The Making of Mary | Page 4

and her brown eyes sparkling with the animation of twenty summers rather than of forty-two.
"Children all gone to bed? That's right! Don't go, mother! I'm sure you'll like to hear about the House of Refuge. We've got it fixed at last! Those rich old lumbermen that won't give a cent to a church, or any charity connected with one, have gone to the bottom of their pockets this time. Fancy Peter Wood, Dave--five hundred dollars! And Jeff Henderson, five hundred. I have the list in my bag. Like to see it?"
"No' the nicht, thenk ye," said my mother stiffly, but I added:
"Hand it over to me, and I'll put it in to-morrow's Echo. That's what they want."
"Nothing of the kind, you old cynic! I shan't tell you another thing about it." But still she went on: "We've taken the old Laurence house on the corner of Garfield Avenue and Pine Street, and it's to be fitted up to accommodate any sort of refugees."
"Irrespective of race, creed, sex, or color," I whispered parenthetically.
"No one is ever to be turned from the door without a good square meal, and there's to be a back, outside stair erected, up which a tramp can go at any hour of the night, and find a nice clean bed awaiting him--locked away from the rest of the house, of course."
"Oh, why?" I innocently inquired. "Surely you have enough faith in your brother man to believe that he would not commit any breach of hospitality?"
"I have," replied Belle, squeezing my recumbent form further against the back of the sofa, upon which she had seated herself. "But remember we are not all theosophists on the Board."
In the words of the historic witness against Mrs. Muldoon, "That's the way the row began!" Belle was elected Treasurer of the House of Refuge, but as she knows nothing of figures, I had to keep the books of that unique institution, and was therefore enabled to form a practical estimate of its workings.
I shall not attempt a description of the numerous "cases" in which my advice, if not my pocketbook, was freely drawn upon, but shall leave them, along with the description of the many antecedent fads of my beloved better half, to some historian of longer wind, and shall content myself with recounting the particular "case"--and attachments--which most nearly affected our family life and happiness.
* * * * *
"This is what I call solid comfort," said Belle to me one evening late in September, as we sat in the parlor in a couple of deep, springy armchairs, fronting a huge grate fire, that would be banished by the lighting of the furnace. "Children all in school again, your mother off on a long visit, and plenty of new books on the table."
I looked up from one of the aforesaid new books.
"Just wait! The season's business hasn't begun in the Refuge yet."
"Everything is in good shape for it, though. We've had enough donations of groceries and vegetables to keep us going almost all winter. We've lots of wood for the furnace, and Mack and Hardy have given us some second-hand furniture and----"
The electric door-bell sent out a long, imperative summons.
"Who can that be, Dave, at this time of night? None of the boys locked out?"
"No; they all went up to bed a while ago."
Belle rose and walked to the door. I pulled the tidy from my chair-back over my bald head to protect me from the draught, but that did not prevent me from hearing what went on.
"Are you Mrs. Gemmell?" This from a female voice, breathless with excitement.
"I am."
"Then you are one of the trustees of the House of Refuge?" gasped another feminine speaker.
"Yes. Won't you come in?"
"No, thank you. We've just come to tell you about this young girl who has run to us for protection."
"We're school-teachers, mawm."
"She's in my class, and she hasn't a friend in the city and knew nowhere else to go."
Then followed some hysterical whispers, which roused my curiosity so much that I went to the door and peeped over the shoulder of my tall wife. The two plain, business-like young women were evidently much distressed, but between them was a fair-haired slip of a girl of fifteen or sixteen, the least disturbed of the group. The three older women might have been talking in a foreign tongue, or of someone else, so unconcerned did she appear, present danger being over.
"How did she happen to be with these people?" Belle was asking as I came forward.
"The wife of this brute of a man told us that she was nursemaid with the Ferguson Family Concert Company, but they dropped her here in Lake City without a friend or a cent."
"She took her in to help sell fruit and ice cream evenings, and she let her go to