“Not a bit of it,” smiled the girl, “though I'd like to, really, if I could,” she added, perversely. “But this is quite another thing. It's no slum work, no charity. In the first place my guests aren't quite so poor as that, and they're much too proud to be reached by the avowed charity worker. But they need it just the same.”
“But you haven't much spare room; have you?” questioned Bertram.
“No, unfortunately; so I shall have to take only two or three at a time, and keep them maybe a week or ten days. It's just a sugar plum, Bertram. Truly it is,” she added whimsically, but with a tender light in her eyes.
“But who are these people?” Bertram's face had lost its look of shocked surprise, and his voice expressed genuine interest.
“Well, to begin with, there's Marie. She'll stay all summer and help me entertain my guests; at the same time her duties won't be arduous, and she'll get a little playtime herself. One week I'm going to have a little old maid who keeps a lodging house in the West End. For uncounted years she's been practically tied to a doorbell, with never a whole day to breathe free. I've made arrangements there for a sister to keep house a whole week, and I'm going to show this little old maid things she hasn't seen for years: the ocean, the green fields, and a summer play or two, perhaps.
“Then there's a little couple that live in a third-story flat in South Boston. They're young and like good times; but the man is on a small salary, and they have had lots of sickness. He's been out so much he can't take any vacation, and they wouldn't have any money to go anywhere if he could. Well, I'm going to have them a week. She'll be here all the time, and he'll come out at night, of course.
“Another one is a widow with six children. The children are already provided for by a fresh-air society, but the woman I'm going to take, and—and give her a whole week of food that she didn't have to cook herself. Another one is a woman who is not so very poor, but who has lost her baby, and is blue and discouraged. There are some children, too, one crippled, and a boy who says he's 'just lonesome.' And there are—really, Bertram, there is no end to them.”
“I can well believe that,” declared Bertram, with emphasis, “so far as your generous heart is concerned.”
Billy colored and looked distressed.
“But it isn't generosity or charity at all, Bertram,” she protested. “You are mistaken when you think it is—really! Why, I shall enjoy every bit of it just as well as they do—and better, perhaps.”