"Thanks to you and your kind-hearted friends," put in the little man, smiling at the two girls who blushed violently.
"I am sure," he continued, turning to Seymour, "it would be quite a pleasure to let the hall to these young ladies for any purpose, but most of all for the purpose they have in view, and not to be behind hand in doing a good turn when I can, I must beg of you to accept the use of the hall for that day as a present." And he stopped breathless and perspiring from his unwonted exertion.
At first neither Mabel nor Minnie would hear of Mr. Rowson's proposal, and protested that they would rather pay for the hall, till Seymour, who had until now been a mere spectator of the proceedings, came to Mr. Rowson's aid who was by this time in a state of hopeless perspiration.
"Come, come, young ladies!" he said. "Do try to reduce yourselves to an ordinary level. Be a little more sensible, and a little less quixotic. Does it not occur to you that it is perhaps a little selfish, trying to secure the monopoly of charity to yourselves, and leaving others who too would like to do something in that way out in the cold?"
"But—" Minnie began, and then she came to a standstill, quite overcome by the last most ingenious argument.
Seymour laughed, so did Mr. Rowson, so did Mabel, and finally so did Minnie herself, and thus the matter was amicably settled.
Seymour and Minnie walked home with Mabel, and when they had left her at her own door, as they strolled slowly home, Seymour remarked, "What a quiet, sensible little woman your friend is—as different as possible from you; how comes it that two such extremes manage to get on so well?"
"Thanks for your good opinion! It's quite flattering to be classed as the extreme opposite of quiet and sensible," was the only reply vouchsafed by Minnie with a great show of offended dignity.
Seymour laughed, and remarked that often "people with a great deal more sense didn't put it to nearly such a good use."
Whereat Minnie assumed a slightly molified air, and observed that now he was disparaging himself—a piece of humility which he altogether repudiated.