Melanie left her chair, and, going over to Ben, gave her a light kiss on her hair.
"Don't worry," she said.
It was more reassuring than any other woman's oath on the Good Book.
After dinner Ben carried the problem to Uncle Paul, whom she found looking utterly miserable.
"My dear!" said Ben. "You're not ill, are you? You frighten me."
"No," said Uncle Paul weakly. "I'm not bodily ill. But life is a blank—they're cleaning out the Round Pond."
Ben put the matter before him.
"As step-aunt," she said, "doesn't mind what she spends, isn't this a gorgeous opportunity to do something really worth doing? And she's so absurdly amenable, ready to take advice. Just like putty. There never was such a chance to be really useful.
"So many things," she continued, "begin well and then decline. Village reading-rooms, with stone tablets in the wall saying in whose honour they were built, are opened with a great flourish, and the next time you go there they are closed and the windows broken. Clubs and institutes the same. But we can provide against all that. It mustn't be enough just to build; there must be endowment, and responsible caretakers or managers, for whatever we do.