“Don’t believe her, Dana!” interposed Miss Cahill, indignantly. “She does it all because she’s so awfully good, and she never brags about it as I would do, I’m sure, and they all adore her down there, and the little boys beg for her flowers, and the little girls have to be kissed, and the teachers are always delighted to see her,” she ran on, breathlessly and triumphantly.
Miss Minot looked up. “I do love the little children and they interest me tremendously,” she said. She leaned forward eagerly, and appealed to Cahill. “Don’t you see,” she said, “how easy it is to become interested in that sort of thing? One doesn’t have to be particularly religiously inclined or even ordinarily good—it’s just the human nature of it which touches one so. You ought to see them,” she went on, still appealing to Cahill. “They are so interested and amused in their ‘clubs,’ which meet different afternoons in the week, and they are so anxious to get in even before the others leave! I have seen them climbing up in the windows to get a look at the good times the others were having, and waiting about at the door in the cold until that ‘club’ should have gone home and left the warm rooms and the playthings, and the cheerful, bright teachers to them. It rather puts our society functions to shame, where no one goes to a reception until the receiving hours are half over, or to the opera until next to the last act.”
“And you ought to see how fond they are of her,” insisted Miss Cahill, admiringly. “She lets them get on her prettiest gowns and muss her, and she is so patient! I keep at a distance, and tell them they are very good and I hope they are having a nice time.”
Cahill laughed.
“Philanthropy made easy, is what suits you, Louise!”
“But it isn’t philanthropy at all,” objected Miss Minot, “unless it’s philanthropy to us outsiders to be allowed to go and help and share a little of the pleasure and culture of our selfish lives. Really you ought to see the children,” she went on, eagerly. “I don’t believe Palmer Cox’s brownies or ‘pigs in clover’ are such favorites anywhere else, and you wouldn’t imagine how interesting the making of a pin-cushion cover could be; and I never thought ‘Daisy Bell,’ and ‘Sweet Marie,’ and ‘Mollie and the Baby and I,’ were really pretty tunes until I heard a little girls’ club singing them in excellent tune, and with an appreciation of the sentiments quite astonishing.”
Cahill nodded a trifle absently. He decided that he had never seen any girl’s face quite as lovely or that appealed to him so as this girl’s, and that she was very different from most of his sister’s college friends, who were such serious young women and who rather over-awed him, and with whom he was never entirely at his ease.
“And then the women in the evening! They like the singing best, I think. It is wonderful to watch them when she sings for them, and I think her voice never sounds so beautiful as then.”
Cahill looked up interrogatively.
“She?” he said.