A Philanthropist | Page 7

thought of anything, then?" he asked interestedly.
She nodded gravely. "Why, yes," she said. "It wouldn't be right for me
to say you must do something, and then offer no suggestions whatever,
knowing as I do how you feel about it. I thought of such a good plan,
and one that would be the best possible answer to Tom--"
"Oh, good heavens!" murmured her lodger, but she went on quickly:
"You know I was going to open the soup-kitchen in 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