“No, you won’t. That would be a mistake. Buy or rent a place if you want to fix it up; but organize a regular club and put some of your toughest specimens in as officers. Responsibility’s most as good for a fellow as boxing. Let the members pay the running expenses out of the dues. They’ll think more of the club if they have to do some hustling to keep it going. There’s that old house of Rankins’. It’s been empty ever since the old man died. Nephew it was left to lives out in Seattle. It’s a whaling big place, but you wouldn’t need to use it all and I’ve a notion you could get it for a song.”
Archibald told Pegeen about the club that night. She was all interest and encouragement; but there was a hint of mental reservation in her approval, and the man noticed it.
“Well, Peg, out with it!” he commanded. “What’s wrong with the scheme?”
She blushed at discovery and hesitated, then spoke her thought frankly, as she always did to him.
“There isn’t anything wrong with it. It’s splendid of you to do it and folks will be perfectly crazy about it—only I was just thinkink how it’s most always the men and the boys that get things done for them. I s’pose it’s because they won’t be good all by themselves the way women and girls will; but I don’t think that’s exactly fair, do you? It’s like giving prizes to the worst spellers.”
Archibald looked at her with a puzzled frown between his eyes.
“Why, Peg,” he began; then stopped and thought the proposition over. Suddenly, something that the Smiling Lady had once said to him came back to him and his face cleared.
“Pegeen, I’m a fool—just a plain, block-headed fool. This Valley doesn’t need a men’s and boys’ club. It needs a neighborhood house and you are going to give it one. There can be a men’s club and a boys’ club and a women’s club and a girls’ club, just for the fun of the thing; but there’ll be a big get-together club that will take all the others in. How’s that?”
Pegeen’s face was his answer. It was one rapture from brow to chin.
“It’ll be perfectly wonderful,” she said happily.