“A nurse! How ever could we get the money to pay one?”
“Only big-city parishes can hope to....”
“We could if we tried!” she said, quelling them by her accent. She looked around at them with burning eyes. She was like a falcon in a barnyard. “A visiting nurse would cost—let us say a thousand a year.”
“Oh, more than that!” cried Mr. Prouty.
“Not if we supplied her with lodging and heat. Why couldn’t we arrange the little storeroom at the head of the stairs here in the Parish House for a bedroom for her? We could....”
“How could you heat it? There’s no radiator there.”
“There’s a steam-riser goes through that room. I noticed it when we were putting the folding chairs away last week. That would make it warm enough. We could furnish it by contributions, without its costing a cent in cash. Everybody has at least one piece of furniture she could spare from her house—in such a cause. About the pay, now. We have more than four hundred dollars in the Ladies’ Guild Treasury, and next Christmas our Bazaar ought to bring in two hundred more; it always does. We could hire Hunt’s Hall on Union Street for it, and have the bazaar bigger, and make more than two hundred easily. Then, there’s Miss Jelliffe, the music supervisor in the public schools, you know. Now that she’s joined St. Peter’s, I’m very sure she would help us get up some concerts later on. We could give ‘Songs of All Countries’ in costume, with the children. When you have lots of children in a program, you can always sell tickets. Their folks want to see them. And we could get a certain amount from the poor families the nurse visits—perhaps enough to make up the rest of her salary. They’d appreciate the service more if they paid something for it. Folks do.”
All this had poured from her effortlessly, as if she had been simply pointing out what lay there to see, not as though she were beating her brains to invent it.
They gaped at her breathlessly.
“I wish you would be chairman of the Committee,” said Mr. Prouty deferentially, “and take charge of the campaign for funds.”