Mary Louise and Josie OGorman | Page 5

for a reckoning. All this was accomplished with much talk and many interruptions. The treasurer's report brought forth a groan. There was little money left in the treasury and much was needed in the way of equipment.
"I see nothing for it but to give up," said one lugubrious member. "Dorfield doesn't take enough interest to support the home and so there's an end of it."
"That would come under new business," suggested the president. "We must get through with what is on the carpet first," consulting a small book on parliamentary law.
"Well, there is no use in staying here if we are going to have to give up," spake the lugubrious one. "All of this talk is foolish if we are going to disband."
"Disband, nothing!" broke in Mrs. Wright, whose hands were busily employed knitting a sweater for one of her girls while her eyes were glancing from person to person. Her foot tapped constantly while her knitting needles flew. One felt that she was doing some kind of work with that tapping foot.
"Disband, indeed!" she whispered sibilantly. "We'll have a tag day and a rummage sale and I'll get up a dicker party and some theatricals. Disband, indeed!"
At last Dr. Weston was allowed to speak.
"Ladies," he said, "I mean Madame President, I have to report to the board--"
"Not another case of measles, I trust!" interrupted one.
"No, not a case of measles, but a case that I hope is going to prove quite as contagious--"
"Mumps, I'll be bound!"
"No, madame! We have had a gift for the home--"
"More old faded carpets and carved walnut furniture, I wager!"
Finally Dr. Weston was able to divulge to the board of managers that Mary Louise Burrows, Jim Hathaway's granddaughter, now Mrs. Danny Dexter, intended to hand over to them her grandfather's old home.
Mary Louise and Josie in the next room with the door closed were able to tell exactly the moment when the news was broken. Such a hubbub ensued that the doctor's voice was quite drowned out.
"And now, ladies," continued Dr. Weston, "since we have several vacancies on our board, I think we could not do better than to ask Mrs. Dexter to fill one of those vacancies and her friend Miss Josie O'Gorman one of the others."
There was much hemming and hawing at this proposition.
"Too young!" was the general verdict, but Dr. Weston declared that Mary Louise was not too young to give her property to the home, and then he hinted wisely of other things she might give. The astute old man was a good judge of human nature, especially human nature as exemplified by a board of women managers. He had held back the fact that Mary Louise also intended to endow the home. He was determined to have her put on the board first, and also her clever little friend, who had such a quiet way of hitting the nail on the head.
With the air of conferring on Mary Louise and Josie a tremendous favor they were finally elected to the board.
"But who is this Josie O'Gorman?" asked a smartly dressed woman, "and why? Isn't she a kind of a washerwoman?"
"Hush!" admonished another. "Don't you know she is in the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop with Elizabeth Wright?"
The secretary was requested to inform the two young women of the honor conferred upon them.
"They are in my office," said Dr. Weston, "and I might just step in and tell them myself."
"Oh, horrors!" cried one of the women. "Do you suppose they heard what we said?"
"I never said anything but that they were too young. Nobody could object to that."
"And I said board work might prove too arduous for them."
"And I said our board was too big as it was."
"I was for them all the time."
"And I!"
"And I!"
CHAPTER III
MARY LOUISE TELLS A STORY
The members of the board need not have concerned themselves in regard to the waiting girls. Josie and Mary Louise had been fully occupied. At the moment that the hubbub had arisen, marking the time when Dr. Weston had made his announcement, there had been a sharp tap on the office door. Josie had opened the door and there had entered a woman and two children, a girl of eight and a boy of about six. The girl carried a badly wrapped bundle of clothes.
Mary Louise and Josie felt a keen interest in all three. The woman was young--under thirty. She was handsome, with raven black hair and well-cut features. Her face was pale and her eyes gloomy. She carried herself with a slow, lazy grace. The good lines of her tall figure asserted themselves in spite of the cheap, ill-fitting serge suit. Josie always noticed hands and feet, because she declared they were more difficult to disguise than any other portion of one's anatomy. One glance at the woman's ungloved hands made Josie