"Still, just a dinner doesn't seem to be enough," said Jean, who, with her chin in her hand, seemed to be thinking deeply. "Of course it helps, but I'd rather save her life or do something like that."
"Little things count for a great deal in this world, sometimes," said Miss Blossom, leaning down to brush her cheek softly against Jean's. "It's generally wiser to leave the big things until one is big enough to handle them."
"Mrs. Crane is pretty big," offered matter-of-fact Mabel.
"Oh, dear," laughed Miss Blossom, "that wasn't at all what I meant."
"Mr. Black," said Bettie, dreamily, "has enough things, but I don't believe he really cares about anything in the world but his roses. His face is different when he talks about them, kind of soft all about the corners and not so—not so—"
"Daniel Webstery," supplied Jean, understandingly.
"It must be pretty lonely for him without any family," agreed Miss Blossom. "I don't know what would become of Father if he didn't have me to keep him cheered up—we're wonderful chums, Father and I."
"Oh", mourned tender-hearted Bettie, "I wish I could make Mrs. Crane rich enough so she wouldn't need to mend all the time, and that I could provide Mr. Black with some really truly relatives to love him the way you love your father."
"Oh, Bettie! Bettie!" cried Mabel, suddenly beginning, in her excitement, to bounce up and down on the one chair that possessed springs. "I know exactly how we could help them both. We could beg seven or eight children from the orphan asylum—they're glad to give 'em away—and let Mrs. Crane sell 'em to Mr. Black for—for ten dollars apiece."
Such a storm of merriment followed this simple solution of the problem that Mabel for the moment looked quite crushed. Her chair, incidentally, was crushed too, for Mabel's final bounce proved too much for its frail constitution; its four legs spread suddenly and lowered the surprised Mabel gently to the floor. Everybody laughed again, Mabel as heartily as anyone, and, for a time, the sorrows of Mrs. Crane and Mr. Black were forgotten.