in what we call the office; just to keep an eye on things, and answer questions about the kitchen, and watch the reading-room, and recommend the periodicals, and take the children's Civic League reports, and oversee the Rooms generally. Now I'd be there Wednesdays to meet the mothers, and Mrs. Underwood Saturdays for the Band of Hope and the kitchen-garden. It would be just Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from ten to twelve, say!"
"From ten to twelve, say," he repeated absently, with his eyes on her handsome, eager face. He had never seen her so animated, so girlishly insistent. She urged with the vivid earnestness of twenty years.
"My dear lady," he brought out finally, "you are like Greek architecture or Eastlake furniture or--or 'God Save the Queen'--perfectly absolute! And I am so hideously relative--But, after all, why should a sense of humor be an essential? One is really more complete--I suppose Mahomet had none--When shall I begin?"
The interested villagers were informed early and regularly of the progress of the latest scheme of their benefactress. Henry and Mr. Waters furnished most satisfactory and detailed bulletins to gatherings of leisurely and congenial spirits, who listened with incredulous amazement to the accounts of Mr. Welles's proceedings.
"Him an' that hired man o' his, they have took more stuff over to them Rooms than you c'd shake a stick at! I never see nothing like it--never! Waxed that floor, they have, and put more mats onto it--fur and colored. An' the stuff--oh, Lord! China--all that blue china he got fr'm ol' Mis' Simms, an' them ol' stoneware platters that Mis' Rivers was goin' to fire away, an' he give her two dollars for the lot--all that's scattered round on tables and shelves. An' that ol' black secr'tary he got fr'm Lord knows where, an' brakes growin' in colored pots standin' right up there, an' statyers o' men an' women--no heads onto 'em, some ain't got; it's all one to him--he'd buy any ol' thing so's 'twas broke, you might say. An' them ol' straight chairs--no upholsterin' on 'em, an' some o' them wicker kind that bends any way, with piliers in 'em. An' cups and sassers, with a tea-pot 'n' kittle; an' he makes tea himself an' drinks it--I swear it's so. An' a guitar, an', Lord, the pictures! You can't see no wall for 'em!
"'It's a mighty lucky thing, havin' this room, Thompson,' says he to that hired man, 'the things was spillin' over. We'll make it a bower o' beauty, Thompson,' says he. 'Yes, sir,' says the man. That's all he ever says, you might say. I never see nothin' like it, never, the way that hired man talks to him; you'd think he was the Queen o' Sheba.
"An' he goes squintin' about here an' there, changin' this an' that, an' singin' away an' laughin'--you'd think he'd have a fit. Seems's if he loved to putter about 'n' fool with things in a room, like women. I heard him say so myself. I was helpin' Miss Gould with the other rooms--she ain't seen his; she don't know no more'n the dead what he's got in there--an' I was by the door when he said it.
"'Thompson,' says he, 'if I don't keep my present situation,' says he, 'I c'n go out as a decorator an' furnisher. Don't you think I'd succeed, Thompson?' says he. 'Yes, sir,' says Thompson.
"'You see, we've got to do something Thompson,' says he. 'We've got ter justify our existence, Thompson,' an' he commenced to laugh. 'Yes, sir,' says Thompson. Beats all I ever see, the way that man answers