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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Philanthropist
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23366]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILANTHROPIST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A PHILANTHROPIST
+
+By Josephine Daskam
+
+Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+“I suspected him from the first,” said Miss Gould, with some irritation,
+to her lodger. She spoke with irritation because of the amused smile
+of the lodger. He bowed with the grace that characterized all his lazy
+movements.
+
+“He looked very much like that Tom Waters that I had at the Reformed
+Drunkards' League last year. I even thought he was Tom--”
+
+“I do not know Tom?” hazarded the lodger.
+
+“No. I don't know whether I ever mentioned him to you. He came twice to
+the League, and we were really quite hopeful about him, and the third
+time he asked to have the meeting at his house. We thought it a great
+sign--the best of signs, in fact. So as a great favor we went there
+instead of meeting at the Rooms. I was a little late--I lost the
+way--and when I got there I heard a great noise as if they were singing
+different songs at the same time. I hurried in to lead them--they get
+so mixed in the singing--and--it makes me blush now to think of it!--the
+wretch had invited them all early, and--and they were all intoxicated!
+
+“I am sorry I told you,” she added with dignity; for the lodger, in an
+endeavor to smile sympathetically, had lost his way and was convulsed
+with a mirth entirely unregretful.
+
+“Not at all, not at all,” he murmured politely. “It is a delightful
+story. I would not have missed it--a choir of reformed drunkards! But do
+you not, my dear Miss Gould, perceive in these little setbacks a warning
+against further attempts? Do you still attend the League? It is not
+possible!”
+
+“Possible?” echoed his visitor; for owing to certain recent and untoward
+circumstances, Miss Gould was half reclining in her lodger's great
+Indian chair, sipping a glass of his '49 port. “Indeed I do! They
+had every one of them to be reformed all over again! It was most
+disgraceful!”
+
+Her lodger checked a rising smile, and leaned solicitously toward her,
+regarding her firm, fine-featured face with flattering attention.
+
+“Are you growing stronger? Can I bring you anything?” he inquired.
+
+Miss Gould's color rose, half with anger at her weakness of body, half
+with a vexed consciousness of his amusement.
+
+“Thank you, no,” she returned coldly, “I am ashamed to have been so
+weak-minded. I must go now and tell Henry to pile the wood again in the
+east corner. There will probably come another tramp very soon--they are
+very prevalent this month, I hear.”
+
+Her lodger left his low wicker seat--a proof of enormous excitement--and
+frowned at her.
+
+“Do you seriously mean, Miss Gould, that you are going to run the risk
+of another such--such catastrophe? It is absurd. I cannot believe it of
+you! Is there no other way--”
+
+But he had been standing a long while, it occurred to him, and he
+retired to the chair again. A splinter of wood on his immaculate white
+flannel coat caught his eye, and a slow smile spread over his handsome,
+lazy face. It grew and grew until at last a distinct chuckle penetrated
+to the dusky corner where the Indian chair leaned back against dull
+Oriental draperies. Its occupant attempted to rise, her face stern, her
+mouth unrelenting. He was at her side instantly.
+
+“Take my arm--and pardon me!” he said with an irresistible grace. “It is
+only my fear for your comfort, you know, Miss Gould. I cannot bear that
+you should be at the mercy of every drunken fellow that wishes to impose
+on you!”
+
+As she crossed the hall that separated her territory from his, her fine,
+full figure erect, her dark head high in the air, a whimsical regret
+came over him that they were not younger and more foolish.
+
+“I should certainly marry her to reform her,” he said to the birch log
+that spluttered on his inimitable colonial fire-dogs. And then, as the
+remembrance of the events of the morning came to him, he laughed again.
+
+He had been disturbed at his leisurely coffee and roll by a rapid
+and ceaseless pounding, followed by a violent rattling, and varied by
+stifled cries apparently from the woodshed. The din seemed to come from
+the lower part of the house, and after one or two futile appeals to the
+man who served as valet, cook, and butler in his bachelor establishment,
+he decided that he was alone in his half of the house, and that the
+noise came from Miss Gould's side. He strolled down the beautiful
+winding staircase, and dragged his crimson dressing-gown to the top
+of the cellar stairs, the uproar growing momentarily more terrific.
+Half-way down the whitewashed steps he paused, viewing the remarkable
+scene below him with interest and amazement. The cemented floor was
+literally covered with neatly chopped kindling-wood, which rose as in a
+tide under the efforts of a large red-faced man who, with the regularity
+of a machine, stooped, grasped a billet in either hand, shook them in
+the face of Miss Gould, who cowered upon a soap-box at his side, and
+flung them on the floor. From the woodhouse near the cellar muffled
+shouts were heard through a storm of blows on the door. From the
+rattling of this door, and the fact that the red-faced man aimed every
+third stick at it, the observer might readily conclude that some one
+desirous of leaving the woodhouse was locked within it.
+
+For a moment the spectator on the stairs stood stunned. The noise
+was deafening; the appearance of the man, whose expression was one of
+settled rage but whose actions were of the coldest regularity, was most
+bewildering, partially obscured as it was by the flying billets of
+wood; the mechanical attempts of Miss Gould to rise from the soap-box,
+invariably checked by a fierce brandishing of the stick just taken from
+the lessening pile, were at once startling and fascinating, inasmuch
+as she was methodically waved back just as her knees had unbent for the
+trial, and as methodically essayed her escape again, alternately rising
+with dignity and sinking back in terror.
+
+The red dressing-gown advanced a step, and met her gaze. Dignity and
+terror shifted to relief.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Welles!” she gasped. Her lodger girded up his _robe de chambre_
+with its red silk cord and advanced with decision through the chaos of
+birch and hickory. A struggle, sharp but brief, and he turned to find
+Miss Gould offering a coil of clothes-rope with which to bind the
+conquered, whom conflict had sobered, for he made no resistance.
+
+“What do you mean by such idiotic actions?” the squire of dames
+demanded, as he freed the maddened Henry from his durance vile in the
+woodhouse and confronted the red-faced man, who had not uttered a word.
+
+He cast a baffled glance at Miss Gould and a triumphant smile at Henry
+before replying. Then, disdaining the lady's righteous indignation and
+the hired man's threatening gestures, he faced the gentleman in the
+scarlet robe and spoke as man to man.
+
+“Gov'nor,” he said with somewhat thickened speech, “I come here an' I
+asked for a meal. An' she tol' me would I work fer it? An' I said yes.
+An' she come into this ol' vault of a suller, an' she pointed to that
+ol' heap o' wood, an' she tol' me ter move it over ter that corner.
+An' I done so fer half an hour. An' I says to that blitherin' fool over
+there, who was workin' in that ol' wood-house, what the devil did she
+care w'ich corner the darned stuff was in? An' he says that she didn't
+care a hang, but that she'd tell the next man that come along to move
+it back to where I got it from; he said 'twas a matter er principle
+with her not to give a man a bite fer nothin'! So I shut him in his ol'
+house, an' w'en she come down I gave her a piece of my mind. I don't
+mind a little work, mister, but when it come to shufflin' kind-lin's
+round in this ol' tomb fer half an hour an' makin' a fool o' myself fer
+nothin', I got my back up. My time ain't so vallyble to me as 'tis to
+some, gov'nor, but it's worth a damn sight more'n that!”
+
+Miss Gould's lodger shuddered as he remembered the quarter he had
+surreptitiously bestowed upon the man, and the withering scorn that
+would be his portion were the weakness known. He smiled as he recalled
+the scene in the cellar when he had helped Miss Gould up the stairs and
+returned to soothe Henry, who regretted that he had left one timber of
+the woodhouse upon another.
+
+“Though I'm bound to say, Mr. Welles, that I see how he felt. I've often
+felt like a fool explainin' how they was to move that wood back an'
+forth. It does seem strange that Miss Gould has to do it that way. Give
+'em some-thin' an' let 'em go, I say!”
+
+It was precisely his own view--but how fundamentally immoral the
+position was he knew so well! He recalled Miss Gould's lectures on the
+subject, miracles of eloquence and irrefutably correct in deductions
+that interested him not nearly so much as the lecturer.
+
+“So firm, so positive, so wholesome!” he would murmur to himself in
+tacit apology for the instructive hours spent before their common
+ground, the great fireplace in the central hall. He never sat there
+without remembering their first interview: her resentment at an
+absolutely inexcusable intrusion slowly melting before his exquisite
+appreciation of every line and corner of the old colonial homestead; her
+reserve waning at every touch of his irresistible courtesy, till, to her
+own open amazement, she rose to conduct this connoisseur in antiquities
+through the rooms whose delights he had perfectly foreseen, he assured
+her, from the modelling of the front porch; her utter and instantaneous
+refusal to consider for a second his proposal to lodge a stranger in
+half of her father's house; and the naïve and conscientious struggle
+with her principles when, with a logic none the less forcible because
+it was so gracefully developed, he convinced her that her plain duty lay
+along the lines of his choice.
+
+For as a philanthropist what could she do? Here were placed in her hands
+means she could not in conscience overlook. Rapidly translating his
+dollars into converts, he juggled them before her dazzled eyes; he
+even hinted delicately at Duty, with that exact conception of the
+requirements of the stern daughter felt by none so keenly as those who
+systematically avoid her.
+
+His good genius prompted him to refer casually to soup-kitchens.
+Now soup-kitchens were the delight of Miss Gould's heart; toward the
+establishment of a soup-kitchen she had looked since the day when her
+father's death had left her the double legacy of his worldly goods and
+his unworldly philanthropy.
+
+Visions of dozens of Bacchic revellers, riotous no more, but seated
+temperately each before his steaming bowl, rose to her delighted eyes;
+she saw in fancy the daughters and nieces of the reformed in smiles and
+white aprons ladling the nutritious and attractive compound, earning
+thus an honest wage; she saw a neatly balanced account-book and a
+triumphant report; she saw herself the respected and deprecatory idol of
+a millennial village. She wavered, hesitated, and was lost.
+
+That very evening saw the establishment of a second ménage in the north
+side of the house, and though a swift regret chilled her manner for
+weeks, she found herself little by little growing interested in her
+lodger, and conscious of an increasing desire to benefit him, an
+irritated longing to influence him for good, to turn him from the
+butterfly whims of a pretended invalid to an appreciation of the
+responsibilities of life.
+
+For in all her well-ordered forty years Miss Gould had never seen so
+indolent, so capricious, so irresponsible a person. That a man of easy
+means, fine education, sufficient health, and gray hair should have
+nothing better to do than collect willow-ware and fire-irons, read the
+magazines, play the piano, and stroll about in the sun seemed to her
+nothing less than horrible.
+
+Each day that added some new treasure to his perfectly arranged rooms,
+and in consequence some new song to his seductive repertoire, left a new
+sting in her soul. She had been influencing somebody or something all
+her life. She had been educating and directing and benefiting till she
+was forced to be grateful to that providential generosity that caused
+new wickedness and ignorance to spring constantly from this very soil
+she had cleared; for if one reform had been sufficient she would long
+since have been obliged to leave the little village for larger fields.
+She had ministered to the starved mind as to the stunted body; the idle
+and dissolute quaked before her. And yet here in her own household,
+across her hall, lived the epitome of uselessness, indolence,
+selfishness, and--she was forced to admit it--charm. What corresponded
+to a sense of humor in her caught at the discrepancy and worried over
+it.
+
+What! was she not competent, then, to influence her equals? For in
+everything but moral stamina she was forced to admit that her lodger was
+her equal, if no more. Widely travelled, well read, well born, talented,
+handsome, deferential--but persistently amused at her, irrevocably
+indolent, hopelessly selfish.
+
+With the firm intention of turning the occasions to his benefit, she had
+finally accepted his regular and courteous invitation to take tea with
+him, and had watched his graceful management of samovar and tea-cup with
+open disfavor. “A habit picked up in England,” he had assured her, when,
+with the frankness characteristic of her, she had criticised him for the
+effeminacy. And his smiling explanation had sent a sudden flush across
+her smooth, firm cheeks. Was she provincial? Did she seem to him a New
+England villager and nothing more? She bit her lip, and the appeal she
+had planned went unspoken that day.
+
+But her desire could not rest, and as to her strict notions the
+continual visits from her side to his seemed unsuitable, she gave in
+self-defence her own invitation, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoons
+saw her lodger across the hall drinking her own tea with wine and
+plum-cake by the shining kettle.
+
+If she could command his admiration in no other way, she felt, she might
+safely rely on his deferential respect for the owner of that pewter
+tea-service--velvety, shimmering, glistening dully, with shapes that
+vaguely recalled Greek lamps and Etruscan urns. And she piled wedges of
+ambrosial plum-cake with yellow frosting on sprigged china, and set out
+wine in her great-grandfather's long-necked decanter, and, with what
+she considered a gracious tact, overlooked the flippancy of her guest's
+desultory conversation, and sincerely tried to discover the humorous
+quality in her conversation that forced a subdued chuckle now and then
+from her listener.
+
+She confided most of her schemes to him, sometimes unconsciously, and
+grew to depend more than she knew upon his common sense and experience;
+for, though openly cynical of her works, he would give her what she
+often realized to be the best of practical advice, and his amusing
+generalities, though to her mind insults to humanity, had been so
+bitterly proved true that she looked fearfully to see his lightest
+adverse prophecy fulfilled.
+
+After a cautious introduction of the subject by asking his advice as
+to the minimum of hours in the week one could conscientiously allow a
+doubtful member of the Weekly Culture Club to spend upon Browning, she
+endeavored to get his idea of that poet. Her famous theory as to
+her ability to place any one satisfactorily in the scale of culture
+according to his degree of appreciation of “Rabbi ben Ezra”
+ was unfortunately known to her lodger before she could with any
+verisimilitude produce the book, and he was wary of committing himself.
+The exquisite effrontery with which she finally brought out her
+gray-green volume was only equalled by the forbearing courtesy with
+which he welcomed both it and her. Nor did he offer any other comment on
+her opening the book at a well-worn page than an apologetic removal to
+the only chair in the room more comfortable than the one he was at the
+time occupying. He listened in silence to her intelligent if somewhat
+sonorous rendering of selected portions of “Saul,” thanking her politely
+at the close, and only stipulating that he should be allowed to return
+the favor by a reading from one of his own favorite poets. With a
+shocked remembrance of certain yellow-covered volumes she had often
+cleared away from the piazza, Miss Gould inquired if the poet in
+question were English. On his hearty affirmative she resigned herself
+with no little interest to the opportunity of seeing her way more
+clearly into this baffling mind, horrified at his criticism of the
+second reading--for she had brought the “Rabbi” forward at last,
+
+     “Then welcome each rebuff
+     That turns earth's smoothness rough,
+     Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!”
+
+she had intoned; and, fixing her eye sternly on the butterfly in white
+flannels, she had asked him with a telling emphasis what that meant to
+him? With the sweetest smile in the world, he had leaned forward, sipped
+his tea, gazed thoughtfully in the fire, and answered, with a polite
+apology for the homeliness of the illustration, that it reminded him
+most strongly of a tack fixed in the seat of a chair, with the attendant
+circumstances! After a convulsive effort to include in one terrible
+sentence all the scorn and regret and pity that she felt, Miss Gould had
+decided that silence was best, and sat back wondering why she suffered
+him one instant in her parlor. He took from the floor beside him at this
+point a neat red volume, and, murmuring something about his inability to
+do the poet justice, he began to read. For one, two, four minutes Miss
+Gould sat staring; then she interrupted him coldly:
+
+“And who is the author of that doggerel, Mr. Welles?”
+
+“Edward Lear, dear Miss Gould--and a great man, too.”
+
+“I think I might have been spared--” she began with such genuine anger
+that any but her lodger would have quailed. He, however, merely smiled.
+
+“But the subtlety of it--the immensity of the conception--the power of
+characterization!” he cried. “Just see how quietly this is treated.”
+
+And to her amazement she let him go on; so that a chance visitor,
+entering unannounced, might have been treated to the delicious spectacle
+of a charming middle-aged gentleman in white flannels reading, near a
+birch fire and a priceless pewter tea-service, to a handsome middle-aged
+woman in black silk, the following pregnant lines:
+
+     “There was an old person of Bow,
+     Whom nobody happened to know,
+          So they gave him some soap,
+          And said coldly, 'We hope
+     You will go back directly to Bow!'
+
+And the illustration is worthy of the text,” he added enthusiastically,
+as he passed the volume to her.
+
+She had no sense of humor, but she had a sense of justice, and it
+occurred to her that after all an agreement was an agreement. If to
+listen to insinuating inanities was the price of his attention, she
+would pay it. She had borne more than this in order to do good.
+
+So the readings continued, a source of unmixed delight to her lodger and
+a great spiritual discipline to herself.
+
+As the days grew milder their intimacy, profiting by the winter
+seclusion, led him to accompany her on her various errands. She was at
+first unwilling to accept his escort--it too clearly resembled a tacit
+consent to his idleness. But his quiet persistence, together with
+his evident cynicism as to the results of these professional tours,
+accomplished, as usual, his end; and the wondering village might observe
+on hot June mornings its benefactress, languidly accompanied by a
+slender man in white flannels, balancing a large white green-lined
+umbrella, picking his way daintily along the dusty paths, with a covered
+basket dangling from one hand and a gray-green volume distending one
+white pocket.
+
+There was material, too, for the interested observer in the picture of
+Miss Gould distributing reading matter, fruit, and lectures on household
+economy in the cottages of the mill-hands, while her lodger pitched
+pennies with the delighted children outside. It was on one of these
+occasions that Miss Gould took the opportunity to address Mr. Thomas
+Waters, late of the paper and cardboard manufacturing force, on the
+wickedness and folly of his present course of action. Mr. Waters had
+left his position on the strength of his wife's financial success.
+Mrs. Waters was a laundress, and the summer boarders, together with
+Mr. Welles, who alone went far toward establishing the fortunes of
+the family, had combined to place the head of the house in his present
+condition of elegant leisure. “I wonder at you, Tom Waters, after all
+the interest we've taken in you \ Are you not horribly ashamed to depend
+on your wife in this lazy way?” Miss Gould demanded of the once member
+of the Reformed Drunkards' League. “How many times have I explained to
+you that nothing--absolutely nothing--is so disgraceful as a man who
+will not work? What were you placed in the world for? How do you justify
+your existence?”
+
+“How,” replied her unabashed audience, with a wave of his pipe toward
+the front yard, where Mr. Welles was amiably superintending a wrestling
+match, “does he justify hisn?”
+
+Had Miss Gould been less consistent and less in earnest, there were many
+replies open to her. As it was, she colored violently, bit her lip,
+made an inaudible remark, and with a bitter glance at the author of
+her confusion, now cheering on to the conflict the scrambling Waters
+children, she called their mother to account for their presence in the
+yard at this time on a school-day, and for the first time in her life
+left the house without exacting a solemn promise of amendment from the
+head of the family.
+
+“I guess I fixed her that time!” Mr. Waters remarked triumphantly, as he
+summoned his second pair of twins from the yard and demanded of them if
+the gentleman had given them nickels or dimes.
+
+The gentleman in question became uncomfortably conscious, in the course
+of their walk home, of an atmosphere not wholly novel, that lost no
+strength in this case from its studied repression. That afternoon, as
+they sat in the shade of the big elm, he in his flexible wicker chair,
+she in a straight-backed, high-seated legacy from her grandfather, the
+whirlwind that Mr. Waters had so lightly sown fell to the reaping of a
+victim too amiable and unsuspecting not to escape the sentence of any
+but so stern a judge as the handsome and inflexible representative of
+the moral order now before him.
+
+Miss Gould was looking her best in a crisp lavender dimity, upon whose
+frills Mrs. Waters had bestowed the grateful exercise of her highest
+art. Her sleek, dark coils of hair, from which no one stray lock
+escaped, framed her fresh cheeks most admirably; her strong white
+hands appeared and disappeared with an absolute regularity through
+the dark-green wool out of which she was evolving a hideous and useful
+shawl. To her lodger, who alternately waved a palm-leaf fan and drank
+lemonade, reading at intervals from a two-days-old newspaper, and
+carrying on the desultory and amusing soliloquy that they were pleased
+to consider conversation, she presented the most attractive of pictures.
+“So firm, so positive, so wholesome,” he murmured to himself, calling
+her attention to the exquisite effect of the slanting rays that struck
+the lawn in a dappled pattern of flickering leaf-shadows, and remarking
+the violet tinge thrown by the setting sun on the old spire below in the
+middle of the village. She did not answer immediately, and when she did
+it was in tones that he had learned from various slight experiments to
+regard as final.
+
+“Mr. Welles,” she said, bending upon him that direct and placid regard
+that rendered evasion difficult and paltering impossible, “things have
+come to a point;” and she narrated the scene of the morning.
+
+“It is indeed a problem,” observed her lodger gravely, “but what is one
+to do? It is just such questions as this that illustrate the futility--”
+
+“There is no question about it, Mr. Welles,” she interrupted gravely.
+“Tom was right and I was wrong. There is no use in my talking to him or
+anybody while I--while you--while things are as they are. You must make
+up your mind, Mr. Welles.”
+
+“But, great heavens, dear Miss Gould, what do you mean? What am I
+to make up my mind about? Am I to provide myself with an occupation,
+perhaps, for the sake of Tom Waters's principles? Or am I--”
+
+“Yes. That is just it. You know what I have always felt, Mr. Welles,
+about it. But I never seemed to be able to make you see. Now, as I say,
+things have come to a point. You must do something.”
+
+“But this is absurd, Miss Gould! I am not a child, and surely nobody can
+dream of holding you in any way responsible--”
+
+“_I_ hold myself responsible,” she replied simply, “and I have never
+approved of it--never!”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders desperately. She was imperturbable; she was
+impossible; she was beyond argument or persuasion or ridicule.
+
+“Suppose I say that I think the situation is absurd, and that I refuse
+to be placed at Mr. Waters's disposal?” he suggested with a furtive
+glance. She drew the ivory hook through the green meshes a little
+faster.
+
+“I should be obliged to refuse to renew your lease in the fall,” she
+answered. He started from his wicker chair.
+
+“You cannot mean it, Miss Gould! You would not be so--so unkind, so
+unjust!”
+
+“I should feel obliged to, Mr. Welles, and I should not feel unjust.”
+
+He sank back into the yielding chair with a sigh. After all, her
+fascination had always lain in her great decision. Was it not illogical
+to expect her to fail to display it at such a crisis? There was a long
+silence. The sun sank lower and lower, the birds twittered happily
+around them. Miss Gould's long white hook slipped in and out of the
+wool, and her lodger's eyes followed it absently. After a while he rose,
+settled his white jacket elaborately, and half turned as if to go back
+to the house.
+
+“I need not tell you how I regret this unfortunate decision of yours,”
+ he said politely, with a slight touch of the hauteur that sat so well on
+his graceful person. “I can only say that I am sorry you yourself should
+regret it so little, and that I hope it will not disturb our pleasant
+acquaintance during the weeks that remain to me.”
+
+She bowed slightly with a dignified gesture that often served her as a
+reply, and he took a step toward her.
+
+“Would we not better come in?” he suggested. “The sun is gone, and your
+dress is thin. Let me send Henry after the chairs,” and his eyes dropped
+to her hands again. They were nearly hidden by the green wool, but the
+long needle quivered like a leaf in the wind; she could not pass it
+between the thread and her white forefinger. He hesitated a moment,
+glanced at her face, smiled inscrutably, and deliberately reseated
+himself.
+
+“What in the world could I do, you see?” he inquired meditatively, as if
+that had been the subject under discussion for some time. “I can't
+make cardboard boxes, you know. It's perfectly useless, my going into a
+factory. Wheels and belts and things always give me the maddest
+longing to jump into them--I couldn't resist it! And that would be so
+unpleasant--”
+
+She dropped her wool and clasped her hands under it.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Welles,” she cried eagerly, “how absurd! As if I meant that! As
+if I meant anything like it!”
+
+“Had you 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 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 back!”
+
+An almost unprecedented headache, brought on by her unremitting labor in
+effecting the change in the Rooms, kept Miss Gould in the house for two
+days after the new headquarters had been satisfactorily arranged; and
+as Mr. Welles had refused to open his office for inspection till it was
+completely furnished, she did not enter that characteristic apartment
+till the third day of its official existence.
+
+As she went through the narrow hallway connecting the four rooms on
+which the social regeneration of her village depended, she caught the
+sweet low thrum of a guitar and a too familiarly seductive voice burst
+forth into a chant, whose literal significance she was unable to grasp,
+owing to lack of familiarity with the language in which it was couched,
+but whose general tenor no one could mistake, so tender and arch was the
+rendering.
+
+With a vague thrill of apprehension she threw open the door.
+
+Sunk in cushions, a tea-cup on the arm of his chair, a guitar resting on
+his white flannel sleeve, reclined the director of the Rooms. Over
+his head hung a large and exquisite copy of the Botticelli Venus.
+Miss Gould's horrified gaze fled from this work of art to rest on a
+representation in bronze of the same reprehensible goddess, clothed,
+to be sure, a little more in accordance with the views of a retired New
+England community, yet leaving much to be desired in this direction.
+Kitty Waters attentively filled his empty cup, beaming the while, and
+the once errant Annabel, sitting on a low stool at his feet, with a red
+bow in her pretty hair, and her great brown eyes fixed adoringly on
+his face as he directed the fascinating incomprehensible little song
+straight at her charming self, was obviously in no present danger of
+running the streets.
+
+“Good morning, Miss Gould!” he said cheerfully, rising and handing the
+guitar to the abashed Annabel. “And you are really quite recovered?
+_C'est bien!_ Business is dull, and we are amusing each other, you see.
+How do you like the rooms? I flatter myself--”
+
+“If you flattered none but yourself, Mr. Welles, much harm would be
+avoided,” she interrupted with uncompromising directness. “Kitty and
+Annabel, I cannot see how you can possibly tell how many people may or
+may not be wanting lunch!”
+
+“Billy Rider tells us when any one comes,” the director assured her.
+“They don't come till twelve, anyway, and then they want to see the
+room, mostly--which we show them, don't we, Annabel?”
+
+Annabel blushed, cast down her eyes, lifted them, showed her dimples,
+and replied in the words, if not in the accents, of Thompson: “Yes,
+sir!”
+
+“It's really going to be an education in itself, don't you think so?”
+ he continued. “It's amazing how the people like it--it's really quite
+gratifying. Perhaps it may be my mission to abolish the chromo and the
+tidy from off the face of New England! We have had crowds here--just to
+look at the pictures.”
+
+“I don't doubt it!” replied Miss Gould briefly.
+
+“And I got the most attractive sugar-bowl from the little boy who
+brought in the reports about picking up papers and such things from the
+streets. He said he ought to have five cents, so I gave him a dime--I
+hadn't five--and I bought the bowl. Annabel, my child, bring me--”
+
+But Annabel and her fellow-waitress had disappeared. Miss Gould sat in
+silence. At intervals her perplexed gaze rested unconsciously on the
+Botticelli Venus, from which she instantly with a slight frown lowered
+it and regarded the floor. When she at last met his eyes the expression
+of her own was so troubled, the droop of her firm mouth so pathetic
+and unusual, that he left his chair and dragged the little stool to
+her feet, assuming an attitude so boyish and graceful that in spite of
+herself she smiled at him.
+
+“What is the matter?” he asked confidentially. “Is anything wrong?
+Don't you like the room? I enjoy it tremendously, myself. I've been
+here almost all the time since it was done. I think Tom Waters must be
+tremendously impressed--”
+
+“That's the trouble; he is,” said Miss Gould simply.
+
+“Trouble? trouble? Is his impression unfavorable? Heavens,
+how unfortunate!” exclaimed the director airily. “Surely, my
+application--Does the room fail to meet his approval, or--”
+
+“Yes, it does,” she interrupted. “He says it's no place for a man to be
+in; and he says the pictures are--are--well, he says they are improper!”
+ glancing at the Venus.
+
+“Ah!” responded the director with a suspicious sweetness. “He does not
+care for the nude, then?”
+
+She sighed deeply. “Oh, Mr. Welles!”
+
+“It is indeed to be regretted that Mr. Waters's ideals are so
+high--and--shall we say--so elusive?” proceeded the director smoothly.
+“It is so difficult--so well-nigh impossible--to satisfy him. One
+devotes one's energies--I may say one slaves night and day--to win
+some slight mark of approval; and just as one is about to reap the
+well-earned reward--a smile, a word of appreciation--all is forfeited!
+It is hard indeed! Would you suggest the rearrangement of the Rooms
+under Mr. Waters's direction? Thompson is at his service--”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Welles!” she sighed hopelessly. “It isn't only that! It's not
+alone the room, though Mrs. Underwood wonders that I should think she
+would be able to conduct the Band of Hope in here, and Mrs. Rider says
+that after what her husband told her she should no more think of sitting
+here for a mothers' meeting than anything in the world. It's the whole
+thing. Why did you treat them all to lemonade the first day? Surely you
+knew that our one aim is to prevent miscellaneous charity. And Tom says
+you smoked in here--he smelt it.”
+
+“I smelt him, too,” remarked the director calmly. “That was one reason
+why I smoked.”
+
+“And--and having Kitty and Annabel here all the time! The Girls' Club
+are so j---- Well, the Girls' Club like the old rooms better, they say,
+and it's so difficult to get them to work together at best. And now we
+shall have to work so hard--
+
+“And the men think it's just a joke, the lemonade and everything, and
+the room gave them such a wrong impression, and they don't seem to want
+it, anyway. Tom Waters says he can't abide sarsaparilla--”
+
+“Great heavens!” the director broke in, “is it possible? A point on
+which Mr. Waters's opinion coincides with mine? I have not lived in
+vain! But this is too much; I have not deserved--”
+
+“Oh, don't!” she begged. “There is more. When I corrected Annabel for
+what I had heard about her--her impertinent behavior, she said that
+Mrs. Underwood had never approved of the whole thing, and that if I had
+consulted her she would never have given her consent to your being here,
+and that I was dictatorial--I!”
+
+Her lodger coughed and ejaculated, “You, indeed!”
+
+“And when I said that their ingratitude actually made me wonder why I
+worked so hard for them, she said--oh, dear! It is all dreadful! I don't
+know what to do!”
+
+“I do!” returned her lodger promptly. “Go away and leave 'em! They
+aren't fit to trouble you any more. Besides, they're really not so
+bad, after all, you know. There has to be just about so much laziness
+and--and that sort of thing, don't you see. Look at me, for instance!
+Think of how much misdirected energy I balance! And it gives other
+people something to do.... Go away and leave it all for a while!” he
+repeated smilingly.
+
+“Go away! But where? Why should I? What do you mean?” she stammered,
+confused at something in his eyes, which never left her face.
+
+“To England--you said you'd like to see it. With me--for I certainly
+couldn't stay here alone. Why do you suppose I stay, dear lady? I used
+to wonder myself. No, sit still, don't get up! I am about to make you an
+offer of marriage; indeed, I am serious, Miss Gould!
+
+“I don't see that it's ridiculous at all. I see every practical reason
+in favor of it. In the first place, if they are gossiping--oh, yes,
+Thompson told me, and I wonder that they hadn't before: these villages
+are dreadful places--I couldn't very well stay, you see; and then where
+should I put all my things? In the second place, I have so much stuff,
+and there's no house fit for it but--but ours; and if we were married I
+could have just twice as much room for it--and I'm getting far too much
+for my side. In the third place, I find that I can't look forward with
+any pleasure to travelling about alone, because, in the fourth place,
+I've grown so tremendously fond of you, dear Miss Gould! I think you
+don't dislike me?”
+
+She plucked the guitar strings nervously with her white, strong fingers.
+The rich, vibrating tones of it filled the room and confused her still
+more.
+
+“People will say that I--that we--” He caught her hand: it had never
+been kissed before. “Would you rather I went away and then there would
+be nothing left for them to say?” he asked softly.
+
+She caught her breath.
+
+“I'm too--”
+
+“You are too charming not to have some one who appreciates the fact as
+thoroughly as I do,” he interrupted gallantly. “I think you do me so
+much good, you know,” he added, still holding her hand. She looked at
+him directly for the first time.
+
+“Do I really? Is that true?” she demanded, with a return of her old
+manner so complete and sudden as to startle him. “If I thought that--”
+
+“You would?” he asked with a smile. “I thought so! Here is a village
+that scorns your efforts and a respectful suitor who implores them. Can
+you hesitate?”
+
+His smile was irresistible, and she returned it half reprovingly. “Will
+you never be serious?” she said. “I wonder that I can--” She stopped.
+
+“That you can--” he repeated, watching her blush, but she would not
+finish.
+
+“You must not think that I can give up my work--my real work--so
+easily,” she said, rising and looking down on him with a return of her
+simple impressive seriousness. “I shall have to consider. I have been
+very much disturbed by their conduct. I will see you after supper,” and
+with a gesture that told him to remain, she left the room, her head
+high as she caught Annabel's voice from outside. She turned in the door,
+however, and the stern curves of her mouth melted with a smile so sweet,
+a promise so gracious and so tender, that when her eyes, frank and
+direct as a boy's, left his, he looked long at the closed door,
+wondering at the quickening of his pulses.
+
+A moment later he heard her voice, imperious and clear, and the mumble
+of Mr. Waters's unavailing if never-ending excuses. He laughed softly to
+himself, and touched the strings of the guitar that she had struck.
+“I shall save the worthy Thomas much,” he murmured to himself, “and of
+course I do it to reform her--I cannot pull down the village and die
+with the Philistines!”
+
+She went up the long main street, Mr. Waters at her side and Annabel
+Riley behind her. Her lodger watched her out of sight, and prepared to
+lock up the Rooms.
+
+“So firm, so positive, so wholesome!” he said, as he started after her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Philanthropist
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23366]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILANTHROPIST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A PHILANTHROPIST
+
+By Josephine Daskam
+
+Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+"I suspected him from the first," said Miss Gould, with some irritation,
+to her lodger. She spoke with irritation because of the amused smile
+of the lodger. He bowed with the grace that characterized all his lazy
+movements.
+
+"He looked very much like that Tom Waters that I had at the Reformed
+Drunkards' League last year. I even thought he was Tom--"
+
+"I do not know Tom?" hazarded the lodger.
+
+"No. I don't know whether I ever mentioned him to you. He came twice to
+the League, and we were really quite hopeful about him, and the third
+time he asked to have the meeting at his house. We thought it a great
+sign--the best of signs, in fact. So as a great favor we went there
+instead of meeting at the Rooms. I was a little late--I lost the
+way--and when I got there I heard a great noise as if they were singing
+different songs at the same time. I hurried in to lead them--they get
+so mixed in the singing--and--it makes me blush now to think of it!--the
+wretch had invited them all early, and--and they were all intoxicated!
+
+"I am sorry I told you," she added with dignity; for the lodger, in an
+endeavor to smile sympathetically, had lost his way and was convulsed
+with a mirth entirely unregretful.
+
+"Not at all, not at all," he murmured politely. "It is a delightful
+story. I would not have missed it--a choir of reformed drunkards! But do
+you not, my dear Miss Gould, perceive in these little setbacks a warning
+against further attempts? Do you still attend the League? It is not
+possible!"
+
+"Possible?" echoed his visitor; for owing to certain recent and untoward
+circumstances, Miss Gould was half reclining in her lodger's great
+Indian chair, sipping a glass of his '49 port. "Indeed I do! They
+had every one of them to be reformed all over again! It was most
+disgraceful!"
+
+Her lodger checked a rising smile, and leaned solicitously toward her,
+regarding her firm, fine-featured face with flattering attention.
+
+"Are you growing stronger? Can I bring you anything?" he inquired.
+
+Miss Gould's color rose, half with anger at her weakness of body, half
+with a vexed consciousness of his amusement.
+
+"Thank you, no," she returned coldly, "I am ashamed to have been so
+weak-minded. I must go now and tell Henry to pile the wood again in the
+east corner. There will probably come another tramp very soon--they are
+very prevalent this month, I hear."
+
+Her lodger left his low wicker seat--a proof of enormous excitement--and
+frowned at her.
+
+"Do you seriously mean, Miss Gould, that you are going to run the risk
+of another such--such catastrophe? It is absurd. I cannot believe it of
+you! Is there no other way--"
+
+But he had been standing a long while, it occurred to him, and he
+retired to the chair again. A splinter of wood on his immaculate white
+flannel coat caught his eye, and a slow smile spread over his handsome,
+lazy face. It grew and grew until at last a distinct chuckle penetrated
+to the dusky corner where the Indian chair leaned back against dull
+Oriental draperies. Its occupant attempted to rise, her face stern, her
+mouth unrelenting. He was at her side instantly.
+
+"Take my arm--and pardon me!" he said with an irresistible grace. "It is
+only my fear for your comfort, you know, Miss Gould. I cannot bear that
+you should be at the mercy of every drunken fellow that wishes to impose
+on you!"
+
+As she crossed the hall that separated her territory from his, her fine,
+full figure erect, her dark head high in the air, a whimsical regret
+came over him that they were not younger and more foolish.
+
+"I should certainly marry her to reform her," he said to the birch log
+that spluttered on his inimitable colonial fire-dogs. And then, as the
+remembrance of the events of the morning came to him, he laughed again.
+
+He had been disturbed at his leisurely coffee and roll by a rapid
+and ceaseless pounding, followed by a violent rattling, and varied by
+stifled cries apparently from the woodshed. The din seemed to come from
+the lower part of the house, and after one or two futile appeals to the
+man who served as valet, cook, and butler in his bachelor establishment,
+he decided that he was alone in his half of the house, and that the
+noise came from Miss Gould's side. He strolled down the beautiful
+winding staircase, and dragged his crimson dressing-gown to the top
+of the cellar stairs, the uproar growing momentarily more terrific.
+Half-way down the whitewashed steps he paused, viewing the remarkable
+scene below him with interest and amazement. The cemented floor was
+literally covered with neatly chopped kindling-wood, which rose as in a
+tide under the efforts of a large red-faced man who, with the regularity
+of a machine, stooped, grasped a billet in either hand, shook them in
+the face of Miss Gould, who cowered upon a soap-box at his side, and
+flung them on the floor. From the woodhouse near the cellar muffled
+shouts were heard through a storm of blows on the door. From the
+rattling of this door, and the fact that the red-faced man aimed every
+third stick at it, the observer might readily conclude that some one
+desirous of leaving the woodhouse was locked within it.
+
+For a moment the spectator on the stairs stood stunned. The noise
+was deafening; the appearance of the man, whose expression was one of
+settled rage but whose actions were of the coldest regularity, was most
+bewildering, partially obscured as it was by the flying billets of
+wood; the mechanical attempts of Miss Gould to rise from the soap-box,
+invariably checked by a fierce brandishing of the stick just taken from
+the lessening pile, were at once startling and fascinating, inasmuch
+as she was methodically waved back just as her knees had unbent for the
+trial, and as methodically essayed her escape again, alternately rising
+with dignity and sinking back in terror.
+
+The red dressing-gown advanced a step, and met her gaze. Dignity and
+terror shifted to relief.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Welles!" she gasped. Her lodger girded up his _robe de chambre_
+with its red silk cord and advanced with decision through the chaos of
+birch and hickory. A struggle, sharp but brief, and he turned to find
+Miss Gould offering a coil of clothes-rope with which to bind the
+conquered, whom conflict had sobered, for he made no resistance.
+
+"What do you mean by such idiotic actions?" the squire of dames
+demanded, as he freed the maddened Henry from his durance vile in the
+woodhouse and confronted the red-faced man, who had not uttered a word.
+
+He cast a baffled glance at Miss Gould and a triumphant smile at Henry
+before replying. Then, disdaining the lady's righteous indignation and
+the hired man's threatening gestures, he faced the gentleman in the
+scarlet robe and spoke as man to man.
+
+"Gov'nor," he said with somewhat thickened speech, "I come here an' I
+asked for a meal. An' she tol' me would I work fer it? An' I said yes.
+An' she come into this ol' vault of a suller, an' she pointed to that
+ol' heap o' wood, an' she tol' me ter move it over ter that corner.
+An' I done so fer half an hour. An' I says to that blitherin' fool over
+there, who was workin' in that ol' wood-house, what the devil did she
+care w'ich corner the darned stuff was in? An' he says that she didn't
+care a hang, but that she'd tell the next man that come along to move
+it back to where I got it from; he said 'twas a matter er principle
+with her not to give a man a bite fer nothin'! So I shut him in his ol'
+house, an' w'en she come down I gave her a piece of my mind. I don't
+mind a little work, mister, but when it come to shufflin' kind-lin's
+round in this ol' tomb fer half an hour an' makin' a fool o' myself fer
+nothin', I got my back up. My time ain't so vallyble to me as 'tis to
+some, gov'nor, but it's worth a damn sight more'n that!"
+
+Miss Gould's lodger shuddered as he remembered the quarter he had
+surreptitiously bestowed upon the man, and the withering scorn that
+would be his portion were the weakness known. He smiled as he recalled
+the scene in the cellar when he had helped Miss Gould up the stairs and
+returned to soothe Henry, who regretted that he had left one timber of
+the woodhouse upon another.
+
+"Though I'm bound to say, Mr. Welles, that I see how he felt. I've often
+felt like a fool explainin' how they was to move that wood back an'
+forth. It does seem strange that Miss Gould has to do it that way. Give
+'em some-thin' an' let 'em go, I say!"
+
+It was precisely his own view--but how fundamentally immoral the
+position was he knew so well! He recalled Miss Gould's lectures on the
+subject, miracles of eloquence and irrefutably correct in deductions
+that interested him not nearly so much as the lecturer.
+
+"So firm, so positive, so wholesome!" he would murmur to himself in
+tacit apology for the instructive hours spent before their common
+ground, the great fireplace in the central hall. He never sat there
+without remembering their first interview: her resentment at an
+absolutely inexcusable intrusion slowly melting before his exquisite
+appreciation of every line and corner of the old colonial homestead; her
+reserve waning at every touch of his irresistible courtesy, till, to her
+own open amazement, she rose to conduct this connoisseur in antiquities
+through the rooms whose delights he had perfectly foreseen, he assured
+her, from the modelling of the front porch; her utter and instantaneous
+refusal to consider for a second his proposal to lodge a stranger in
+half of her father's house; and the na�ve and conscientious struggle
+with her principles when, with a logic none the less forcible because
+it was so gracefully developed, he convinced her that her plain duty lay
+along the lines of his choice.
+
+For as a philanthropist what could she do? Here were placed in her hands
+means she could not in conscience overlook. Rapidly translating his
+dollars into converts, he juggled them before her dazzled eyes; he
+even hinted delicately at Duty, with that exact conception of the
+requirements of the stern daughter felt by none so keenly as those who
+systematically avoid her.
+
+His good genius prompted him to refer casually to soup-kitchens.
+Now soup-kitchens were the delight of Miss Gould's heart; toward the
+establishment of a soup-kitchen she had looked since the day when her
+father's death had left her the double legacy of his worldly goods and
+his unworldly philanthropy.
+
+Visions of dozens of Bacchic revellers, riotous no more, but seated
+temperately each before his steaming bowl, rose to her delighted eyes;
+she saw in fancy the daughters and nieces of the reformed in smiles and
+white aprons ladling the nutritious and attractive compound, earning
+thus an honest wage; she saw a neatly balanced account-book and a
+triumphant report; she saw herself the respected and deprecatory idol of
+a millennial village. She wavered, hesitated, and was lost.
+
+That very evening saw the establishment of a second m�nage in the north
+side of the house, and though a swift regret chilled her manner for
+weeks, she found herself little by little growing interested in her
+lodger, and conscious of an increasing desire to benefit him, an
+irritated longing to influence him for good, to turn him from the
+butterfly whims of a pretended invalid to an appreciation of the
+responsibilities of life.
+
+For in all her well-ordered forty years Miss Gould had never seen so
+indolent, so capricious, so irresponsible a person. That a man of easy
+means, fine education, sufficient health, and gray hair should have
+nothing better to do than collect willow-ware and fire-irons, read the
+magazines, play the piano, and stroll about in the sun seemed to her
+nothing less than horrible.
+
+Each day that added some new treasure to his perfectly arranged rooms,
+and in consequence some new song to his seductive repertoire, left a new
+sting in her soul. She had been influencing somebody or something all
+her life. She had been educating and directing and benefiting till she
+was forced to be grateful to that providential generosity that caused
+new wickedness and ignorance to spring constantly from this very soil
+she had cleared; for if one reform had been sufficient she would long
+since have been obliged to leave the little village for larger fields.
+She had ministered to the starved mind as to the stunted body; the idle
+and dissolute quaked before her. And yet here in her own household,
+across her hall, lived the epitome of uselessness, indolence,
+selfishness, and--she was forced to admit it--charm. What corresponded
+to a sense of humor in her caught at the discrepancy and worried over
+it.
+
+What! was she not competent, then, to influence her equals? For in
+everything but moral stamina she was forced to admit that her lodger was
+her equal, if no more. Widely travelled, well read, well born, talented,
+handsome, deferential--but persistently amused at her, irrevocably
+indolent, hopelessly selfish.
+
+With the firm intention of turning the occasions to his benefit, she had
+finally accepted his regular and courteous invitation to take tea with
+him, and had watched his graceful management of samovar and tea-cup with
+open disfavor. "A habit picked up in England," he had assured her, when,
+with the frankness characteristic of her, she had criticised him for the
+effeminacy. And his smiling explanation had sent a sudden flush across
+her smooth, firm cheeks. Was she provincial? Did she seem to him a New
+England villager and nothing more? She bit her lip, and the appeal she
+had planned went unspoken that day.
+
+But her desire could not rest, and as to her strict notions the
+continual visits from her side to his seemed unsuitable, she gave in
+self-defence her own invitation, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoons
+saw her lodger across the hall drinking her own tea with wine and
+plum-cake by the shining kettle.
+
+If she could command his admiration in no other way, she felt, she might
+safely rely on his deferential respect for the owner of that pewter
+tea-service--velvety, shimmering, glistening dully, with shapes that
+vaguely recalled Greek lamps and Etruscan urns. And she piled wedges of
+ambrosial plum-cake with yellow frosting on sprigged china, and set out
+wine in her great-grandfather's long-necked decanter, and, with what
+she considered a gracious tact, overlooked the flippancy of her guest's
+desultory conversation, and sincerely tried to discover the humorous
+quality in her conversation that forced a subdued chuckle now and then
+from her listener.
+
+She confided most of her schemes to him, sometimes unconsciously, and
+grew to depend more than she knew upon his common sense and experience;
+for, though openly cynical of her works, he would give her what she
+often realized to be the best of practical advice, and his amusing
+generalities, though to her mind insults to humanity, had been so
+bitterly proved true that she looked fearfully to see his lightest
+adverse prophecy fulfilled.
+
+After a cautious introduction of the subject by asking his advice as
+to the minimum of hours in the week one could conscientiously allow a
+doubtful member of the Weekly Culture Club to spend upon Browning, she
+endeavored to get his idea of that poet. Her famous theory as to
+her ability to place any one satisfactorily in the scale of culture
+according to his degree of appreciation of "Rabbi ben Ezra"
+was unfortunately known to her lodger before she could with any
+verisimilitude produce the book, and he was wary of committing himself.
+The exquisite effrontery with which she finally brought out her
+gray-green volume was only equalled by the forbearing courtesy with
+which he welcomed both it and her. Nor did he offer any other comment on
+her opening the book at a well-worn page than an apologetic removal to
+the only chair in the room more comfortable than the one he was at the
+time occupying. He listened in silence to her intelligent if somewhat
+sonorous rendering of selected portions of "Saul," thanking her politely
+at the close, and only stipulating that he should be allowed to return
+the favor by a reading from one of his own favorite poets. With a
+shocked remembrance of certain yellow-covered volumes she had often
+cleared away from the piazza, Miss Gould inquired if the poet in
+question were English. On his hearty affirmative she resigned herself
+with no little interest to the opportunity of seeing her way more
+clearly into this baffling mind, horrified at his criticism of the
+second reading--for she had brought the "Rabbi" forward at last,
+
+     "Then welcome each rebuff
+     That turns earth's smoothness rough,
+     Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!"
+
+she had intoned; and, fixing her eye sternly on the butterfly in white
+flannels, she had asked him with a telling emphasis what that meant to
+him? With the sweetest smile in the world, he had leaned forward, sipped
+his tea, gazed thoughtfully in the fire, and answered, with a polite
+apology for the homeliness of the illustration, that it reminded him
+most strongly of a tack fixed in the seat of a chair, with the attendant
+circumstances! After a convulsive effort to include in one terrible
+sentence all the scorn and regret and pity that she felt, Miss Gould had
+decided that silence was best, and sat back wondering why she suffered
+him one instant in her parlor. He took from the floor beside him at this
+point a neat red volume, and, murmuring something about his inability to
+do the poet justice, he began to read. For one, two, four minutes Miss
+Gould sat staring; then she interrupted him coldly:
+
+"And who is the author of that doggerel, Mr. Welles?"
+
+"Edward Lear, dear Miss Gould--and a great man, too."
+
+"I think I might have been spared--" she began with such genuine anger
+that any but her lodger would have quailed. He, however, merely smiled.
+
+"But the subtlety of it--the immensity of the conception--the power of
+characterization!" he cried. "Just see how quietly this is treated."
+
+And to her amazement she let him go on; so that a chance visitor,
+entering unannounced, might have been treated to the delicious spectacle
+of a charming middle-aged gentleman in white flannels reading, near a
+birch fire and a priceless pewter tea-service, to a handsome middle-aged
+woman in black silk, the following pregnant lines:
+
+     "There was an old person of Bow,
+     Whom nobody happened to know,
+          So they gave him some soap,
+          And said coldly, 'We hope
+     You will go back directly to Bow!'
+
+And the illustration is worthy of the text," he added enthusiastically,
+as he passed the volume to her.
+
+She had no sense of humor, but she had a sense of justice, and it
+occurred to her that after all an agreement was an agreement. If to
+listen to insinuating inanities was the price of his attention, she
+would pay it. She had borne more than this in order to do good.
+
+So the readings continued, a source of unmixed delight to her lodger and
+a great spiritual discipline to herself.
+
+As the days grew milder their intimacy, profiting by the winter
+seclusion, led him to accompany her on her various errands. She was at
+first unwilling to accept his escort--it too clearly resembled a tacit
+consent to his idleness. But his quiet persistence, together with
+his evident cynicism as to the results of these professional tours,
+accomplished, as usual, his end; and the wondering village might observe
+on hot June mornings its benefactress, languidly accompanied by a
+slender man in white flannels, balancing a large white green-lined
+umbrella, picking his way daintily along the dusty paths, with a covered
+basket dangling from one hand and a gray-green volume distending one
+white pocket.
+
+There was material, too, for the interested observer in the picture of
+Miss Gould distributing reading matter, fruit, and lectures on household
+economy in the cottages of the mill-hands, while her lodger pitched
+pennies with the delighted children outside. It was on one of these
+occasions that Miss Gould took the opportunity to address Mr. Thomas
+Waters, late of the paper and cardboard manufacturing force, on the
+wickedness and folly of his present course of action. Mr. Waters had
+left his position on the strength of his wife's financial success.
+Mrs. Waters was a laundress, and the summer boarders, together with
+Mr. Welles, who alone went far toward establishing the fortunes of
+the family, had combined to place the head of the house in his present
+condition of elegant leisure. "I wonder at you, Tom Waters, after all
+the interest we've taken in you \ Are you not horribly ashamed to depend
+on your wife in this lazy way?" Miss Gould demanded of the once member
+of the Reformed Drunkards' League. "How many times have I explained to
+you that nothing--absolutely nothing--is so disgraceful as a man who
+will not work? What were you placed in the world for? How do you justify
+your existence?"
+
+"How," replied her unabashed audience, with a wave of his pipe toward
+the front yard, where Mr. Welles was amiably superintending a wrestling
+match, "does he justify hisn?"
+
+Had Miss Gould been less consistent and less in earnest, there were many
+replies open to her. As it was, she colored violently, bit her lip,
+made an inaudible remark, and with a bitter glance at the author of
+her confusion, now cheering on to the conflict the scrambling Waters
+children, she called their mother to account for their presence in the
+yard at this time on a school-day, and for the first time in her life
+left the house without exacting a solemn promise of amendment from the
+head of the family.
+
+"I guess I fixed her that time!" Mr. Waters remarked triumphantly, as he
+summoned his second pair of twins from the yard and demanded of them if
+the gentleman had given them nickels or dimes.
+
+The gentleman in question became uncomfortably conscious, in the course
+of their walk home, of an atmosphere not wholly novel, that lost no
+strength in this case from its studied repression. That afternoon, as
+they sat in the shade of the big elm, he in his flexible wicker chair,
+she in a straight-backed, high-seated legacy from her grandfather, the
+whirlwind that Mr. Waters had so lightly sown fell to the reaping of a
+victim too amiable and unsuspecting not to escape the sentence of any
+but so stern a judge as the handsome and inflexible representative of
+the moral order now before him.
+
+Miss Gould was looking her best in a crisp lavender dimity, upon whose
+frills Mrs. Waters had bestowed the grateful exercise of her highest
+art. Her sleek, dark coils of hair, from which no one stray lock
+escaped, framed her fresh cheeks most admirably; her strong white
+hands appeared and disappeared with an absolute regularity through
+the dark-green wool out of which she was evolving a hideous and useful
+shawl. To her lodger, who alternately waved a palm-leaf fan and drank
+lemonade, reading at intervals from a two-days-old newspaper, and
+carrying on the desultory and amusing soliloquy that they were pleased
+to consider conversation, she presented the most attractive of pictures.
+"So firm, so positive, so wholesome," he murmured to himself, calling
+her attention to the exquisite effect of the slanting rays that struck
+the lawn in a dappled pattern of flickering leaf-shadows, and remarking
+the violet tinge thrown by the setting sun on the old spire below in the
+middle of the village. She did not answer immediately, and when she did
+it was in tones that he had learned from various slight experiments to
+regard as final.
+
+"Mr. Welles," she said, bending upon him that direct and placid regard
+that rendered evasion difficult and paltering impossible, "things have
+come to a point;" and she narrated the scene of the morning.
+
+"It is indeed a problem," observed her lodger gravely, "but what is one
+to do? It is just such questions as this that illustrate the futility--"
+
+"There is no question about it, Mr. Welles," she interrupted gravely.
+"Tom was right and I was wrong. There is no use in my talking to him or
+anybody while I--while you--while things are as they are. You must make
+up your mind, Mr. Welles."
+
+"But, great heavens, dear Miss Gould, what do you mean? What am I
+to make up my mind about? Am I to provide myself with an occupation,
+perhaps, for the sake of Tom Waters's principles? Or am I--"
+
+"Yes. That is just it. You know what I have always felt, Mr. Welles,
+about it. But I never seemed to be able to make you see. Now, as I say,
+things have come to a point. You must do something."
+
+"But this is absurd, Miss Gould! I am not a child, and surely nobody can
+dream of holding you in any way responsible--"
+
+"_I_ hold myself responsible," she replied simply, "and I have never
+approved of it--never!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders desperately. She was imperturbable; she was
+impossible; she was beyond argument or persuasion or ridicule.
+
+"Suppose I say that I think the situation is absurd, and that I refuse
+to be placed at Mr. Waters's disposal?" he suggested with a furtive
+glance. She drew the ivory hook through the green meshes a little
+faster.
+
+"I should be obliged to refuse to renew your lease in the fall," she
+answered. He started from his wicker chair.
+
+"You cannot mean it, Miss Gould! You would not be so--so unkind, so
+unjust!"
+
+"I should feel obliged to, Mr. Welles, and I should not feel unjust."
+
+He sank back into the yielding chair with a sigh. After all, her
+fascination had always lain in her great decision. Was it not illogical
+to expect her to fail to display it at such a crisis? There was a long
+silence. The sun sank lower and lower, the birds twittered happily
+around them. Miss Gould's long white hook slipped in and out of the
+wool, and her lodger's eyes followed it absently. After a while he rose,
+settled his white jacket elaborately, and half turned as if to go back
+to the house.
+
+"I need not tell you how I regret this unfortunate decision of yours,"
+he said politely, with a slight touch of the hauteur that sat so well on
+his graceful person. "I can only say that I am sorry you yourself should
+regret it so little, and that I hope it will not disturb our pleasant
+acquaintance during the weeks that remain to me."
+
+She bowed slightly with a dignified gesture that often served her as a
+reply, and he took a step toward her.
+
+"Would we not better come in?" he suggested. "The sun is gone, and your
+dress is thin. Let me send Henry after the chairs," and his eyes dropped
+to her hands again. They were nearly hidden by the green wool, but the
+long needle quivered like a leaf in the wind; she could not pass it
+between the thread and her white forefinger. He hesitated a moment,
+glanced at her face, smiled inscrutably, and deliberately reseated
+himself.
+
+"What in the world could I do, you see?" he inquired meditatively, as if
+that had been the subject under discussion for some time. "I can't
+make cardboard boxes, you know. It's perfectly useless, my going into a
+factory. Wheels and belts and things always give me the maddest
+longing to jump into them--I couldn't resist it! And that would be so
+unpleasant--"
+
+She dropped her wool and clasped her hands under it.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Welles," she cried eagerly, "how absurd! As if I meant that! As
+if I meant anything like it!"
+
+"Had you 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 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 back!"
+
+An almost unprecedented headache, brought on by her unremitting labor in
+effecting the change in the Rooms, kept Miss Gould in the house for two
+days after the new headquarters had been satisfactorily arranged; and
+as Mr. Welles had refused to open his office for inspection till it was
+completely furnished, she did not enter that characteristic apartment
+till the third day of its official existence.
+
+As she went through the narrow hallway connecting the four rooms on
+which the social regeneration of her village depended, she caught the
+sweet low thrum of a guitar and a too familiarly seductive voice burst
+forth into a chant, whose literal significance she was unable to grasp,
+owing to lack of familiarity with the language in which it was couched,
+but whose general tenor no one could mistake, so tender and arch was the
+rendering.
+
+With a vague thrill of apprehension she threw open the door.
+
+Sunk in cushions, a tea-cup on the arm of his chair, a guitar resting on
+his white flannel sleeve, reclined the director of the Rooms. Over
+his head hung a large and exquisite copy of the Botticelli Venus.
+Miss Gould's horrified gaze fled from this work of art to rest on a
+representation in bronze of the same reprehensible goddess, clothed,
+to be sure, a little more in accordance with the views of a retired New
+England community, yet leaving much to be desired in this direction.
+Kitty Waters attentively filled his empty cup, beaming the while, and
+the once errant Annabel, sitting on a low stool at his feet, with a red
+bow in her pretty hair, and her great brown eyes fixed adoringly on
+his face as he directed the fascinating incomprehensible little song
+straight at her charming self, was obviously in no present danger of
+running the streets.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Gould!" he said cheerfully, rising and handing the
+guitar to the abashed Annabel. "And you are really quite recovered?
+_C'est bien!_ Business is dull, and we are amusing each other, you see.
+How do you like the rooms? I flatter myself--"
+
+"If you flattered none but yourself, Mr. Welles, much harm would be
+avoided," she interrupted with uncompromising directness. "Kitty and
+Annabel, I cannot see how you can possibly tell how many people may or
+may not be wanting lunch!"
+
+"Billy Rider tells us when any one comes," the director assured her.
+"They don't come till twelve, anyway, and then they want to see the
+room, mostly--which we show them, don't we, Annabel?"
+
+Annabel blushed, cast down her eyes, lifted them, showed her dimples,
+and replied in the words, if not in the accents, of Thompson: "Yes,
+sir!"
+
+"It's really going to be an education in itself, don't you think so?"
+he continued. "It's amazing how the people like it--it's really quite
+gratifying. Perhaps it may be my mission to abolish the chromo and the
+tidy from off the face of New England! We have had crowds here--just to
+look at the pictures."
+
+"I don't doubt it!" replied Miss Gould briefly.
+
+"And I got the most attractive sugar-bowl from the little boy who
+brought in the reports about picking up papers and such things from the
+streets. He said he ought to have five cents, so I gave him a dime--I
+hadn't five--and I bought the bowl. Annabel, my child, bring me--"
+
+But Annabel and her fellow-waitress had disappeared. Miss Gould sat in
+silence. At intervals her perplexed gaze rested unconsciously on the
+Botticelli Venus, from which she instantly with a slight frown lowered
+it and regarded the floor. When she at last met his eyes the expression
+of her own was so troubled, the droop of her firm mouth so pathetic
+and unusual, that he left his chair and dragged the little stool to
+her feet, assuming an attitude so boyish and graceful that in spite of
+herself she smiled at him.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked confidentially. "Is anything wrong?
+Don't you like the room? I enjoy it tremendously, myself. I've been
+here almost all the time since it was done. I think Tom Waters must be
+tremendously impressed--"
+
+"That's the trouble; he is," said Miss Gould simply.
+
+"Trouble? trouble? Is his impression unfavorable? Heavens,
+how unfortunate!" exclaimed the director airily. "Surely, my
+application--Does the room fail to meet his approval, or--"
+
+"Yes, it does," she interrupted. "He says it's no place for a man to be
+in; and he says the pictures are--are--well, he says they are improper!"
+glancing at the Venus.
+
+"Ah!" responded the director with a suspicious sweetness. "He does not
+care for the nude, then?"
+
+She sighed deeply. "Oh, Mr. Welles!"
+
+"It is indeed to be regretted that Mr. Waters's ideals are so
+high--and--shall we say--so elusive?" proceeded the director smoothly.
+"It is so difficult--so well-nigh impossible--to satisfy him. One
+devotes one's energies--I may say one slaves night and day--to win
+some slight mark of approval; and just as one is about to reap the
+well-earned reward--a smile, a word of appreciation--all is forfeited!
+It is hard indeed! Would you suggest the rearrangement of the Rooms
+under Mr. Waters's direction? Thompson is at his service--"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Welles!" she sighed hopelessly. "It isn't only that! It's not
+alone the room, though Mrs. Underwood wonders that I should think she
+would be able to conduct the Band of Hope in here, and Mrs. Rider says
+that after what her husband told her she should no more think of sitting
+here for a mothers' meeting than anything in the world. It's the whole
+thing. Why did you treat them all to lemonade the first day? Surely you
+knew that our one aim is to prevent miscellaneous charity. And Tom says
+you smoked in here--he smelt it."
+
+"I smelt him, too," remarked the director calmly. "That was one reason
+why I smoked."
+
+"And--and having Kitty and Annabel here all the time! The Girls' Club
+are so j---- Well, the Girls' Club like the old rooms better, they say,
+and it's so difficult to get them to work together at best. And now we
+shall have to work so hard--
+
+"And the men think it's just a joke, the lemonade and everything, and
+the room gave them such a wrong impression, and they don't seem to want
+it, anyway. Tom Waters says he can't abide sarsaparilla--"
+
+"Great heavens!" the director broke in, "is it possible? A point on
+which Mr. Waters's opinion coincides with mine? I have not lived in
+vain! But this is too much; I have not deserved--"
+
+"Oh, don't!" she begged. "There is more. When I corrected Annabel for
+what I had heard about her--her impertinent behavior, she said that
+Mrs. Underwood had never approved of the whole thing, and that if I had
+consulted her she would never have given her consent to your being here,
+and that I was dictatorial--I!"
+
+Her lodger coughed and ejaculated, "You, indeed!"
+
+"And when I said that their ingratitude actually made me wonder why I
+worked so hard for them, she said--oh, dear! It is all dreadful! I don't
+know what to do!"
+
+"I do!" returned her lodger promptly. "Go away and leave 'em! They
+aren't fit to trouble you any more. Besides, they're really not so
+bad, after all, you know. There has to be just about so much laziness
+and--and that sort of thing, don't you see. Look at me, for instance!
+Think of how much misdirected energy I balance! And it gives other
+people something to do.... Go away and leave it all for a while!" he
+repeated smilingly.
+
+"Go away! But where? Why should I? What do you mean?" she stammered,
+confused at something in his eyes, which never left her face.
+
+"To England--you said you'd like to see it. With me--for I certainly
+couldn't stay here alone. Why do you suppose I stay, dear lady? I used
+to wonder myself. No, sit still, don't get up! I am about to make you an
+offer of marriage; indeed, I am serious, Miss Gould!
+
+"I don't see that it's ridiculous at all. I see every practical reason
+in favor of it. In the first place, if they are gossiping--oh, yes,
+Thompson told me, and I wonder that they hadn't before: these villages
+are dreadful places--I couldn't very well stay, you see; and then where
+should I put all my things? In the second place, I have so much stuff,
+and there's no house fit for it but--but ours; and if we were married I
+could have just twice as much room for it--and I'm getting far too much
+for my side. In the third place, I find that I can't look forward with
+any pleasure to travelling about alone, because, in the fourth place,
+I've grown so tremendously fond of you, dear Miss Gould! I think you
+don't dislike me?"
+
+She plucked the guitar strings nervously with her white, strong fingers.
+The rich, vibrating tones of it filled the room and confused her still
+more.
+
+"People will say that I--that we--" He caught her hand: it had never
+been kissed before. "Would you rather I went away and then there would
+be nothing left for them to say?" he asked softly.
+
+She caught her breath.
+
+"I'm too--"
+
+"You are too charming not to have some one who appreciates the fact as
+thoroughly as I do," he interrupted gallantly. "I think you do me so
+much good, you know," he added, still holding her hand. She looked at
+him directly for the first time.
+
+"Do I really? Is that true?" she demanded, with a return of her old
+manner so complete and sudden as to startle him. "If I thought that--"
+
+"You would?" he asked with a smile. "I thought so! Here is a village
+that scorns your efforts and a respectful suitor who implores them. Can
+you hesitate?"
+
+His smile was irresistible, and she returned it half reprovingly. "Will
+you never be serious?" she said. "I wonder that I can--" She stopped.
+
+"That you can--" he repeated, watching her blush, but she would not
+finish.
+
+"You must not think that I can give up my work--my real work--so
+easily," she said, rising and looking down on him with a return of her
+simple impressive seriousness. "I shall have to consider. I have been
+very much disturbed by their conduct. I will see you after supper," and
+with a gesture that told him to remain, she left the room, her head
+high as she caught Annabel's voice from outside. She turned in the door,
+however, and the stern curves of her mouth melted with a smile so sweet,
+a promise so gracious and so tender, that when her eyes, frank and
+direct as a boy's, left his, he looked long at the closed door,
+wondering at the quickening of his pulses.
+
+A moment later he heard her voice, imperious and clear, and the mumble
+of Mr. Waters's unavailing if never-ending excuses. He laughed softly to
+himself, and touched the strings of the guitar that she had struck.
+"I shall save the worthy Thomas much," he murmured to himself, "and of
+course I do it to reform her--I cannot pull down the village and die
+with the Philistines!"
+
+She went up the long main street, Mr. Waters at her side and Annabel
+Riley behind her. Her lodger watched her out of sight, and prepared to
+lock up the Rooms.
+
+"So firm, so positive, so wholesome!" he said, as he started after her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam
+    </title>
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
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+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Philanthropist
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23366]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILANTHROPIST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A PHILANTHROPIST
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Josephine Daskam <br /> <br /> Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's
+      Sons
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspected him from the first,&rdquo; said Miss Gould, with some irritation,
+      to her lodger. She spoke with irritation because of the amused smile of
+      the lodger. He bowed with the grace that characterized all his lazy
+      movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looked very much like that Tom Waters that I had at the Reformed
+      Drunkards' League last year. I even thought he was Tom&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know Tom?&rdquo; hazarded the lodger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I don't know whether I ever mentioned him to you. He came twice to
+      the League, and we were really quite hopeful about him, and the third time
+      he asked to have the meeting at his house. We thought it a great sign&mdash;the
+      best of signs, in fact. So as a great favor we went there instead of
+      meeting at the Rooms. I was a little late&mdash;I lost the way&mdash;and
+      when I got there I heard a great noise as if they were singing different
+      songs at the same time. I hurried in to lead them&mdash;they get so mixed
+      in the singing&mdash;and&mdash;it makes me blush now to think of it!&mdash;the
+      wretch had invited them all early, and&mdash;and they were all
+      intoxicated!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry I told you,&rdquo; she added with dignity; for the lodger, in an
+      endeavor to smile sympathetically, had lost his way and was convulsed with
+      a mirth entirely unregretful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all, not at all,&rdquo; he murmured politely. &ldquo;It is a delightful story.
+      I would not have missed it&mdash;a choir of reformed drunkards! But do you
+      not, my dear Miss Gould, perceive in these little setbacks a warning
+      against further attempts? Do you still attend the League? It is not
+      possible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possible?&rdquo; echoed his visitor; for owing to certain recent and untoward
+      circumstances, Miss Gould was half reclining in her lodger's great Indian
+      chair, sipping a glass of his '49 port. &ldquo;Indeed I do! They had every one
+      of them to be reformed all over again! It was most disgraceful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lodger checked a rising smile, and leaned solicitously toward her,
+      regarding her firm, fine-featured face with flattering attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you growing stronger? Can I bring you anything?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Gould's color rose, half with anger at her weakness of body, half
+      with a vexed consciousness of his amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, no,&rdquo; she returned coldly, &ldquo;I am ashamed to have been so
+      weak-minded. I must go now and tell Henry to pile the wood again in the
+      east corner. There will probably come another tramp very soon&mdash;they
+      are very prevalent this month, I hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lodger left his low wicker seat&mdash;a proof of enormous excitement&mdash;and
+      frowned at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you seriously mean, Miss Gould, that you are going to run the risk of
+      another such&mdash;such catastrophe? It is absurd. I cannot believe it of
+      you! Is there no other way&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had been standing a long while, it occurred to him, and he retired
+      to the chair again. A splinter of wood on his immaculate white flannel
+      coat caught his eye, and a slow smile spread over his handsome, lazy face.
+      It grew and grew until at last a distinct chuckle penetrated to the dusky
+      corner where the Indian chair leaned back against dull Oriental draperies.
+      Its occupant attempted to rise, her face stern, her mouth unrelenting. He
+      was at her side instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take my arm&mdash;and pardon me!&rdquo; he said with an irresistible grace. &ldquo;It
+      is only my fear for your comfort, you know, Miss Gould. I cannot bear that
+      you should be at the mercy of every drunken fellow that wishes to impose
+      on you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she crossed the hall that separated her territory from his, her fine,
+      full figure erect, her dark head high in the air, a whimsical regret came
+      over him that they were not younger and more foolish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should certainly marry her to reform her,&rdquo; he said to the birch log
+      that spluttered on his inimitable colonial fire-dogs. And then, as the
+      remembrance of the events of the morning came to him, he laughed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been disturbed at his leisurely coffee and roll by a rapid and
+      ceaseless pounding, followed by a violent rattling, and varied by stifled
+      cries apparently from the woodshed. The din seemed to come from the lower
+      part of the house, and after one or two futile appeals to the man who
+      served as valet, cook, and butler in his bachelor establishment, he
+      decided that he was alone in his half of the house, and that the noise
+      came from Miss Gould's side. He strolled down the beautiful winding
+      staircase, and dragged his crimson dressing-gown to the top of the cellar
+      stairs, the uproar growing momentarily more terrific. Half-way down the
+      whitewashed steps he paused, viewing the remarkable scene below him with
+      interest and amazement. The cemented floor was literally covered with
+      neatly chopped kindling-wood, which rose as in a tide under the efforts of
+      a large red-faced man who, with the regularity of a machine, stooped,
+      grasped a billet in either hand, shook them in the face of Miss Gould, who
+      cowered upon a soap-box at his side, and flung them on the floor. From the
+      woodhouse near the cellar muffled shouts were heard through a storm of
+      blows on the door. From the rattling of this door, and the fact that the
+      red-faced man aimed every third stick at it, the observer might readily
+      conclude that some one desirous of leaving the woodhouse was locked within
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the spectator on the stairs stood stunned. The noise was
+      deafening; the appearance of the man, whose expression was one of settled
+      rage but whose actions were of the coldest regularity, was most
+      bewildering, partially obscured as it was by the flying billets of wood;
+      the mechanical attempts of Miss Gould to rise from the soap-box,
+      invariably checked by a fierce brandishing of the stick just taken from
+      the lessening pile, were at once startling and fascinating, inasmuch as
+      she was methodically waved back just as her knees had unbent for the
+      trial, and as methodically essayed her escape again, alternately rising
+      with dignity and sinking back in terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red dressing-gown advanced a step, and met her gaze. Dignity and
+      terror shifted to relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Welles!&rdquo; she gasped. Her lodger girded up his <i>robe de chambre</i>
+      with its red silk cord and advanced with decision through the chaos of
+      birch and hickory. A struggle, sharp but brief, and he turned to find Miss
+      Gould offering a coil of clothes-rope with which to bind the conquered,
+      whom conflict had sobered, for he made no resistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by such idiotic actions?&rdquo; the squire of dames demanded,
+      as he freed the maddened Henry from his durance vile in the woodhouse and
+      confronted the red-faced man, who had not uttered a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast a baffled glance at Miss Gould and a triumphant smile at Henry
+      before replying. Then, disdaining the lady's righteous indignation and the
+      hired man's threatening gestures, he faced the gentleman in the scarlet
+      robe and spoke as man to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gov'nor,&rdquo; he said with somewhat thickened speech, &ldquo;I come here an' I
+      asked for a meal. An' she tol' me would I work fer it? An' I said yes. An'
+      she come into this ol' vault of a suller, an' she pointed to that ol' heap
+      o' wood, an' she tol' me ter move it over ter that corner. An' I done so
+      fer half an hour. An' I says to that blitherin' fool over there, who was
+      workin' in that ol' wood-house, what the devil did she care w'ich corner
+      the darned stuff was in? An' he says that she didn't care a hang, but that
+      she'd tell the next man that come along to move it back to where I got it
+      from; he said 'twas a matter er principle with her not to give a man a
+      bite fer nothin'! So I shut him in his ol' house, an' w'en she come down I
+      gave her a piece of my mind. I don't mind a little work, mister, but when
+      it come to shufflin' kind-lin's round in this ol' tomb fer half an hour
+      an' makin' a fool o' myself fer nothin', I got my back up. My time ain't
+      so vallyble to me as 'tis to some, gov'nor, but it's worth a damn sight
+      more'n that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Gould's lodger shuddered as he remembered the quarter he had
+      surreptitiously bestowed upon the man, and the withering scorn that would
+      be his portion were the weakness known. He smiled as he recalled the scene
+      in the cellar when he had helped Miss Gould up the stairs and returned to
+      soothe Henry, who regretted that he had left one timber of the woodhouse
+      upon another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though I'm bound to say, Mr. Welles, that I see how he felt. I've often
+      felt like a fool explainin' how they was to move that wood back an' forth.
+      It does seem strange that Miss Gould has to do it that way. Give 'em
+      some-thin' an' let 'em go, I say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was precisely his own view&mdash;but how fundamentally immoral the
+      position was he knew so well! He recalled Miss Gould's lectures on the
+      subject, miracles of eloquence and irrefutably correct in deductions that
+      interested him not nearly so much as the lecturer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So firm, so positive, so wholesome!&rdquo; he would murmur to himself in tacit
+      apology for the instructive hours spent before their common ground, the
+      great fireplace in the central hall. He never sat there without
+      remembering their first interview: her resentment at an absolutely
+      inexcusable intrusion slowly melting before his exquisite appreciation of
+      every line and corner of the old colonial homestead; her reserve waning at
+      every touch of his irresistible courtesy, till, to her own open amazement,
+      she rose to conduct this connoisseur in antiquities through the rooms
+      whose delights he had perfectly foreseen, he assured her, from the
+      modelling of the front porch; her utter and instantaneous refusal to
+      consider for a second his proposal to lodge a stranger in half of her
+      father's house; and the naïve and conscientious struggle with her
+      principles when, with a logic none the less forcible because it was so
+      gracefully developed, he convinced her that her plain duty lay along the
+      lines of his choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For as a philanthropist what could she do? Here were placed in her hands
+      means she could not in conscience overlook. Rapidly translating his
+      dollars into converts, he juggled them before her dazzled eyes; he even
+      hinted delicately at Duty, with that exact conception of the requirements
+      of the stern daughter felt by none so keenly as those who systematically
+      avoid her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His good genius prompted him to refer casually to soup-kitchens. Now
+      soup-kitchens were the delight of Miss Gould's heart; toward the
+      establishment of a soup-kitchen she had looked since the day when her
+      father's death had left her the double legacy of his worldly goods and his
+      unworldly philanthropy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Visions of dozens of Bacchic revellers, riotous no more, but seated
+      temperately each before his steaming bowl, rose to her delighted eyes; she
+      saw in fancy the daughters and nieces of the reformed in smiles and white
+      aprons ladling the nutritious and attractive compound, earning thus an
+      honest wage; she saw a neatly balanced account-book and a triumphant
+      report; she saw herself the respected and deprecatory idol of a millennial
+      village. She wavered, hesitated, and was lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That very evening saw the establishment of a second ménage in the north
+      side of the house, and though a swift regret chilled her manner for weeks,
+      she found herself little by little growing interested in her lodger, and
+      conscious of an increasing desire to benefit him, an irritated longing to
+      influence him for good, to turn him from the butterfly whims of a
+      pretended invalid to an appreciation of the responsibilities of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For in all her well-ordered forty years Miss Gould had never seen so
+      indolent, so capricious, so irresponsible a person. That a man of easy
+      means, fine education, sufficient health, and gray hair should have
+      nothing better to do than collect willow-ware and fire-irons, read the
+      magazines, play the piano, and stroll about in the sun seemed to her
+      nothing less than horrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each day that added some new treasure to his perfectly arranged rooms, and
+      in consequence some new song to his seductive repertoire, left a new sting
+      in her soul. She had been influencing somebody or something all her life.
+      She had been educating and directing and benefiting till she was forced to
+      be grateful to that providential generosity that caused new wickedness and
+      ignorance to spring constantly from this very soil she had cleared; for if
+      one reform had been sufficient she would long since have been obliged to
+      leave the little village for larger fields. She had ministered to the
+      starved mind as to the stunted body; the idle and dissolute quaked before
+      her. And yet here in her own household, across her hall, lived the epitome
+      of uselessness, indolence, selfishness, and&mdash;she was forced to admit
+      it&mdash;charm. What corresponded to a sense of humor in her caught at the
+      discrepancy and worried over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What! was she not competent, then, to influence her equals? For in
+      everything but moral stamina she was forced to admit that her lodger was
+      her equal, if no more. Widely travelled, well read, well born, talented,
+      handsome, deferential&mdash;but persistently amused at her, irrevocably
+      indolent, hopelessly selfish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the firm intention of turning the occasions to his benefit, she had
+      finally accepted his regular and courteous invitation to take tea with
+      him, and had watched his graceful management of samovar and tea-cup with
+      open disfavor. &ldquo;A habit picked up in England,&rdquo; he had assured her, when,
+      with the frankness characteristic of her, she had criticised him for the
+      effeminacy. And his smiling explanation had sent a sudden flush across her
+      smooth, firm cheeks. Was she provincial? Did she seem to him a New England
+      villager and nothing more? She bit her lip, and the appeal she had planned
+      went unspoken that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her desire could not rest, and as to her strict notions the continual
+      visits from her side to his seemed unsuitable, she gave in self-defence
+      her own invitation, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoons saw her lodger
+      across the hall drinking her own tea with wine and plum-cake by the
+      shining kettle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she could command his admiration in no other way, she felt, she might
+      safely rely on his deferential respect for the owner of that pewter
+      tea-service&mdash;velvety, shimmering, glistening dully, with shapes that
+      vaguely recalled Greek lamps and Etruscan urns. And she piled wedges of
+      ambrosial plum-cake with yellow frosting on sprigged china, and set out
+      wine in her great-grandfather's long-necked decanter, and, with what she
+      considered a gracious tact, overlooked the flippancy of her guest's
+      desultory conversation, and sincerely tried to discover the humorous
+      quality in her conversation that forced a subdued chuckle now and then
+      from her listener.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She confided most of her schemes to him, sometimes unconsciously, and grew
+      to depend more than she knew upon his common sense and experience; for,
+      though openly cynical of her works, he would give her what she often
+      realized to be the best of practical advice, and his amusing generalities,
+      though to her mind insults to humanity, had been so bitterly proved true
+      that she looked fearfully to see his lightest adverse prophecy fulfilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a cautious introduction of the subject by asking his advice as to
+      the minimum of hours in the week one could conscientiously allow a
+      doubtful member of the Weekly Culture Club to spend upon Browning, she
+      endeavored to get his idea of that poet. Her famous theory as to her
+      ability to place any one satisfactorily in the scale of culture according
+      to his degree of appreciation of &ldquo;Rabbi ben Ezra&rdquo; was unfortunately known
+      to her lodger before she could with any verisimilitude produce the book,
+      and he was wary of committing himself. The exquisite effrontery with which
+      she finally brought out her gray-green volume was only equalled by the
+      forbearing courtesy with which he welcomed both it and her. Nor did he
+      offer any other comment on her opening the book at a well-worn page than
+      an apologetic removal to the only chair in the room more comfortable than
+      the one he was at the time occupying. He listened in silence to her
+      intelligent if somewhat sonorous rendering of selected portions of &ldquo;Saul,&rdquo;
+       thanking her politely at the close, and only stipulating that he should be
+      allowed to return the favor by a reading from one of his own favorite
+      poets. With a shocked remembrance of certain yellow-covered volumes she
+      had often cleared away from the piazza, Miss Gould inquired if the poet in
+      question were English. On his hearty affirmative she resigned herself with
+      no little interest to the opportunity of seeing her way more clearly into
+      this baffling mind, horrified at his criticism of the second reading&mdash;for
+      she had brought the &ldquo;Rabbi&rdquo; forward at last,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Then welcome each rebuff
+     That turns earth's smoothness rough,
+     Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      she had intoned; and, fixing her eye sternly on the butterfly in white
+      flannels, she had asked him with a telling emphasis what that meant to
+      him? With the sweetest smile in the world, he had leaned forward, sipped
+      his tea, gazed thoughtfully in the fire, and answered, with a polite
+      apology for the homeliness of the illustration, that it reminded him most
+      strongly of a tack fixed in the seat of a chair, with the attendant
+      circumstances! After a convulsive effort to include in one terrible
+      sentence all the scorn and regret and pity that she felt, Miss Gould had
+      decided that silence was best, and sat back wondering why she suffered him
+      one instant in her parlor. He took from the floor beside him at this point
+      a neat red volume, and, murmuring something about his inability to do the
+      poet justice, he began to read. For one, two, four minutes Miss Gould sat
+      staring; then she interrupted him coldly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who is the author of that doggerel, Mr. Welles?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edward Lear, dear Miss Gould&mdash;and a great man, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I might have been spared&mdash;&rdquo; she began with such genuine
+      anger that any but her lodger would have quailed. He, however, merely
+      smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the subtlety of it&mdash;the immensity of the conception&mdash;the
+      power of characterization!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Just see how quietly this is
+      treated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And to her amazement she let him go on; so that a chance visitor, entering
+      unannounced, might have been treated to the delicious spectacle of a
+      charming middle-aged gentleman in white flannels reading, near a birch
+      fire and a priceless pewter tea-service, to a handsome middle-aged woman
+      in black silk, the following pregnant lines:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;There was an old person of Bow,
+     Whom nobody happened to know,
+          So they gave him some soap,
+          And said coldly, 'We hope
+     You will go back directly to Bow!'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And the illustration is worthy of the text,&rdquo; he added enthusiastically, as
+      he passed the volume to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no sense of humor, but she had a sense of justice, and it occurred
+      to her that after all an agreement was an agreement. If to listen to
+      insinuating inanities was the price of his attention, she would pay it.
+      She had borne more than this in order to do good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the readings continued, a source of unmixed delight to her lodger and a
+      great spiritual discipline to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the days grew milder their intimacy, profiting by the winter seclusion,
+      led him to accompany her on her various errands. She was at first
+      unwilling to accept his escort&mdash;it too clearly resembled a tacit
+      consent to his idleness. But his quiet persistence, together with his
+      evident cynicism as to the results of these professional tours,
+      accomplished, as usual, his end; and the wondering village might observe
+      on hot June mornings its benefactress, languidly accompanied by a slender
+      man in white flannels, balancing a large white green-lined umbrella,
+      picking his way daintily along the dusty paths, with a covered basket
+      dangling from one hand and a gray-green volume distending one white
+      pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was material, too, for the interested observer in the picture of
+      Miss Gould distributing reading matter, fruit, and lectures on household
+      economy in the cottages of the mill-hands, while her lodger pitched
+      pennies with the delighted children outside. It was on one of these
+      occasions that Miss Gould took the opportunity to address Mr. Thomas
+      Waters, late of the paper and cardboard manufacturing force, on the
+      wickedness and folly of his present course of action. Mr. Waters had left
+      his position on the strength of his wife's financial success. Mrs. Waters
+      was a laundress, and the summer boarders, together with Mr. Welles, who
+      alone went far toward establishing the fortunes of the family, had
+      combined to place the head of the house in his present condition of
+      elegant leisure. &ldquo;I wonder at you, Tom Waters, after all the interest
+      we've taken in you \ Are you not horribly ashamed to depend on your wife
+      in this lazy way?&rdquo; Miss Gould demanded of the once member of the Reformed
+      Drunkards' League. &ldquo;How many times have I explained to you that nothing&mdash;absolutely
+      nothing&mdash;is so disgraceful as a man who will not work? What were you
+      placed in the world for? How do you justify your existence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How,&rdquo; replied her unabashed audience, with a wave of his pipe toward the
+      front yard, where Mr. Welles was amiably superintending a wrestling match,
+      &ldquo;does he justify hisn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Had Miss Gould been less consistent and less in earnest, there were many
+      replies open to her. As it was, she colored violently, bit her lip, made
+      an inaudible remark, and with a bitter glance at the author of her
+      confusion, now cheering on to the conflict the scrambling Waters children,
+      she called their mother to account for their presence in the yard at this
+      time on a school-day, and for the first time in her life left the house
+      without exacting a solemn promise of amendment from the head of the
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I fixed her that time!&rdquo; Mr. Waters remarked triumphantly, as he
+      summoned his second pair of twins from the yard and demanded of them if
+      the gentleman had given them nickels or dimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman in question became uncomfortably conscious, in the course of
+      their walk home, of an atmosphere not wholly novel, that lost no strength
+      in this case from its studied repression. That afternoon, as they sat in
+      the shade of the big elm, he in his flexible wicker chair, she in a
+      straight-backed, high-seated legacy from her grandfather, the whirlwind
+      that Mr. Waters had so lightly sown fell to the reaping of a victim too
+      amiable and unsuspecting not to escape the sentence of any but so stern a
+      judge as the handsome and inflexible representative of the moral order now
+      before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Gould was looking her best in a crisp lavender dimity, upon whose
+      frills Mrs. Waters had bestowed the grateful exercise of her highest art.
+      Her sleek, dark coils of hair, from which no one stray lock escaped,
+      framed her fresh cheeks most admirably; her strong white hands appeared
+      and disappeared with an absolute regularity through the dark-green wool
+      out of which she was evolving a hideous and useful shawl. To her lodger,
+      who alternately waved a palm-leaf fan and drank lemonade, reading at
+      intervals from a two-days-old newspaper, and carrying on the desultory and
+      amusing soliloquy that they were pleased to consider conversation, she
+      presented the most attractive of pictures. &ldquo;So firm, so positive, so
+      wholesome,&rdquo; he murmured to himself, calling her attention to the exquisite
+      effect of the slanting rays that struck the lawn in a dappled pattern of
+      flickering leaf-shadows, and remarking the violet tinge thrown by the
+      setting sun on the old spire below in the middle of the village. She did
+      not answer immediately, and when she did it was in tones that he had
+      learned from various slight experiments to regard as final.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Welles,&rdquo; she said, bending upon him that direct and placid regard
+      that rendered evasion difficult and paltering impossible, &ldquo;things have
+      come to a point;&rdquo; and she narrated the scene of the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is indeed a problem,&rdquo; observed her lodger gravely, &ldquo;but what is one to
+      do? It is just such questions as this that illustrate the futility&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no question about it, Mr. Welles,&rdquo; she interrupted gravely. &ldquo;Tom
+      was right and I was wrong. There is no use in my talking to him or anybody
+      while I&mdash;while you&mdash;while things are as they are. You must make
+      up your mind, Mr. Welles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, great heavens, dear Miss Gould, what do you mean? What am I to make
+      up my mind about? Am I to provide myself with an occupation, perhaps, for
+      the sake of Tom Waters's principles? Or am I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. That is just it. You know what I have always felt, Mr. Welles, about
+      it. But I never seemed to be able to make you see. Now, as I say, things
+      have come to a point. You must do something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this is absurd, Miss Gould! I am not a child, and surely nobody can
+      dream of holding you in any way responsible&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> hold myself responsible,&rdquo; she replied simply, &ldquo;and I have never
+      approved of it&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders desperately. She was imperturbable; she was
+      impossible; she was beyond argument or persuasion or ridicule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose I say that I think the situation is absurd, and that I refuse to
+      be placed at Mr. Waters's disposal?&rdquo; he suggested with a furtive glance.
+      She drew the ivory hook through the green meshes a little faster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be obliged to refuse to renew your lease in the fall,&rdquo; she
+      answered. He started from his wicker chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot mean it, Miss Gould! You would not be so&mdash;so unkind, so
+      unjust!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should feel obliged to, Mr. Welles, and I should not feel unjust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sank back into the yielding chair with a sigh. After all, her
+      fascination had always lain in her great decision. Was it not illogical to
+      expect her to fail to display it at such a crisis? There was a long
+      silence. The sun sank lower and lower, the birds twittered happily around
+      them. Miss Gould's long white hook slipped in and out of the wool, and her
+      lodger's eyes followed it absently. After a while he rose, settled his
+      white jacket elaborately, and half turned as if to go back to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need not tell you how I regret this unfortunate decision of yours,&rdquo; he
+      said politely, with a slight touch of the hauteur that sat so well on his
+      graceful person. &ldquo;I can only say that I am sorry you yourself should
+      regret it so little, and that I hope it will not disturb our pleasant
+      acquaintance during the weeks that remain to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bowed slightly with a dignified gesture that often served her as a
+      reply, and he took a step toward her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would we not better come in?&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;The sun is gone, and your
+      dress is thin. Let me send Henry after the chairs,&rdquo; and his eyes dropped
+      to her hands again. They were nearly hidden by the green wool, but the
+      long needle quivered like a leaf in the wind; she could not pass it
+      between the thread and her white forefinger. He hesitated a moment,
+      glanced at her face, smiled inscrutably, and deliberately reseated
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in the world could I do, you see?&rdquo; he inquired meditatively, as if
+      that had been the subject under discussion for some time. &ldquo;I can't make
+      cardboard boxes, you know. It's perfectly useless, my going into a
+      factory. Wheels and belts and things always give me the maddest longing to
+      jump into them&mdash;I couldn't resist it! And that would be so unpleasant&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped her wool and clasped her hands under it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Welles,&rdquo; she cried eagerly, &ldquo;how absurd! As if I meant that! As
+      if I meant anything like it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had you thought of anything, then?&rdquo; he asked interestedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded gravely. &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good heavens!&rdquo; murmured her lodger, but she went on quickly: &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;I have loathed it from childhood&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, no, no!&rdquo; she interrupted, with her sweet, tolerant smile. She
+      smiled at him as if he had been a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better fifty years of poker than a cycle of croquet!&rdquo; her lodger
+      murmured. &ldquo;Yes, I have always felt that myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From ten to twelve, say,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; he brought out finally, &ldquo;you are like Greek architecture
+      or Eastlake furniture or&mdash;or 'God Save the Queen'&mdash;perfectly
+      absolute! And I am so hideously relative&mdash;But, after all, why should
+      a sense of humor be an essential? One is really more complete&mdash;I
+      suppose Mahomet had none&mdash;When shall I begin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;never!
+      Waxed that floor, they have, and put more mats onto it&mdash;fur and
+      colored. An' the stuff&mdash;oh, Lord! China&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;no heads onto 'em,
+      some ain't got; it's all one to him&mdash;he'd buy any ol' thing so's
+      'twas broke, you might say. An' them ol' straight chairs&mdash;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&mdash;I swear it's so. An' a guitar, an',
+      Lord, the pictures! You can't see no wall for 'em!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' he goes squintin' about here an' there, changin' this an' that, an'
+      singin' away an' laughin'&mdash;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&mdash;she
+      ain't seen his; she don't know no more'n the dead what he's got in there&mdash;an'
+      I was by the door when he said it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'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 back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An almost unprecedented headache, brought on by her unremitting labor in
+      effecting the change in the Rooms, kept Miss Gould in the house for two
+      days after the new headquarters had been satisfactorily arranged; and as
+      Mr. Welles had refused to open his office for inspection till it was
+      completely furnished, she did not enter that characteristic apartment till
+      the third day of its official existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she went through the narrow hallway connecting the four rooms on which
+      the social regeneration of her village depended, she caught the sweet low
+      thrum of a guitar and a too familiarly seductive voice burst forth into a
+      chant, whose literal significance she was unable to grasp, owing to lack
+      of familiarity with the language in which it was couched, but whose
+      general tenor no one could mistake, so tender and arch was the rendering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a vague thrill of apprehension she threw open the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sunk in cushions, a tea-cup on the arm of his chair, a guitar resting on
+      his white flannel sleeve, reclined the director of the Rooms. Over his
+      head hung a large and exquisite copy of the Botticelli Venus. Miss Gould's
+      horrified gaze fled from this work of art to rest on a representation in
+      bronze of the same reprehensible goddess, clothed, to be sure, a little
+      more in accordance with the views of a retired New England community, yet
+      leaving much to be desired in this direction. Kitty Waters attentively
+      filled his empty cup, beaming the while, and the once errant Annabel,
+      sitting on a low stool at his feet, with a red bow in her pretty hair, and
+      her great brown eyes fixed adoringly on his face as he directed the
+      fascinating incomprehensible little song straight at her charming self,
+      was obviously in no present danger of running the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Miss Gould!&rdquo; he said cheerfully, rising and handing the
+      guitar to the abashed Annabel. &ldquo;And you are really quite recovered? <i>C'est
+      bien!</i> Business is dull, and we are amusing each other, you see. How do
+      you like the rooms? I flatter myself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you flattered none but yourself, Mr. Welles, much harm would be
+      avoided,&rdquo; she interrupted with uncompromising directness. &ldquo;Kitty and
+      Annabel, I cannot see how you can possibly tell how many people may or may
+      not be wanting lunch!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Billy Rider tells us when any one comes,&rdquo; the director assured her. &ldquo;They
+      don't come till twelve, anyway, and then they want to see the room, mostly&mdash;which
+      we show them, don't we, Annabel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Annabel blushed, cast down her eyes, lifted them, showed her dimples, and
+      replied in the words, if not in the accents, of Thompson: &ldquo;Yes, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's really going to be an education in itself, don't you think so?&rdquo; he
+      continued. &ldquo;It's amazing how the people like it&mdash;it's really quite
+      gratifying. Perhaps it may be my mission to abolish the chromo and the
+      tidy from off the face of New England! We have had crowds here&mdash;just
+      to look at the pictures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't doubt it!&rdquo; replied Miss Gould briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I got the most attractive sugar-bowl from the little boy who brought
+      in the reports about picking up papers and such things from the streets.
+      He said he ought to have five cents, so I gave him a dime&mdash;I hadn't
+      five&mdash;and I bought the bowl. Annabel, my child, bring me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Annabel and her fellow-waitress had disappeared. Miss Gould sat in
+      silence. At intervals her perplexed gaze rested unconsciously on the
+      Botticelli Venus, from which she instantly with a slight frown lowered it
+      and regarded the floor. When she at last met his eyes the expression of
+      her own was so troubled, the droop of her firm mouth so pathetic and
+      unusual, that he left his chair and dragged the little stool to her feet,
+      assuming an attitude so boyish and graceful that in spite of herself she
+      smiled at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; he asked confidentially. &ldquo;Is anything wrong? Don't
+      you like the room? I enjoy it tremendously, myself. I've been here almost
+      all the time since it was done. I think Tom Waters must be tremendously
+      impressed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the trouble; he is,&rdquo; said Miss Gould simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trouble? trouble? Is his impression unfavorable? Heavens, how
+      unfortunate!&rdquo; exclaimed the director airily. &ldquo;Surely, my application&mdash;Does
+      the room fail to meet his approval, or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it does,&rdquo; she interrupted. &ldquo;He says it's no place for a man to be
+      in; and he says the pictures are&mdash;are&mdash;well, he says they are
+      improper!&rdquo; glancing at the Venus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; responded the director with a suspicious sweetness. &ldquo;He does not
+      care for the nude, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sighed deeply. &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Welles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is indeed to be regretted that Mr. Waters's ideals are so high&mdash;and&mdash;shall
+      we say&mdash;so elusive?&rdquo; proceeded the director smoothly. &ldquo;It is so
+      difficult&mdash;so well-nigh impossible&mdash;to satisfy him. One devotes
+      one's energies&mdash;I may say one slaves night and day&mdash;to win some
+      slight mark of approval; and just as one is about to reap the well-earned
+      reward&mdash;a smile, a word of appreciation&mdash;all is forfeited! It is
+      hard indeed! Would you suggest the rearrangement of the Rooms under Mr.
+      Waters's direction? Thompson is at his service&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Welles!&rdquo; she sighed hopelessly. &ldquo;It isn't only that! It's not
+      alone the room, though Mrs. Underwood wonders that I should think she
+      would be able to conduct the Band of Hope in here, and Mrs. Rider says
+      that after what her husband told her she should no more think of sitting
+      here for a mothers' meeting than anything in the world. It's the whole
+      thing. Why did you treat them all to lemonade the first day? Surely you
+      knew that our one aim is to prevent miscellaneous charity. And Tom says
+      you smoked in here&mdash;he smelt it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I smelt him, too,&rdquo; remarked the director calmly. &ldquo;That was one reason why
+      I smoked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;and having Kitty and Annabel here all the time! The Girls' Club
+      are so j&mdash;&mdash; Well, the Girls' Club like the old rooms better,
+      they say, and it's so difficult to get them to work together at best. And
+      now we shall have to work so hard&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the men think it's just a joke, the lemonade and everything, and the
+      room gave them such a wrong impression, and they don't seem to want it,
+      anyway. Tom Waters says he can't abide sarsaparilla&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great heavens!&rdquo; the director broke in, &ldquo;is it possible? A point on which
+      Mr. Waters's opinion coincides with mine? I have not lived in vain! But
+      this is too much; I have not deserved&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't!&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;There is more. When I corrected Annabel for what
+      I had heard about her&mdash;her impertinent behavior, she said that Mrs.
+      Underwood had never approved of the whole thing, and that if I had
+      consulted her she would never have given her consent to your being here,
+      and that I was dictatorial&mdash;I!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lodger coughed and ejaculated, &ldquo;You, indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when I said that their ingratitude actually made me wonder why I
+      worked so hard for them, she said&mdash;oh, dear! It is all dreadful! I
+      don't know what to do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do!&rdquo; returned her lodger promptly. &ldquo;Go away and leave 'em! They aren't
+      fit to trouble you any more. Besides, they're really not so bad, after
+      all, you know. There has to be just about so much laziness and&mdash;and
+      that sort of thing, don't you see. Look at me, for instance! Think of how
+      much misdirected energy I balance! And it gives other people something to
+      do.... Go away and leave it all for a while!&rdquo; he repeated smilingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away! But where? Why should I? What do you mean?&rdquo; she stammered,
+      confused at something in his eyes, which never left her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To England&mdash;you said you'd like to see it. With me&mdash;for I
+      certainly couldn't stay here alone. Why do you suppose I stay, dear lady?
+      I used to wonder myself. No, sit still, don't get up! I am about to make
+      you an offer of marriage; indeed, I am serious, Miss Gould!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see that it's ridiculous at all. I see every practical reason in
+      favor of it. In the first place, if they are gossiping&mdash;oh, yes,
+      Thompson told me, and I wonder that they hadn't before: these villages are
+      dreadful places&mdash;I couldn't very well stay, you see; and then where
+      should I put all my things? In the second place, I have so much stuff, and
+      there's no house fit for it but&mdash;but ours; and if we were married I
+      could have just twice as much room for it&mdash;and I'm getting far too
+      much for my side. In the third place, I find that I can't look forward
+      with any pleasure to travelling about alone, because, in the fourth place,
+      I've grown so tremendously fond of you, dear Miss Gould! I think you don't
+      dislike me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She plucked the guitar strings nervously with her white, strong fingers.
+      The rich, vibrating tones of it filled the room and confused her still
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People will say that I&mdash;that we&mdash;&rdquo; He caught her hand: it had
+      never been kissed before. &ldquo;Would you rather I went away and then there
+      would be nothing left for them to say?&rdquo; he asked softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm too&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too charming not to have some one who appreciates the fact as
+      thoroughly as I do,&rdquo; he interrupted gallantly. &ldquo;I think you do me so much
+      good, you know,&rdquo; he added, still holding her hand. She looked at him
+      directly for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I really? Is that true?&rdquo; she demanded, with a return of her old manner
+      so complete and sudden as to startle him. &ldquo;If I thought that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would?&rdquo; he asked with a smile. &ldquo;I thought so! Here is a village that
+      scorns your efforts and a respectful suitor who implores them. Can you
+      hesitate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His smile was irresistible, and she returned it half reprovingly. &ldquo;Will
+      you never be serious?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I wonder that I can&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you can&mdash;&rdquo; he repeated, watching her blush, but she would not
+      finish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not think that I can give up my work&mdash;my real work&mdash;so
+      easily,&rdquo; she said, rising and looking down on him with a return of her
+      simple impressive seriousness. &ldquo;I shall have to consider. I have been very
+      much disturbed by their conduct. I will see you after supper,&rdquo; and with a
+      gesture that told him to remain, she left the room, her head high as she
+      caught Annabel's voice from outside. She turned in the door, however, and
+      the stern curves of her mouth melted with a smile so sweet, a promise so
+      gracious and so tender, that when her eyes, frank and direct as a boy's,
+      left his, he looked long at the closed door, wondering at the quickening
+      of his pulses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later he heard her voice, imperious and clear, and the mumble of
+      Mr. Waters's unavailing if never-ending excuses. He laughed softly to
+      himself, and touched the strings of the guitar that she had struck. &ldquo;I
+      shall save the worthy Thomas much,&rdquo; he murmured to himself, &ldquo;and of course
+      I do it to reform her&mdash;I cannot pull down the village and die with
+      the Philistines!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went up the long main street, Mr. Waters at her side and Annabel Riley
+      behind her. Her lodger watched her out of sight, and prepared to lock up
+      the Rooms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So firm, so positive, so wholesome!&rdquo; he said, as he started after her.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Philanthropist
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23366]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILANTHROPIST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A PHILANTHROPIST
+
+By Josephine Daskam
+
+Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+"I suspected him from the first," said Miss Gould, with some irritation,
+to her lodger. She spoke with irritation because of the amused smile
+of the lodger. He bowed with the grace that characterized all his lazy
+movements.
+
+"He looked very much like that Tom Waters that I had at the Reformed
+Drunkards' League last year. I even thought he was Tom--"
+
+"I do not know Tom?" hazarded the lodger.
+
+"No. I don't know whether I ever mentioned him to you. He came twice to
+the League, and we were really quite hopeful about him, and the third
+time he asked to have the meeting at his house. We thought it a great
+sign--the best of signs, in fact. So as a great favor we went there
+instead of meeting at the Rooms. I was a little late--I lost the
+way--and when I got there I heard a great noise as if they were singing
+different songs at the same time. I hurried in to lead them--they get
+so mixed in the singing--and--it makes me blush now to think of it!--the
+wretch had invited them all early, and--and they were all intoxicated!
+
+"I am sorry I told you," she added with dignity; for the lodger, in an
+endeavor to smile sympathetically, had lost his way and was convulsed
+with a mirth entirely unregretful.
+
+"Not at all, not at all," he murmured politely. "It is a delightful
+story. I would not have missed it--a choir of reformed drunkards! But do
+you not, my dear Miss Gould, perceive in these little setbacks a warning
+against further attempts? Do you still attend the League? It is not
+possible!"
+
+"Possible?" echoed his visitor; for owing to certain recent and untoward
+circumstances, Miss Gould was half reclining in her lodger's great
+Indian chair, sipping a glass of his '49 port. "Indeed I do! They
+had every one of them to be reformed all over again! It was most
+disgraceful!"
+
+Her lodger checked a rising smile, and leaned solicitously toward her,
+regarding her firm, fine-featured face with flattering attention.
+
+"Are you growing stronger? Can I bring you anything?" he inquired.
+
+Miss Gould's color rose, half with anger at her weakness of body, half
+with a vexed consciousness of his amusement.
+
+"Thank you, no," she returned coldly, "I am ashamed to have been so
+weak-minded. I must go now and tell Henry to pile the wood again in the
+east corner. There will probably come another tramp very soon--they are
+very prevalent this month, I hear."
+
+Her lodger left his low wicker seat--a proof of enormous excitement--and
+frowned at her.
+
+"Do you seriously mean, Miss Gould, that you are going to run the risk
+of another such--such catastrophe? It is absurd. I cannot believe it of
+you! Is there no other way--"
+
+But he had been standing a long while, it occurred to him, and he
+retired to the chair again. A splinter of wood on his immaculate white
+flannel coat caught his eye, and a slow smile spread over his handsome,
+lazy face. It grew and grew until at last a distinct chuckle penetrated
+to the dusky corner where the Indian chair leaned back against dull
+Oriental draperies. Its occupant attempted to rise, her face stern, her
+mouth unrelenting. He was at her side instantly.
+
+"Take my arm--and pardon me!" he said with an irresistible grace. "It is
+only my fear for your comfort, you know, Miss Gould. I cannot bear that
+you should be at the mercy of every drunken fellow that wishes to impose
+on you!"
+
+As she crossed the hall that separated her territory from his, her fine,
+full figure erect, her dark head high in the air, a whimsical regret
+came over him that they were not younger and more foolish.
+
+"I should certainly marry her to reform her," he said to the birch log
+that spluttered on his inimitable colonial fire-dogs. And then, as the
+remembrance of the events of the morning came to him, he laughed again.
+
+He had been disturbed at his leisurely coffee and roll by a rapid
+and ceaseless pounding, followed by a violent rattling, and varied by
+stifled cries apparently from the woodshed. The din seemed to come from
+the lower part of the house, and after one or two futile appeals to the
+man who served as valet, cook, and butler in his bachelor establishment,
+he decided that he was alone in his half of the house, and that the
+noise came from Miss Gould's side. He strolled down the beautiful
+winding staircase, and dragged his crimson dressing-gown to the top
+of the cellar stairs, the uproar growing momentarily more terrific.
+Half-way down the whitewashed steps he paused, viewing the remarkable
+scene below him with interest and amazement. The cemented floor was
+literally covered with neatly chopped kindling-wood, which rose as in a
+tide under the efforts of a large red-faced man who, with the regularity
+of a machine, stooped, grasped a billet in either hand, shook them in
+the face of Miss Gould, who cowered upon a soap-box at his side, and
+flung them on the floor. From the woodhouse near the cellar muffled
+shouts were heard through a storm of blows on the door. From the
+rattling of this door, and the fact that the red-faced man aimed every
+third stick at it, the observer might readily conclude that some one
+desirous of leaving the woodhouse was locked within it.
+
+For a moment the spectator on the stairs stood stunned. The noise
+was deafening; the appearance of the man, whose expression was one of
+settled rage but whose actions were of the coldest regularity, was most
+bewildering, partially obscured as it was by the flying billets of
+wood; the mechanical attempts of Miss Gould to rise from the soap-box,
+invariably checked by a fierce brandishing of the stick just taken from
+the lessening pile, were at once startling and fascinating, inasmuch
+as she was methodically waved back just as her knees had unbent for the
+trial, and as methodically essayed her escape again, alternately rising
+with dignity and sinking back in terror.
+
+The red dressing-gown advanced a step, and met her gaze. Dignity and
+terror shifted to relief.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Welles!" she gasped. Her lodger girded up his _robe de chambre_
+with its red silk cord and advanced with decision through the chaos of
+birch and hickory. A struggle, sharp but brief, and he turned to find
+Miss Gould offering a coil of clothes-rope with which to bind the
+conquered, whom conflict had sobered, for he made no resistance.
+
+"What do you mean by such idiotic actions?" the squire of dames
+demanded, as he freed the maddened Henry from his durance vile in the
+woodhouse and confronted the red-faced man, who had not uttered a word.
+
+He cast a baffled glance at Miss Gould and a triumphant smile at Henry
+before replying. Then, disdaining the lady's righteous indignation and
+the hired man's threatening gestures, he faced the gentleman in the
+scarlet robe and spoke as man to man.
+
+"Gov'nor," he said with somewhat thickened speech, "I come here an' I
+asked for a meal. An' she tol' me would I work fer it? An' I said yes.
+An' she come into this ol' vault of a suller, an' she pointed to that
+ol' heap o' wood, an' she tol' me ter move it over ter that corner.
+An' I done so fer half an hour. An' I says to that blitherin' fool over
+there, who was workin' in that ol' wood-house, what the devil did she
+care w'ich corner the darned stuff was in? An' he says that she didn't
+care a hang, but that she'd tell the next man that come along to move
+it back to where I got it from; he said 'twas a matter er principle
+with her not to give a man a bite fer nothin'! So I shut him in his ol'
+house, an' w'en she come down I gave her a piece of my mind. I don't
+mind a little work, mister, but when it come to shufflin' kind-lin's
+round in this ol' tomb fer half an hour an' makin' a fool o' myself fer
+nothin', I got my back up. My time ain't so vallyble to me as 'tis to
+some, gov'nor, but it's worth a damn sight more'n that!"
+
+Miss Gould's lodger shuddered as he remembered the quarter he had
+surreptitiously bestowed upon the man, and the withering scorn that
+would be his portion were the weakness known. He smiled as he recalled
+the scene in the cellar when he had helped Miss Gould up the stairs and
+returned to soothe Henry, who regretted that he had left one timber of
+the woodhouse upon another.
+
+"Though I'm bound to say, Mr. Welles, that I see how he felt. I've often
+felt like a fool explainin' how they was to move that wood back an'
+forth. It does seem strange that Miss Gould has to do it that way. Give
+'em some-thin' an' let 'em go, I say!"
+
+It was precisely his own view--but how fundamentally immoral the
+position was he knew so well! He recalled Miss Gould's lectures on the
+subject, miracles of eloquence and irrefutably correct in deductions
+that interested him not nearly so much as the lecturer.
+
+"So firm, so positive, so wholesome!" he would murmur to himself in
+tacit apology for the instructive hours spent before their common
+ground, the great fireplace in the central hall. He never sat there
+without remembering their first interview: her resentment at an
+absolutely inexcusable intrusion slowly melting before his exquisite
+appreciation of every line and corner of the old colonial homestead; her
+reserve waning at every touch of his irresistible courtesy, till, to her
+own open amazement, she rose to conduct this connoisseur in antiquities
+through the rooms whose delights he had perfectly foreseen, he assured
+her, from the modelling of the front porch; her utter and instantaneous
+refusal to consider for a second his proposal to lodge a stranger in
+half of her father's house; and the naive and conscientious struggle
+with her principles when, with a logic none the less forcible because
+it was so gracefully developed, he convinced her that her plain duty lay
+along the lines of his choice.
+
+For as a philanthropist what could she do? Here were placed in her hands
+means she could not in conscience overlook. Rapidly translating his
+dollars into converts, he juggled them before her dazzled eyes; he
+even hinted delicately at Duty, with that exact conception of the
+requirements of the stern daughter felt by none so keenly as those who
+systematically avoid her.
+
+His good genius prompted him to refer casually to soup-kitchens.
+Now soup-kitchens were the delight of Miss Gould's heart; toward the
+establishment of a soup-kitchen she had looked since the day when her
+father's death had left her the double legacy of his worldly goods and
+his unworldly philanthropy.
+
+Visions of dozens of Bacchic revellers, riotous no more, but seated
+temperately each before his steaming bowl, rose to her delighted eyes;
+she saw in fancy the daughters and nieces of the reformed in smiles and
+white aprons ladling the nutritious and attractive compound, earning
+thus an honest wage; she saw a neatly balanced account-book and a
+triumphant report; she saw herself the respected and deprecatory idol of
+a millennial village. She wavered, hesitated, and was lost.
+
+That very evening saw the establishment of a second menage in the north
+side of the house, and though a swift regret chilled her manner for
+weeks, she found herself little by little growing interested in her
+lodger, and conscious of an increasing desire to benefit him, an
+irritated longing to influence him for good, to turn him from the
+butterfly whims of a pretended invalid to an appreciation of the
+responsibilities of life.
+
+For in all her well-ordered forty years Miss Gould had never seen so
+indolent, so capricious, so irresponsible a person. That a man of easy
+means, fine education, sufficient health, and gray hair should have
+nothing better to do than collect willow-ware and fire-irons, read the
+magazines, play the piano, and stroll about in the sun seemed to her
+nothing less than horrible.
+
+Each day that added some new treasure to his perfectly arranged rooms,
+and in consequence some new song to his seductive repertoire, left a new
+sting in her soul. She had been influencing somebody or something all
+her life. She had been educating and directing and benefiting till she
+was forced to be grateful to that providential generosity that caused
+new wickedness and ignorance to spring constantly from this very soil
+she had cleared; for if one reform had been sufficient she would long
+since have been obliged to leave the little village for larger fields.
+She had ministered to the starved mind as to the stunted body; the idle
+and dissolute quaked before her. And yet here in her own household,
+across her hall, lived the epitome of uselessness, indolence,
+selfishness, and--she was forced to admit it--charm. What corresponded
+to a sense of humor in her caught at the discrepancy and worried over
+it.
+
+What! was she not competent, then, to influence her equals? For in
+everything but moral stamina she was forced to admit that her lodger was
+her equal, if no more. Widely travelled, well read, well born, talented,
+handsome, deferential--but persistently amused at her, irrevocably
+indolent, hopelessly selfish.
+
+With the firm intention of turning the occasions to his benefit, she had
+finally accepted his regular and courteous invitation to take tea with
+him, and had watched his graceful management of samovar and tea-cup with
+open disfavor. "A habit picked up in England," he had assured her, when,
+with the frankness characteristic of her, she had criticised him for the
+effeminacy. And his smiling explanation had sent a sudden flush across
+her smooth, firm cheeks. Was she provincial? Did she seem to him a New
+England villager and nothing more? She bit her lip, and the appeal she
+had planned went unspoken that day.
+
+But her desire could not rest, and as to her strict notions the
+continual visits from her side to his seemed unsuitable, she gave in
+self-defence her own invitation, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoons
+saw her lodger across the hall drinking her own tea with wine and
+plum-cake by the shining kettle.
+
+If she could command his admiration in no other way, she felt, she might
+safely rely on his deferential respect for the owner of that pewter
+tea-service--velvety, shimmering, glistening dully, with shapes that
+vaguely recalled Greek lamps and Etruscan urns. And she piled wedges of
+ambrosial plum-cake with yellow frosting on sprigged china, and set out
+wine in her great-grandfather's long-necked decanter, and, with what
+she considered a gracious tact, overlooked the flippancy of her guest's
+desultory conversation, and sincerely tried to discover the humorous
+quality in her conversation that forced a subdued chuckle now and then
+from her listener.
+
+She confided most of her schemes to him, sometimes unconsciously, and
+grew to depend more than she knew upon his common sense and experience;
+for, though openly cynical of her works, he would give her what she
+often realized to be the best of practical advice, and his amusing
+generalities, though to her mind insults to humanity, had been so
+bitterly proved true that she looked fearfully to see his lightest
+adverse prophecy fulfilled.
+
+After a cautious introduction of the subject by asking his advice as
+to the minimum of hours in the week one could conscientiously allow a
+doubtful member of the Weekly Culture Club to spend upon Browning, she
+endeavored to get his idea of that poet. Her famous theory as to
+her ability to place any one satisfactorily in the scale of culture
+according to his degree of appreciation of "Rabbi ben Ezra"
+was unfortunately known to her lodger before she could with any
+verisimilitude produce the book, and he was wary of committing himself.
+The exquisite effrontery with which she finally brought out her
+gray-green volume was only equalled by the forbearing courtesy with
+which he welcomed both it and her. Nor did he offer any other comment on
+her opening the book at a well-worn page than an apologetic removal to
+the only chair in the room more comfortable than the one he was at the
+time occupying. He listened in silence to her intelligent if somewhat
+sonorous rendering of selected portions of "Saul," thanking her politely
+at the close, and only stipulating that he should be allowed to return
+the favor by a reading from one of his own favorite poets. With a
+shocked remembrance of certain yellow-covered volumes she had often
+cleared away from the piazza, Miss Gould inquired if the poet in
+question were English. On his hearty affirmative she resigned herself
+with no little interest to the opportunity of seeing her way more
+clearly into this baffling mind, horrified at his criticism of the
+second reading--for she had brought the "Rabbi" forward at last,
+
+     "Then welcome each rebuff
+     That turns earth's smoothness rough,
+     Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!"
+
+she had intoned; and, fixing her eye sternly on the butterfly in white
+flannels, she had asked him with a telling emphasis what that meant to
+him? With the sweetest smile in the world, he had leaned forward, sipped
+his tea, gazed thoughtfully in the fire, and answered, with a polite
+apology for the homeliness of the illustration, that it reminded him
+most strongly of a tack fixed in the seat of a chair, with the attendant
+circumstances! After a convulsive effort to include in one terrible
+sentence all the scorn and regret and pity that she felt, Miss Gould had
+decided that silence was best, and sat back wondering why she suffered
+him one instant in her parlor. He took from the floor beside him at this
+point a neat red volume, and, murmuring something about his inability to
+do the poet justice, he began to read. For one, two, four minutes Miss
+Gould sat staring; then she interrupted him coldly:
+
+"And who is the author of that doggerel, Mr. Welles?"
+
+"Edward Lear, dear Miss Gould--and a great man, too."
+
+"I think I might have been spared--" she began with such genuine anger
+that any but her lodger would have quailed. He, however, merely smiled.
+
+"But the subtlety of it--the immensity of the conception--the power of
+characterization!" he cried. "Just see how quietly this is treated."
+
+And to her amazement she let him go on; so that a chance visitor,
+entering unannounced, might have been treated to the delicious spectacle
+of a charming middle-aged gentleman in white flannels reading, near a
+birch fire and a priceless pewter tea-service, to a handsome middle-aged
+woman in black silk, the following pregnant lines:
+
+     "There was an old person of Bow,
+     Whom nobody happened to know,
+          So they gave him some soap,
+          And said coldly, 'We hope
+     You will go back directly to Bow!'
+
+And the illustration is worthy of the text," he added enthusiastically,
+as he passed the volume to her.
+
+She had no sense of humor, but she had a sense of justice, and it
+occurred to her that after all an agreement was an agreement. If to
+listen to insinuating inanities was the price of his attention, she
+would pay it. She had borne more than this in order to do good.
+
+So the readings continued, a source of unmixed delight to her lodger and
+a great spiritual discipline to herself.
+
+As the days grew milder their intimacy, profiting by the winter
+seclusion, led him to accompany her on her various errands. She was at
+first unwilling to accept his escort--it too clearly resembled a tacit
+consent to his idleness. But his quiet persistence, together with
+his evident cynicism as to the results of these professional tours,
+accomplished, as usual, his end; and the wondering village might observe
+on hot June mornings its benefactress, languidly accompanied by a
+slender man in white flannels, balancing a large white green-lined
+umbrella, picking his way daintily along the dusty paths, with a covered
+basket dangling from one hand and a gray-green volume distending one
+white pocket.
+
+There was material, too, for the interested observer in the picture of
+Miss Gould distributing reading matter, fruit, and lectures on household
+economy in the cottages of the mill-hands, while her lodger pitched
+pennies with the delighted children outside. It was on one of these
+occasions that Miss Gould took the opportunity to address Mr. Thomas
+Waters, late of the paper and cardboard manufacturing force, on the
+wickedness and folly of his present course of action. Mr. Waters had
+left his position on the strength of his wife's financial success.
+Mrs. Waters was a laundress, and the summer boarders, together with
+Mr. Welles, who alone went far toward establishing the fortunes of
+the family, had combined to place the head of the house in his present
+condition of elegant leisure. "I wonder at you, Tom Waters, after all
+the interest we've taken in you \ Are you not horribly ashamed to depend
+on your wife in this lazy way?" Miss Gould demanded of the once member
+of the Reformed Drunkards' League. "How many times have I explained to
+you that nothing--absolutely nothing--is so disgraceful as a man who
+will not work? What were you placed in the world for? How do you justify
+your existence?"
+
+"How," replied her unabashed audience, with a wave of his pipe toward
+the front yard, where Mr. Welles was amiably superintending a wrestling
+match, "does he justify hisn?"
+
+Had Miss Gould been less consistent and less in earnest, there were many
+replies open to her. As it was, she colored violently, bit her lip,
+made an inaudible remark, and with a bitter glance at the author of
+her confusion, now cheering on to the conflict the scrambling Waters
+children, she called their mother to account for their presence in the
+yard at this time on a school-day, and for the first time in her life
+left the house without exacting a solemn promise of amendment from the
+head of the family.
+
+"I guess I fixed her that time!" Mr. Waters remarked triumphantly, as he
+summoned his second pair of twins from the yard and demanded of them if
+the gentleman had given them nickels or dimes.
+
+The gentleman in question became uncomfortably conscious, in the course
+of their walk home, of an atmosphere not wholly novel, that lost no
+strength in this case from its studied repression. That afternoon, as
+they sat in the shade of the big elm, he in his flexible wicker chair,
+she in a straight-backed, high-seated legacy from her grandfather, the
+whirlwind that Mr. Waters had so lightly sown fell to the reaping of a
+victim too amiable and unsuspecting not to escape the sentence of any
+but so stern a judge as the handsome and inflexible representative of
+the moral order now before him.
+
+Miss Gould was looking her best in a crisp lavender dimity, upon whose
+frills Mrs. Waters had bestowed the grateful exercise of her highest
+art. Her sleek, dark coils of hair, from which no one stray lock
+escaped, framed her fresh cheeks most admirably; her strong white
+hands appeared and disappeared with an absolute regularity through
+the dark-green wool out of which she was evolving a hideous and useful
+shawl. To her lodger, who alternately waved a palm-leaf fan and drank
+lemonade, reading at intervals from a two-days-old newspaper, and
+carrying on the desultory and amusing soliloquy that they were pleased
+to consider conversation, she presented the most attractive of pictures.
+"So firm, so positive, so wholesome," he murmured to himself, calling
+her attention to the exquisite effect of the slanting rays that struck
+the lawn in a dappled pattern of flickering leaf-shadows, and remarking
+the violet tinge thrown by the setting sun on the old spire below in the
+middle of the village. She did not answer immediately, and when she did
+it was in tones that he had learned from various slight experiments to
+regard as final.
+
+"Mr. Welles," she said, bending upon him that direct and placid regard
+that rendered evasion difficult and paltering impossible, "things have
+come to a point;" and she narrated the scene of the morning.
+
+"It is indeed a problem," observed her lodger gravely, "but what is one
+to do? It is just such questions as this that illustrate the futility--"
+
+"There is no question about it, Mr. Welles," she interrupted gravely.
+"Tom was right and I was wrong. There is no use in my talking to him or
+anybody while I--while you--while things are as they are. You must make
+up your mind, Mr. Welles."
+
+"But, great heavens, dear Miss Gould, what do you mean? What am I
+to make up my mind about? Am I to provide myself with an occupation,
+perhaps, for the sake of Tom Waters's principles? Or am I--"
+
+"Yes. That is just it. You know what I have always felt, Mr. Welles,
+about it. But I never seemed to be able to make you see. Now, as I say,
+things have come to a point. You must do something."
+
+"But this is absurd, Miss Gould! I am not a child, and surely nobody can
+dream of holding you in any way responsible--"
+
+"_I_ hold myself responsible," she replied simply, "and I have never
+approved of it--never!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders desperately. She was imperturbable; she was
+impossible; she was beyond argument or persuasion or ridicule.
+
+"Suppose I say that I think the situation is absurd, and that I refuse
+to be placed at Mr. Waters's disposal?" he suggested with a furtive
+glance. She drew the ivory hook through the green meshes a little
+faster.
+
+"I should be obliged to refuse to renew your lease in the fall," she
+answered. He started from his wicker chair.
+
+"You cannot mean it, Miss Gould! You would not be so--so unkind, so
+unjust!"
+
+"I should feel obliged to, Mr. Welles, and I should not feel unjust."
+
+He sank back into the yielding chair with a sigh. After all, her
+fascination had always lain in her great decision. Was it not illogical
+to expect her to fail to display it at such a crisis? There was a long
+silence. The sun sank lower and lower, the birds twittered happily
+around them. Miss Gould's long white hook slipped in and out of the
+wool, and her lodger's eyes followed it absently. After a while he rose,
+settled his white jacket elaborately, and half turned as if to go back
+to the house.
+
+"I need not tell you how I regret this unfortunate decision of yours,"
+he said politely, with a slight touch of the hauteur that sat so well on
+his graceful person. "I can only say that I am sorry you yourself should
+regret it so little, and that I hope it will not disturb our pleasant
+acquaintance during the weeks that remain to me."
+
+She bowed slightly with a dignified gesture that often served her as a
+reply, and he took a step toward her.
+
+"Would we not better come in?" he suggested. "The sun is gone, and your
+dress is thin. Let me send Henry after the chairs," and his eyes dropped
+to her hands again. They were nearly hidden by the green wool, but the
+long needle quivered like a leaf in the wind; she could not pass it
+between the thread and her white forefinger. He hesitated a moment,
+glanced at her face, smiled inscrutably, and deliberately reseated
+himself.
+
+"What in the world could I do, you see?" he inquired meditatively, as if
+that had been the subject under discussion for some time. "I can't
+make cardboard boxes, you know. It's perfectly useless, my going into a
+factory. Wheels and belts and things always give me the maddest
+longing to jump into them--I couldn't resist it! And that would be so
+unpleasant--"
+
+She dropped her wool and clasped her hands under it.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Welles," she cried eagerly, "how absurd! As if I meant that! As
+if I meant anything like it!"
+
+"Had you 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 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 back!"
+
+An almost unprecedented headache, brought on by her unremitting labor in
+effecting the change in the Rooms, kept Miss Gould in the house for two
+days after the new headquarters had been satisfactorily arranged; and
+as Mr. Welles had refused to open his office for inspection till it was
+completely furnished, she did not enter that characteristic apartment
+till the third day of its official existence.
+
+As she went through the narrow hallway connecting the four rooms on
+which the social regeneration of her village depended, she caught the
+sweet low thrum of a guitar and a too familiarly seductive voice burst
+forth into a chant, whose literal significance she was unable to grasp,
+owing to lack of familiarity with the language in which it was couched,
+but whose general tenor no one could mistake, so tender and arch was the
+rendering.
+
+With a vague thrill of apprehension she threw open the door.
+
+Sunk in cushions, a tea-cup on the arm of his chair, a guitar resting on
+his white flannel sleeve, reclined the director of the Rooms. Over
+his head hung a large and exquisite copy of the Botticelli Venus.
+Miss Gould's horrified gaze fled from this work of art to rest on a
+representation in bronze of the same reprehensible goddess, clothed,
+to be sure, a little more in accordance with the views of a retired New
+England community, yet leaving much to be desired in this direction.
+Kitty Waters attentively filled his empty cup, beaming the while, and
+the once errant Annabel, sitting on a low stool at his feet, with a red
+bow in her pretty hair, and her great brown eyes fixed adoringly on
+his face as he directed the fascinating incomprehensible little song
+straight at her charming self, was obviously in no present danger of
+running the streets.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Gould!" he said cheerfully, rising and handing the
+guitar to the abashed Annabel. "And you are really quite recovered?
+_C'est bien!_ Business is dull, and we are amusing each other, you see.
+How do you like the rooms? I flatter myself--"
+
+"If you flattered none but yourself, Mr. Welles, much harm would be
+avoided," she interrupted with uncompromising directness. "Kitty and
+Annabel, I cannot see how you can possibly tell how many people may or
+may not be wanting lunch!"
+
+"Billy Rider tells us when any one comes," the director assured her.
+"They don't come till twelve, anyway, and then they want to see the
+room, mostly--which we show them, don't we, Annabel?"
+
+Annabel blushed, cast down her eyes, lifted them, showed her dimples,
+and replied in the words, if not in the accents, of Thompson: "Yes,
+sir!"
+
+"It's really going to be an education in itself, don't you think so?"
+he continued. "It's amazing how the people like it--it's really quite
+gratifying. Perhaps it may be my mission to abolish the chromo and the
+tidy from off the face of New England! We have had crowds here--just to
+look at the pictures."
+
+"I don't doubt it!" replied Miss Gould briefly.
+
+"And I got the most attractive sugar-bowl from the little boy who
+brought in the reports about picking up papers and such things from the
+streets. He said he ought to have five cents, so I gave him a dime--I
+hadn't five--and I bought the bowl. Annabel, my child, bring me--"
+
+But Annabel and her fellow-waitress had disappeared. Miss Gould sat in
+silence. At intervals her perplexed gaze rested unconsciously on the
+Botticelli Venus, from which she instantly with a slight frown lowered
+it and regarded the floor. When she at last met his eyes the expression
+of her own was so troubled, the droop of her firm mouth so pathetic
+and unusual, that he left his chair and dragged the little stool to
+her feet, assuming an attitude so boyish and graceful that in spite of
+herself she smiled at him.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked confidentially. "Is anything wrong?
+Don't you like the room? I enjoy it tremendously, myself. I've been
+here almost all the time since it was done. I think Tom Waters must be
+tremendously impressed--"
+
+"That's the trouble; he is," said Miss Gould simply.
+
+"Trouble? trouble? Is his impression unfavorable? Heavens,
+how unfortunate!" exclaimed the director airily. "Surely, my
+application--Does the room fail to meet his approval, or--"
+
+"Yes, it does," she interrupted. "He says it's no place for a man to be
+in; and he says the pictures are--are--well, he says they are improper!"
+glancing at the Venus.
+
+"Ah!" responded the director with a suspicious sweetness. "He does not
+care for the nude, then?"
+
+She sighed deeply. "Oh, Mr. Welles!"
+
+"It is indeed to be regretted that Mr. Waters's ideals are so
+high--and--shall we say--so elusive?" proceeded the director smoothly.
+"It is so difficult--so well-nigh impossible--to satisfy him. One
+devotes one's energies--I may say one slaves night and day--to win
+some slight mark of approval; and just as one is about to reap the
+well-earned reward--a smile, a word of appreciation--all is forfeited!
+It is hard indeed! Would you suggest the rearrangement of the Rooms
+under Mr. Waters's direction? Thompson is at his service--"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Welles!" she sighed hopelessly. "It isn't only that! It's not
+alone the room, though Mrs. Underwood wonders that I should think she
+would be able to conduct the Band of Hope in here, and Mrs. Rider says
+that after what her husband told her she should no more think of sitting
+here for a mothers' meeting than anything in the world. It's the whole
+thing. Why did you treat them all to lemonade the first day? Surely you
+knew that our one aim is to prevent miscellaneous charity. And Tom says
+you smoked in here--he smelt it."
+
+"I smelt him, too," remarked the director calmly. "That was one reason
+why I smoked."
+
+"And--and having Kitty and Annabel here all the time! The Girls' Club
+are so j---- Well, the Girls' Club like the old rooms better, they say,
+and it's so difficult to get them to work together at best. And now we
+shall have to work so hard--
+
+"And the men think it's just a joke, the lemonade and everything, and
+the room gave them such a wrong impression, and they don't seem to want
+it, anyway. Tom Waters says he can't abide sarsaparilla--"
+
+"Great heavens!" the director broke in, "is it possible? A point on
+which Mr. Waters's opinion coincides with mine? I have not lived in
+vain! But this is too much; I have not deserved--"
+
+"Oh, don't!" she begged. "There is more. When I corrected Annabel for
+what I had heard about her--her impertinent behavior, she said that
+Mrs. Underwood had never approved of the whole thing, and that if I had
+consulted her she would never have given her consent to your being here,
+and that I was dictatorial--I!"
+
+Her lodger coughed and ejaculated, "You, indeed!"
+
+"And when I said that their ingratitude actually made me wonder why I
+worked so hard for them, she said--oh, dear! It is all dreadful! I don't
+know what to do!"
+
+"I do!" returned her lodger promptly. "Go away and leave 'em! They
+aren't fit to trouble you any more. Besides, they're really not so
+bad, after all, you know. There has to be just about so much laziness
+and--and that sort of thing, don't you see. Look at me, for instance!
+Think of how much misdirected energy I balance! And it gives other
+people something to do.... Go away and leave it all for a while!" he
+repeated smilingly.
+
+"Go away! But where? Why should I? What do you mean?" she stammered,
+confused at something in his eyes, which never left her face.
+
+"To England--you said you'd like to see it. With me--for I certainly
+couldn't stay here alone. Why do you suppose I stay, dear lady? I used
+to wonder myself. No, sit still, don't get up! I am about to make you an
+offer of marriage; indeed, I am serious, Miss Gould!
+
+"I don't see that it's ridiculous at all. I see every practical reason
+in favor of it. In the first place, if they are gossiping--oh, yes,
+Thompson told me, and I wonder that they hadn't before: these villages
+are dreadful places--I couldn't very well stay, you see; and then where
+should I put all my things? In the second place, I have so much stuff,
+and there's no house fit for it but--but ours; and if we were married I
+could have just twice as much room for it--and I'm getting far too much
+for my side. In the third place, I find that I can't look forward with
+any pleasure to travelling about alone, because, in the fourth place,
+I've grown so tremendously fond of you, dear Miss Gould! I think you
+don't dislike me?"
+
+She plucked the guitar strings nervously with her white, strong fingers.
+The rich, vibrating tones of it filled the room and confused her still
+more.
+
+"People will say that I--that we--" He caught her hand: it had never
+been kissed before. "Would you rather I went away and then there would
+be nothing left for them to say?" he asked softly.
+
+She caught her breath.
+
+"I'm too--"
+
+"You are too charming not to have some one who appreciates the fact as
+thoroughly as I do," he interrupted gallantly. "I think you do me so
+much good, you know," he added, still holding her hand. She looked at
+him directly for the first time.
+
+"Do I really? Is that true?" she demanded, with a return of her old
+manner so complete and sudden as to startle him. "If I thought that--"
+
+"You would?" he asked with a smile. "I thought so! Here is a village
+that scorns your efforts and a respectful suitor who implores them. Can
+you hesitate?"
+
+His smile was irresistible, and she returned it half reprovingly. "Will
+you never be serious?" she said. "I wonder that I can--" She stopped.
+
+"That you can--" he repeated, watching her blush, but she would not
+finish.
+
+"You must not think that I can give up my work--my real work--so
+easily," she said, rising and looking down on him with a return of her
+simple impressive seriousness. "I shall have to consider. I have been
+very much disturbed by their conduct. I will see you after supper," and
+with a gesture that told him to remain, she left the room, her head
+high as she caught Annabel's voice from outside. She turned in the door,
+however, and the stern curves of her mouth melted with a smile so sweet,
+a promise so gracious and so tender, that when her eyes, frank and
+direct as a boy's, left his, he looked long at the closed door,
+wondering at the quickening of his pulses.
+
+A moment later he heard her voice, imperious and clear, and the mumble
+of Mr. Waters's unavailing if never-ending excuses. He laughed softly to
+himself, and touched the strings of the guitar that she had struck.
+"I shall save the worthy Thomas much," he murmured to himself, "and of
+course I do it to reform her--I cannot pull down the village and die
+with the Philistines!"
+
+She went up the long main street, Mr. Waters at her side and Annabel
+Riley behind her. Her lodger watched her out of sight, and prepared to
+lock up the Rooms.
+
+"So firm, so positive, so wholesome!" he said, as he started after her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
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+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philanthropist, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Philanthropist
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23366]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILANTHROPIST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A PHILANTHROPIST
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Josephine Daskam <br /> <br /> Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's
+      Sons
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspected him from the first,&rdquo; said Miss Gould, with some irritation,
+      to her lodger. She spoke with irritation because of the amused smile of
+      the lodger. He bowed with the grace that characterized all his lazy
+      movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looked very much like that Tom Waters that I had at the Reformed
+      Drunkards' League last year. I even thought he was Tom&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know Tom?&rdquo; hazarded the lodger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I don't know whether I ever mentioned him to you. He came twice to
+      the League, and we were really quite hopeful about him, and the third time
+      he asked to have the meeting at his house. We thought it a great sign&mdash;the
+      best of signs, in fact. So as a great favor we went there instead of
+      meeting at the Rooms. I was a little late&mdash;I lost the way&mdash;and
+      when I got there I heard a great noise as if they were singing different
+      songs at the same time. I hurried in to lead them&mdash;they get so mixed
+      in the singing&mdash;and&mdash;it makes me blush now to think of it!&mdash;the
+      wretch had invited them all early, and&mdash;and they were all
+      intoxicated!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry I told you,&rdquo; she added with dignity; for the lodger, in an
+      endeavor to smile sympathetically, had lost his way and was convulsed with
+      a mirth entirely unregretful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all, not at all,&rdquo; he murmured politely. &ldquo;It is a delightful story.
+      I would not have missed it&mdash;a choir of reformed drunkards! But do you
+      not, my dear Miss Gould, perceive in these little setbacks a warning
+      against further attempts? Do you still attend the League? It is not
+      possible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possible?&rdquo; echoed his visitor; for owing to certain recent and untoward
+      circumstances, Miss Gould was half reclining in her lodger's great Indian
+      chair, sipping a glass of his '49 port. &ldquo;Indeed I do! They had every one
+      of them to be reformed all over again! It was most disgraceful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lodger checked a rising smile, and leaned solicitously toward her,
+      regarding her firm, fine-featured face with flattering attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you growing stronger? Can I bring you anything?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Gould's color rose, half with anger at her weakness of body, half
+      with a vexed consciousness of his amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, no,&rdquo; she returned coldly, &ldquo;I am ashamed to have been so
+      weak-minded. I must go now and tell Henry to pile the wood again in the
+      east corner. There will probably come another tramp very soon&mdash;they
+      are very prevalent this month, I hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lodger left his low wicker seat&mdash;a proof of enormous excitement&mdash;and
+      frowned at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you seriously mean, Miss Gould, that you are going to run the risk of
+      another such&mdash;such catastrophe? It is absurd. I cannot believe it of
+      you! Is there no other way&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had been standing a long while, it occurred to him, and he retired
+      to the chair again. A splinter of wood on his immaculate white flannel
+      coat caught his eye, and a slow smile spread over his handsome, lazy face.
+      It grew and grew until at last a distinct chuckle penetrated to the dusky
+      corner where the Indian chair leaned back against dull Oriental draperies.
+      Its occupant attempted to rise, her face stern, her mouth unrelenting. He
+      was at her side instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take my arm&mdash;and pardon me!&rdquo; he said with an irresistible grace. &ldquo;It
+      is only my fear for your comfort, you know, Miss Gould. I cannot bear that
+      you should be at the mercy of every drunken fellow that wishes to impose
+      on you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she crossed the hall that separated her territory from his, her fine,
+      full figure erect, her dark head high in the air, a whimsical regret came
+      over him that they were not younger and more foolish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should certainly marry her to reform her,&rdquo; he said to the birch log
+      that spluttered on his inimitable colonial fire-dogs. And then, as the
+      remembrance of the events of the morning came to him, he laughed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been disturbed at his leisurely coffee and roll by a rapid and
+      ceaseless pounding, followed by a violent rattling, and varied by stifled
+      cries apparently from the woodshed. The din seemed to come from the lower
+      part of the house, and after one or two futile appeals to the man who
+      served as valet, cook, and butler in his bachelor establishment, he
+      decided that he was alone in his half of the house, and that the noise
+      came from Miss Gould's side. He strolled down the beautiful winding
+      staircase, and dragged his crimson dressing-gown to the top of the cellar
+      stairs, the uproar growing momentarily more terrific. Half-way down the
+      whitewashed steps he paused, viewing the remarkable scene below him with
+      interest and amazement. The cemented floor was literally covered with
+      neatly chopped kindling-wood, which rose as in a tide under the efforts of
+      a large red-faced man who, with the regularity of a machine, stooped,
+      grasped a billet in either hand, shook them in the face of Miss Gould, who
+      cowered upon a soap-box at his side, and flung them on the floor. From the
+      woodhouse near the cellar muffled shouts were heard through a storm of
+      blows on the door. From the rattling of this door, and the fact that the
+      red-faced man aimed every third stick at it, the observer might readily
+      conclude that some one desirous of leaving the woodhouse was locked within
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the spectator on the stairs stood stunned. The noise was
+      deafening; the appearance of the man, whose expression was one of settled
+      rage but whose actions were of the coldest regularity, was most
+      bewildering, partially obscured as it was by the flying billets of wood;
+      the mechanical attempts of Miss Gould to rise from the soap-box,
+      invariably checked by a fierce brandishing of the stick just taken from
+      the lessening pile, were at once startling and fascinating, inasmuch as
+      she was methodically waved back just as her knees had unbent for the
+      trial, and as methodically essayed her escape again, alternately rising
+      with dignity and sinking back in terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red dressing-gown advanced a step, and met her gaze. Dignity and
+      terror shifted to relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Welles!&rdquo; she gasped. Her lodger girded up his <i>robe de chambre</i>
+      with its red silk cord and advanced with decision through the chaos of
+      birch and hickory. A struggle, sharp but brief, and he turned to find Miss
+      Gould offering a coil of clothes-rope with which to bind the conquered,
+      whom conflict had sobered, for he made no resistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by such idiotic actions?&rdquo; the squire of dames demanded,
+      as he freed the maddened Henry from his durance vile in the woodhouse and
+      confronted the red-faced man, who had not uttered a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast a baffled glance at Miss Gould and a triumphant smile at Henry
+      before replying. Then, disdaining the lady's righteous indignation and the
+      hired man's threatening gestures, he faced the gentleman in the scarlet
+      robe and spoke as man to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gov'nor,&rdquo; he said with somewhat thickened speech, &ldquo;I come here an' I
+      asked for a meal. An' she tol' me would I work fer it? An' I said yes. An'
+      she come into this ol' vault of a suller, an' she pointed to that ol' heap
+      o' wood, an' she tol' me ter move it over ter that corner. An' I done so
+      fer half an hour. An' I says to that blitherin' fool over there, who was
+      workin' in that ol' wood-house, what the devil did she care w'ich corner
+      the darned stuff was in? An' he says that she didn't care a hang, but that
+      she'd tell the next man that come along to move it back to where I got it
+      from; he said 'twas a matter er principle with her not to give a man a
+      bite fer nothin'! So I shut him in his ol' house, an' w'en she come down I
+      gave her a piece of my mind. I don't mind a little work, mister, but when
+      it come to shufflin' kind-lin's round in this ol' tomb fer half an hour
+      an' makin' a fool o' myself fer nothin', I got my back up. My time ain't
+      so vallyble to me as 'tis to some, gov'nor, but it's worth a damn sight
+      more'n that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Gould's lodger shuddered as he remembered the quarter he had
+      surreptitiously bestowed upon the man, and the withering scorn that would
+      be his portion were the weakness known. He smiled as he recalled the scene
+      in the cellar when he had helped Miss Gould up the stairs and returned to
+      soothe Henry, who regretted that he had left one timber of the woodhouse
+      upon another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though I'm bound to say, Mr. Welles, that I see how he felt. I've often
+      felt like a fool explainin' how they was to move that wood back an' forth.
+      It does seem strange that Miss Gould has to do it that way. Give 'em
+      some-thin' an' let 'em go, I say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was precisely his own view&mdash;but how fundamentally immoral the
+      position was he knew so well! He recalled Miss Gould's lectures on the
+      subject, miracles of eloquence and irrefutably correct in deductions that
+      interested him not nearly so much as the lecturer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So firm, so positive, so wholesome!&rdquo; he would murmur to himself in tacit
+      apology for the instructive hours spent before their common ground, the
+      great fireplace in the central hall. He never sat there without
+      remembering their first interview: her resentment at an absolutely
+      inexcusable intrusion slowly melting before his exquisite appreciation of
+      every line and corner of the old colonial homestead; her reserve waning at
+      every touch of his irresistible courtesy, till, to her own open amazement,
+      she rose to conduct this connoisseur in antiquities through the rooms
+      whose delights he had perfectly foreseen, he assured her, from the
+      modelling of the front porch; her utter and instantaneous refusal to
+      consider for a second his proposal to lodge a stranger in half of her
+      father's house; and the naïve and conscientious struggle with her
+      principles when, with a logic none the less forcible because it was so
+      gracefully developed, he convinced her that her plain duty lay along the
+      lines of his choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For as a philanthropist what could she do? Here were placed in her hands
+      means she could not in conscience overlook. Rapidly translating his
+      dollars into converts, he juggled them before her dazzled eyes; he even
+      hinted delicately at Duty, with that exact conception of the requirements
+      of the stern daughter felt by none so keenly as those who systematically
+      avoid her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His good genius prompted him to refer casually to soup-kitchens. Now
+      soup-kitchens were the delight of Miss Gould's heart; toward the
+      establishment of a soup-kitchen she had looked since the day when her
+      father's death had left her the double legacy of his worldly goods and his
+      unworldly philanthropy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Visions of dozens of Bacchic revellers, riotous no more, but seated
+      temperately each before his steaming bowl, rose to her delighted eyes; she
+      saw in fancy the daughters and nieces of the reformed in smiles and white
+      aprons ladling the nutritious and attractive compound, earning thus an
+      honest wage; she saw a neatly balanced account-book and a triumphant
+      report; she saw herself the respected and deprecatory idol of a millennial
+      village. She wavered, hesitated, and was lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That very evening saw the establishment of a second ménage in the north
+      side of the house, and though a swift regret chilled her manner for weeks,
+      she found herself little by little growing interested in her lodger, and
+      conscious of an increasing desire to benefit him, an irritated longing to
+      influence him for good, to turn him from the butterfly whims of a
+      pretended invalid to an appreciation of the responsibilities of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For in all her well-ordered forty years Miss Gould had never seen so
+      indolent, so capricious, so irresponsible a person. That a man of easy
+      means, fine education, sufficient health, and gray hair should have
+      nothing better to do than collect willow-ware and fire-irons, read the
+      magazines, play the piano, and stroll about in the sun seemed to her
+      nothing less than horrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each day that added some new treasure to his perfectly arranged rooms, and
+      in consequence some new song to his seductive repertoire, left a new sting
+      in her soul. She had been influencing somebody or something all her life.
+      She had been educating and directing and benefiting till she was forced to
+      be grateful to that providential generosity that caused new wickedness and
+      ignorance to spring constantly from this very soil she had cleared; for if
+      one reform had been sufficient she would long since have been obliged to
+      leave the little village for larger fields. She had ministered to the
+      starved mind as to the stunted body; the idle and dissolute quaked before
+      her. And yet here in her own household, across her hall, lived the epitome
+      of uselessness, indolence, selfishness, and&mdash;she was forced to admit
+      it&mdash;charm. What corresponded to a sense of humor in her caught at the
+      discrepancy and worried over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What! was she not competent, then, to influence her equals? For in
+      everything but moral stamina she was forced to admit that her lodger was
+      her equal, if no more. Widely travelled, well read, well born, talented,
+      handsome, deferential&mdash;but persistently amused at her, irrevocably
+      indolent, hopelessly selfish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the firm intention of turning the occasions to his benefit, she had
+      finally accepted his regular and courteous invitation to take tea with
+      him, and had watched his graceful management of samovar and tea-cup with
+      open disfavor. &ldquo;A habit picked up in England,&rdquo; he had assured her, when,
+      with the frankness characteristic of her, she had criticised him for the
+      effeminacy. And his smiling explanation had sent a sudden flush across her
+      smooth, firm cheeks. Was she provincial? Did she seem to him a New England
+      villager and nothing more? She bit her lip, and the appeal she had planned
+      went unspoken that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her desire could not rest, and as to her strict notions the continual
+      visits from her side to his seemed unsuitable, she gave in self-defence
+      her own invitation, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoons saw her lodger
+      across the hall drinking her own tea with wine and plum-cake by the
+      shining kettle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she could command his admiration in no other way, she felt, she might
+      safely rely on his deferential respect for the owner of that pewter
+      tea-service&mdash;velvety, shimmering, glistening dully, with shapes that
+      vaguely recalled Greek lamps and Etruscan urns. And she piled wedges of
+      ambrosial plum-cake with yellow frosting on sprigged china, and set out
+      wine in her great-grandfather's long-necked decanter, and, with what she
+      considered a gracious tact, overlooked the flippancy of her guest's
+      desultory conversation, and sincerely tried to discover the humorous
+      quality in her conversation that forced a subdued chuckle now and then
+      from her listener.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She confided most of her schemes to him, sometimes unconsciously, and grew
+      to depend more than she knew upon his common sense and experience; for,
+      though openly cynical of her works, he would give her what she often
+      realized to be the best of practical advice, and his amusing generalities,
+      though to her mind insults to humanity, had been so bitterly proved true
+      that she looked fearfully to see his lightest adverse prophecy fulfilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a cautious introduction of the subject by asking his advice as to
+      the minimum of hours in the week one could conscientiously allow a
+      doubtful member of the Weekly Culture Club to spend upon Browning, she
+      endeavored to get his idea of that poet. Her famous theory as to her
+      ability to place any one satisfactorily in the scale of culture according
+      to his degree of appreciation of &ldquo;Rabbi ben Ezra&rdquo; was unfortunately known
+      to her lodger before she could with any verisimilitude produce the book,
+      and he was wary of committing himself. The exquisite effrontery with which
+      she finally brought out her gray-green volume was only equalled by the
+      forbearing courtesy with which he welcomed both it and her. Nor did he
+      offer any other comment on her opening the book at a well-worn page than
+      an apologetic removal to the only chair in the room more comfortable than
+      the one he was at the time occupying. He listened in silence to her
+      intelligent if somewhat sonorous rendering of selected portions of &ldquo;Saul,&rdquo;
+       thanking her politely at the close, and only stipulating that he should be
+      allowed to return the favor by a reading from one of his own favorite
+      poets. With a shocked remembrance of certain yellow-covered volumes she
+      had often cleared away from the piazza, Miss Gould inquired if the poet in
+      question were English. On his hearty affirmative she resigned herself with
+      no little interest to the opportunity of seeing her way more clearly into
+      this baffling mind, horrified at his criticism of the second reading&mdash;for
+      she had brought the &ldquo;Rabbi&rdquo; forward at last,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Then welcome each rebuff
+     That turns earth's smoothness rough,
+     Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      she had intoned; and, fixing her eye sternly on the butterfly in white
+      flannels, she had asked him with a telling emphasis what that meant to
+      him? With the sweetest smile in the world, he had leaned forward, sipped
+      his tea, gazed thoughtfully in the fire, and answered, with a polite
+      apology for the homeliness of the illustration, that it reminded him most
+      strongly of a tack fixed in the seat of a chair, with the attendant
+      circumstances! After a convulsive effort to include in one terrible
+      sentence all the scorn and regret and pity that she felt, Miss Gould had
+      decided that silence was best, and sat back wondering why she suffered him
+      one instant in her parlor. He took from the floor beside him at this point
+      a neat red volume, and, murmuring something about his inability to do the
+      poet justice, he began to read. For one, two, four minutes Miss Gould sat
+      staring; then she interrupted him coldly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who is the author of that doggerel, Mr. Welles?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edward Lear, dear Miss Gould&mdash;and a great man, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I might have been spared&mdash;&rdquo; she began with such genuine
+      anger that any but her lodger would have quailed. He, however, merely
+      smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the subtlety of it&mdash;the immensity of the conception&mdash;the
+      power of characterization!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Just see how quietly this is
+      treated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And to her amazement she let him go on; so that a chance visitor, entering
+      unannounced, might have been treated to the delicious spectacle of a
+      charming middle-aged gentleman in white flannels reading, near a birch
+      fire and a priceless pewter tea-service, to a handsome middle-aged woman
+      in black silk, the following pregnant lines:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;There was an old person of Bow,
+     Whom nobody happened to know,
+          So they gave him some soap,
+          And said coldly, 'We hope
+     You will go back directly to Bow!'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And the illustration is worthy of the text,&rdquo; he added enthusiastically, as
+      he passed the volume to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no sense of humor, but she had a sense of justice, and it occurred
+      to her that after all an agreement was an agreement. If to listen to
+      insinuating inanities was the price of his attention, she would pay it.
+      She had borne more than this in order to do good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the readings continued, a source of unmixed delight to her lodger and a
+      great spiritual discipline to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the days grew milder their intimacy, profiting by the winter seclusion,
+      led him to accompany her on her various errands. She was at first
+      unwilling to accept his escort&mdash;it too clearly resembled a tacit
+      consent to his idleness. But his quiet persistence, together with his
+      evident cynicism as to the results of these professional tours,
+      accomplished, as usual, his end; and the wondering village might observe
+      on hot June mornings its benefactress, languidly accompanied by a slender
+      man in white flannels, balancing a large white green-lined umbrella,
+      picking his way daintily along the dusty paths, with a covered basket
+      dangling from one hand and a gray-green volume distending one white
+      pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was material, too, for the interested observer in the picture of
+      Miss Gould distributing reading matter, fruit, and lectures on household
+      economy in the cottages of the mill-hands, while her lodger pitched
+      pennies with the delighted children outside. It was on one of these
+      occasions that Miss Gould took the opportunity to address Mr. Thomas
+      Waters, late of the paper and cardboard manufacturing force, on the
+      wickedness and folly of his present course of action. Mr. Waters had left
+      his position on the strength of his wife's financial success. Mrs. Waters
+      was a laundress, and the summer boarders, together with Mr. Welles, who
+      alone went far toward establishing the fortunes of the family, had
+      combined to place the head of the house in his present condition of
+      elegant leisure. &ldquo;I wonder at you, Tom Waters, after all the interest
+      we've taken in you \ Are you not horribly ashamed to depend on your wife
+      in this lazy way?&rdquo; Miss Gould demanded of the once member of the Reformed
+      Drunkards' League. &ldquo;How many times have I explained to you that nothing&mdash;absolutely
+      nothing&mdash;is so disgraceful as a man who will not work? What were you
+      placed in the world for? How do you justify your existence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How,&rdquo; replied her unabashed audience, with a wave of his pipe toward the
+      front yard, where Mr. Welles was amiably superintending a wrestling match,
+      &ldquo;does he justify hisn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Had Miss Gould been less consistent and less in earnest, there were many
+      replies open to her. As it was, she colored violently, bit her lip, made
+      an inaudible remark, and with a bitter glance at the author of her
+      confusion, now cheering on to the conflict the scrambling Waters children,
+      she called their mother to account for their presence in the yard at this
+      time on a school-day, and for the first time in her life left the house
+      without exacting a solemn promise of amendment from the head of the
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I fixed her that time!&rdquo; Mr. Waters remarked triumphantly, as he
+      summoned his second pair of twins from the yard and demanded of them if
+      the gentleman had given them nickels or dimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman in question became uncomfortably conscious, in the course of
+      their walk home, of an atmosphere not wholly novel, that lost no strength
+      in this case from its studied repression. That afternoon, as they sat in
+      the shade of the big elm, he in his flexible wicker chair, she in a
+      straight-backed, high-seated legacy from her grandfather, the whirlwind
+      that Mr. Waters had so lightly sown fell to the reaping of a victim too
+      amiable and unsuspecting not to escape the sentence of any but so stern a
+      judge as the handsome and inflexible representative of the moral order now
+      before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Gould was looking her best in a crisp lavender dimity, upon whose
+      frills Mrs. Waters had bestowed the grateful exercise of her highest art.
+      Her sleek, dark coils of hair, from which no one stray lock escaped,
+      framed her fresh cheeks most admirably; her strong white hands appeared
+      and disappeared with an absolute regularity through the dark-green wool
+      out of which she was evolving a hideous and useful shawl. To her lodger,
+      who alternately waved a palm-leaf fan and drank lemonade, reading at
+      intervals from a two-days-old newspaper, and carrying on the desultory and
+      amusing soliloquy that they were pleased to consider conversation, she
+      presented the most attractive of pictures. &ldquo;So firm, so positive, so
+      wholesome,&rdquo; he murmured to himself, calling her attention to the exquisite
+      effect of the slanting rays that struck the lawn in a dappled pattern of
+      flickering leaf-shadows, and remarking the violet tinge thrown by the
+      setting sun on the old spire below in the middle of the village. She did
+      not answer immediately, and when she did it was in tones that he had
+      learned from various slight experiments to regard as final.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Welles,&rdquo; she said, bending upon him that direct and placid regard
+      that rendered evasion difficult and paltering impossible, &ldquo;things have
+      come to a point;&rdquo; and she narrated the scene of the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is indeed a problem,&rdquo; observed her lodger gravely, &ldquo;but what is one to
+      do? It is just such questions as this that illustrate the futility&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no question about it, Mr. Welles,&rdquo; she interrupted gravely. &ldquo;Tom
+      was right and I was wrong. There is no use in my talking to him or anybody
+      while I&mdash;while you&mdash;while things are as they are. You must make
+      up your mind, Mr. Welles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, great heavens, dear Miss Gould, what do you mean? What am I to make
+      up my mind about? Am I to provide myself with an occupation, perhaps, for
+      the sake of Tom Waters's principles? Or am I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. That is just it. You know what I have always felt, Mr. Welles, about
+      it. But I never seemed to be able to make you see. Now, as I say, things
+      have come to a point. You must do something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this is absurd, Miss Gould! I am not a child, and surely nobody can
+      dream of holding you in any way responsible&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> hold myself responsible,&rdquo; she replied simply, &ldquo;and I have never
+      approved of it&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders desperately. She was imperturbable; she was
+      impossible; she was beyond argument or persuasion or ridicule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose I say that I think the situation is absurd, and that I refuse to
+      be placed at Mr. Waters's disposal?&rdquo; he suggested with a furtive glance.
+      She drew the ivory hook through the green meshes a little faster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be obliged to refuse to renew your lease in the fall,&rdquo; she
+      answered. He started from his wicker chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot mean it, Miss Gould! You would not be so&mdash;so unkind, so
+      unjust!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should feel obliged to, Mr. Welles, and I should not feel unjust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sank back into the yielding chair with a sigh. After all, her
+      fascination had always lain in her great decision. Was it not illogical to
+      expect her to fail to display it at such a crisis? There was a long
+      silence. The sun sank lower and lower, the birds twittered happily around
+      them. Miss Gould's long white hook slipped in and out of the wool, and her
+      lodger's eyes followed it absently. After a while he rose, settled his
+      white jacket elaborately, and half turned as if to go back to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need not tell you how I regret this unfortunate decision of yours,&rdquo; he
+      said politely, with a slight touch of the hauteur that sat so well on his
+      graceful person. &ldquo;I can only say that I am sorry you yourself should
+      regret it so little, and that I hope it will not disturb our pleasant
+      acquaintance during the weeks that remain to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bowed slightly with a dignified gesture that often served her as a
+      reply, and he took a step toward her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would we not better come in?&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;The sun is gone, and your
+      dress is thin. Let me send Henry after the chairs,&rdquo; and his eyes dropped
+      to her hands again. They were nearly hidden by the green wool, but the
+      long needle quivered like a leaf in the wind; she could not pass it
+      between the thread and her white forefinger. He hesitated a moment,
+      glanced at her face, smiled inscrutably, and deliberately reseated
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in the world could I do, you see?&rdquo; he inquired meditatively, as if
+      that had been the subject under discussion for some time. &ldquo;I can't make
+      cardboard boxes, you know. It's perfectly useless, my going into a
+      factory. Wheels and belts and things always give me the maddest longing to
+      jump into them&mdash;I couldn't resist it! And that would be so unpleasant&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped her wool and clasped her hands under it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Welles,&rdquo; she cried eagerly, &ldquo;how absurd! As if I meant that! As
+      if I meant anything like it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had you thought of anything, then?&rdquo; he asked interestedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded gravely. &ldquo;Why, yes,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good heavens!&rdquo; murmured her lodger, but she went on quickly: &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;I have loathed it from childhood&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, no, no!&rdquo; she interrupted, with her sweet, tolerant smile. She
+      smiled at him as if he had been a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better fifty years of poker than a cycle of croquet!&rdquo; her lodger
+      murmured. &ldquo;Yes, I have always felt that myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From ten to twelve, say,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; he brought out finally, &ldquo;you are like Greek architecture
+      or Eastlake furniture or&mdash;or 'God Save the Queen'&mdash;perfectly
+      absolute! And I am so hideously relative&mdash;But, after all, why should
+      a sense of humor be an essential? One is really more complete&mdash;I
+      suppose Mahomet had none&mdash;When shall I begin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;never!
+      Waxed that floor, they have, and put more mats onto it&mdash;fur and
+      colored. An' the stuff&mdash;oh, Lord! China&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;no heads onto 'em,
+      some ain't got; it's all one to him&mdash;he'd buy any ol' thing so's
+      'twas broke, you might say. An' them ol' straight chairs&mdash;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&mdash;I swear it's so. An' a guitar, an',
+      Lord, the pictures! You can't see no wall for 'em!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' he goes squintin' about here an' there, changin' this an' that, an'
+      singin' away an' laughin'&mdash;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&mdash;she
+      ain't seen his; she don't know no more'n the dead what he's got in there&mdash;an'
+      I was by the door when he said it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'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 back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An almost unprecedented headache, brought on by her unremitting labor in
+      effecting the change in the Rooms, kept Miss Gould in the house for two
+      days after the new headquarters had been satisfactorily arranged; and as
+      Mr. Welles had refused to open his office for inspection till it was
+      completely furnished, she did not enter that characteristic apartment till
+      the third day of its official existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she went through the narrow hallway connecting the four rooms on which
+      the social regeneration of her village depended, she caught the sweet low
+      thrum of a guitar and a too familiarly seductive voice burst forth into a
+      chant, whose literal significance she was unable to grasp, owing to lack
+      of familiarity with the language in which it was couched, but whose
+      general tenor no one could mistake, so tender and arch was the rendering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a vague thrill of apprehension she threw open the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sunk in cushions, a tea-cup on the arm of his chair, a guitar resting on
+      his white flannel sleeve, reclined the director of the Rooms. Over his
+      head hung a large and exquisite copy of the Botticelli Venus. Miss Gould's
+      horrified gaze fled from this work of art to rest on a representation in
+      bronze of the same reprehensible goddess, clothed, to be sure, a little
+      more in accordance with the views of a retired New England community, yet
+      leaving much to be desired in this direction. Kitty Waters attentively
+      filled his empty cup, beaming the while, and the once errant Annabel,
+      sitting on a low stool at his feet, with a red bow in her pretty hair, and
+      her great brown eyes fixed adoringly on his face as he directed the
+      fascinating incomprehensible little song straight at her charming self,
+      was obviously in no present danger of running the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Miss Gould!&rdquo; he said cheerfully, rising and handing the
+      guitar to the abashed Annabel. &ldquo;And you are really quite recovered? <i>C'est
+      bien!</i> Business is dull, and we are amusing each other, you see. How do
+      you like the rooms? I flatter myself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you flattered none but yourself, Mr. Welles, much harm would be
+      avoided,&rdquo; she interrupted with uncompromising directness. &ldquo;Kitty and
+      Annabel, I cannot see how you can possibly tell how many people may or may
+      not be wanting lunch!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Billy Rider tells us when any one comes,&rdquo; the director assured her. &ldquo;They
+      don't come till twelve, anyway, and then they want to see the room, mostly&mdash;which
+      we show them, don't we, Annabel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Annabel blushed, cast down her eyes, lifted them, showed her dimples, and
+      replied in the words, if not in the accents, of Thompson: &ldquo;Yes, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's really going to be an education in itself, don't you think so?&rdquo; he
+      continued. &ldquo;It's amazing how the people like it&mdash;it's really quite
+      gratifying. Perhaps it may be my mission to abolish the chromo and the
+      tidy from off the face of New England! We have had crowds here&mdash;just
+      to look at the pictures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't doubt it!&rdquo; replied Miss Gould briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I got the most attractive sugar-bowl from the little boy who brought
+      in the reports about picking up papers and such things from the streets.
+      He said he ought to have five cents, so I gave him a dime&mdash;I hadn't
+      five&mdash;and I bought the bowl. Annabel, my child, bring me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Annabel and her fellow-waitress had disappeared. Miss Gould sat in
+      silence. At intervals her perplexed gaze rested unconsciously on the
+      Botticelli Venus, from which she instantly with a slight frown lowered it
+      and regarded the floor. When she at last met his eyes the expression of
+      her own was so troubled, the droop of her firm mouth so pathetic and
+      unusual, that he left his chair and dragged the little stool to her feet,
+      assuming an attitude so boyish and graceful that in spite of herself she
+      smiled at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; he asked confidentially. &ldquo;Is anything wrong? Don't
+      you like the room? I enjoy it tremendously, myself. I've been here almost
+      all the time since it was done. I think Tom Waters must be tremendously
+      impressed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the trouble; he is,&rdquo; said Miss Gould simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trouble? trouble? Is his impression unfavorable? Heavens, how
+      unfortunate!&rdquo; exclaimed the director airily. &ldquo;Surely, my application&mdash;Does
+      the room fail to meet his approval, or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it does,&rdquo; she interrupted. &ldquo;He says it's no place for a man to be
+      in; and he says the pictures are&mdash;are&mdash;well, he says they are
+      improper!&rdquo; glancing at the Venus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; responded the director with a suspicious sweetness. &ldquo;He does not
+      care for the nude, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sighed deeply. &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Welles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is indeed to be regretted that Mr. Waters's ideals are so high&mdash;and&mdash;shall
+      we say&mdash;so elusive?&rdquo; proceeded the director smoothly. &ldquo;It is so
+      difficult&mdash;so well-nigh impossible&mdash;to satisfy him. One devotes
+      one's energies&mdash;I may say one slaves night and day&mdash;to win some
+      slight mark of approval; and just as one is about to reap the well-earned
+      reward&mdash;a smile, a word of appreciation&mdash;all is forfeited! It is
+      hard indeed! Would you suggest the rearrangement of the Rooms under Mr.
+      Waters's direction? Thompson is at his service&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Welles!&rdquo; she sighed hopelessly. &ldquo;It isn't only that! It's not
+      alone the room, though Mrs. Underwood wonders that I should think she
+      would be able to conduct the Band of Hope in here, and Mrs. Rider says
+      that after what her husband told her she should no more think of sitting
+      here for a mothers' meeting than anything in the world. It's the whole
+      thing. Why did you treat them all to lemonade the first day? Surely you
+      knew that our one aim is to prevent miscellaneous charity. And Tom says
+      you smoked in here&mdash;he smelt it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I smelt him, too,&rdquo; remarked the director calmly. &ldquo;That was one reason why
+      I smoked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;and having Kitty and Annabel here all the time! The Girls' Club
+      are so j&mdash;&mdash; Well, the Girls' Club like the old rooms better,
+      they say, and it's so difficult to get them to work together at best. And
+      now we shall have to work so hard&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the men think it's just a joke, the lemonade and everything, and the
+      room gave them such a wrong impression, and they don't seem to want it,
+      anyway. Tom Waters says he can't abide sarsaparilla&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great heavens!&rdquo; the director broke in, &ldquo;is it possible? A point on which
+      Mr. Waters's opinion coincides with mine? I have not lived in vain! But
+      this is too much; I have not deserved&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't!&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;There is more. When I corrected Annabel for what
+      I had heard about her&mdash;her impertinent behavior, she said that Mrs.
+      Underwood had never approved of the whole thing, and that if I had
+      consulted her she would never have given her consent to your being here,
+      and that I was dictatorial&mdash;I!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her lodger coughed and ejaculated, &ldquo;You, indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when I said that their ingratitude actually made me wonder why I
+      worked so hard for them, she said&mdash;oh, dear! It is all dreadful! I
+      don't know what to do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do!&rdquo; returned her lodger promptly. &ldquo;Go away and leave 'em! They aren't
+      fit to trouble you any more. Besides, they're really not so bad, after
+      all, you know. There has to be just about so much laziness and&mdash;and
+      that sort of thing, don't you see. Look at me, for instance! Think of how
+      much misdirected energy I balance! And it gives other people something to
+      do.... Go away and leave it all for a while!&rdquo; he repeated smilingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away! But where? Why should I? What do you mean?&rdquo; she stammered,
+      confused at something in his eyes, which never left her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To England&mdash;you said you'd like to see it. With me&mdash;for I
+      certainly couldn't stay here alone. Why do you suppose I stay, dear lady?
+      I used to wonder myself. No, sit still, don't get up! I am about to make
+      you an offer of marriage; indeed, I am serious, Miss Gould!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see that it's ridiculous at all. I see every practical reason in
+      favor of it. In the first place, if they are gossiping&mdash;oh, yes,
+      Thompson told me, and I wonder that they hadn't before: these villages are
+      dreadful places&mdash;I couldn't very well stay, you see; and then where
+      should I put all my things? In the second place, I have so much stuff, and
+      there's no house fit for it but&mdash;but ours; and if we were married I
+      could have just twice as much room for it&mdash;and I'm getting far too
+      much for my side. In the third place, I find that I can't look forward
+      with any pleasure to travelling about alone, because, in the fourth place,
+      I've grown so tremendously fond of you, dear Miss Gould! I think you don't
+      dislike me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She plucked the guitar strings nervously with her white, strong fingers.
+      The rich, vibrating tones of it filled the room and confused her still
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People will say that I&mdash;that we&mdash;&rdquo; He caught her hand: it had
+      never been kissed before. &ldquo;Would you rather I went away and then there
+      would be nothing left for them to say?&rdquo; he asked softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm too&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too charming not to have some one who appreciates the fact as
+      thoroughly as I do,&rdquo; he interrupted gallantly. &ldquo;I think you do me so much
+      good, you know,&rdquo; he added, still holding her hand. She looked at him
+      directly for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I really? Is that true?&rdquo; she demanded, with a return of her old manner
+      so complete and sudden as to startle him. &ldquo;If I thought that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would?&rdquo; he asked with a smile. &ldquo;I thought so! Here is a village that
+      scorns your efforts and a respectful suitor who implores them. Can you
+      hesitate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His smile was irresistible, and she returned it half reprovingly. &ldquo;Will
+      you never be serious?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I wonder that I can&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you can&mdash;&rdquo; he repeated, watching her blush, but she would not
+      finish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not think that I can give up my work&mdash;my real work&mdash;so
+      easily,&rdquo; she said, rising and looking down on him with a return of her
+      simple impressive seriousness. &ldquo;I shall have to consider. I have been very
+      much disturbed by their conduct. I will see you after supper,&rdquo; and with a
+      gesture that told him to remain, she left the room, her head high as she
+      caught Annabel's voice from outside. She turned in the door, however, and
+      the stern curves of her mouth melted with a smile so sweet, a promise so
+      gracious and so tender, that when her eyes, frank and direct as a boy's,
+      left his, he looked long at the closed door, wondering at the quickening
+      of his pulses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later he heard her voice, imperious and clear, and the mumble of
+      Mr. Waters's unavailing if never-ending excuses. He laughed softly to
+      himself, and touched the strings of the guitar that she had struck. &ldquo;I
+      shall save the worthy Thomas much,&rdquo; he murmured to himself, &ldquo;and of course
+      I do it to reform her&mdash;I cannot pull down the village and die with
+      the Philistines!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went up the long main street, Mr. Waters at her side and Annabel Riley
+      behind her. Her lodger watched her out of sight, and prepared to lock up
+      the Rooms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So firm, so positive, so wholesome!&rdquo; he said, as he started after her.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>