Oh, Money! Money! A Novel

by Eleanor H. Porter

He knew, for a fact, that she had refused to accept any of the Blaisdells’ legacy. Jane, to be sure, had not offered any money yet (though she had offered the parlor carpet, which had been promptly refused), but Frank and James and Flora had offered money, and had urged her to take it. Miss Maggie, however would have none of it.

Mr. Smith suspected that Miss Maggie was proud, and that she regarded such a gift as savoring too much of charity. Mr. Smith wished he could say something to Miss Maggie. Mr. Smith was, indeed, not a little disturbed over the matter. He did try once to say something; but Miss Maggie tossed it off with a merry: “Take their money? Never! I should feel as if I were eating up some of Jane’s interest, or one of Hattie’s gold chairs!” After that she would not let him get near the subject. There seemed then really nothing that he could do. It was about this time, however, that Mr. Smith began to demand certain extra luxuries—honey, olives, sardines, candied fruits, and imported jellies. They were always luxuries that must be bought, not prepared in the home; and he promptly increased the price of his board—but to a sum far beyond the extra cost of the delicacies he ordered. When Miss Maggie remonstrated at the size of the increase, he pooh-poohed her objections, and declared that even that did not pay for having such a nuisance of a boarder around, with all his fussy notions. He insisted, moreover, that the family should all partake freely of the various delicacies, declaring that it seemed to take away the sting of his fussiness if they ate as he ate, and so did not make him appear singular in his tastes. Of the Blaisdells Mr. Smith saw a good deal that winter. They often came to Miss Maggie’s, and occasionally he called at their homes. Mr. Smith was on excellent terms with them all. They seemed to regard him, indeed, as quite one of the family, and they asked his advice, and discussed their affairs before him with as much freedom as if he were, in truth, a member of the family.

He knew that Mrs. Hattie Blaisdell was having a very gay winter, and that she had been invited twice to the Gaylords’. He knew that James Blaisdell was happy in long evenings with his books before the fire. From Fred’s mother he learned that Fred had made the most exclusive club in college, and from Fred’s father he learned that the boy was already leading his class in his studies. He heard of Bessie’s visits to the homes of wealthy New Yorkers, and of the trials Benny’s teachers were having with Benny.

He knew something of Miss Flora’s placid life in her “house of mourning” (as Bessie had dubbed the little cottage), and he heard of the “perfectly lovely times” Mellicent was having at her finishing school. He dropped in occasionally to talk over the price of beans and potatoes with Mr. Frank Blaisdell in his bustling grocery store, and he often saw Mrs. Jane at Miss Maggie’s. It was at Miss Maggie’s, indeed, one day, that he heard Mrs. Jane say, as she sank wearily into a chair:—

“Well, I declare! Sometimes I think I’ll never give anybody a thing again!”

Mr. Smith, at his table, was conscious of a sudden lively interest. So often, in his earlier acquaintance with Mrs. Jane, while he boarded there, had he heard her say to mission-workers, church-solicitors, and doorway beggars, alike, something similar to this; “No, I can give you nothing. I have nothing to give. I’d love to, if I could—really I would. It makes me quite unhappy to hear of all this need and suffering. I’d so love to do something! And if I were rich I would; but as it is, I can only give you my sympathy and my prayers.”

Mr. Smith was thinking of this now. He had wondered several times, since the money came, as to Mrs. Jane’s giving. Hence his interest now in what she was about to say.

“Why, Jane, what’s the matter?” Miss Maggie was querying.

“Everything’s the matter,” snapped Jane. “And positively a more ungrateful set of people all around I never saw. To begin with, take the church. You know I’ve never been able to do anything. We couldn’t afford it. And now I was so happy that I could do something, and I told them so; and they seemed real pleased at first. I gave two dollars apiece to the Ladies’ Aid, the Home Missionary Society, and the Foreign Missionary Society—and, do you know? they hardly even thanked me! They acted for all the world as if they expected more—the grasping things! And, listen! On the way home, just as I passed the Gale girls’ I heard Sue say: ‘What’s two dollars to her? She’ll never miss it.’ They meant me, of course. So you see it wasn’t appreciated. Now, was it?”

“Perhaps not.”