“I’ve been wondering about that, too,” Rhoda spoke up. “And I can see no end to a list. Nan has so many friends that it is positively embarrassing! We can’t possibly have a dinner, even if Dr. Beulah and Mrs. Cupp would let us. There just wouldn’t be enough room.”
“Nor enough money,” Amelia added significantly.
“That’s right,” Laura stuck in her oar. “How are we going to get the money to pay for all of this.”
The question fell on a quiet room. No one had thought of paying for it!
Finally, Bess broke in on the silence, “Maybe I could get my father to send me some extra money this month,” she offered doubtfully. “I could write and ask him for two months’ allowance at once. I think he would do it.” Bess did have a way with her father and mother that usually secured for her what she wanted, for she was an only child and they loved her dearly. For this reason, she had no conception at all of the value of money. “You seem to think,” Nan often told her, “that it is something you go out and pick off from bushes. Don’t you know that people work for money?”
Now it was Amelia who put a damper on Bess’s generous but thoughtless offer. “That wouldn’t be fair at all,” she rejected Bess’s proposal.
“Why?” This from Bess.
“Because we are all giving the party, and we all want to help.”
“Thata girl, Amelia,” Laura applauded slangily.
“Why can’t we,” Rhoda began slowly as though she hadn’t quite worked the idea out in her own mind yet, “make up a list of people that we know would like to do something for Nan—goodness knows, there’s enough of them—and invite them asking each one to contribute fifty cents to help take care of expenses?”