"No, my poor fellow!" replied Mr. Armstrong, "it really does not. In your place, I think I should go back to the blanket and be a savage with the rest. I will tell you what to do: come East again with your mother and sister. I will let you try farming on a piece of land which I have taken a fancy to in Massachusetts, where you will not have these discouragements. When the land question is settled, you and Jim shall come back here and form a partnership. If it is divided in severalty to the Utes, then I will establish your right to the cañon, and you shall take Jim in as your partner; and if it is opened to the whites for settlement, he will take up the land and give you a share in it."
This proposition was accepted by Charles Sumner and his sister, the mother preferring to remain with her husband. After establishing the young Indians in Massachusetts, Mr. Armstrong brought Jim with him to Narragansett Pier.
A short space must now be given to Milly and Adelaide, who, though mingling in a very different class of society, had an experience that summer not unlike our own. Mrs. Roseveldt gave a lawn-party at the beginning of the season to organize a tennis club. Tennis was the rage that season. Many of the cottages had tennis courts, and the different players wished to plan for a grand tournament at the end of the season. A pretty uniform was designed of white flannel, the skirt embroidered with a deep Greek fret in gold thread, and laid in accordion pleats. A little jacket lined with gold-colored silk, and embroidered in the same pattern, was to be worn over the shirt waist, and a gold-colored sash ending in a tassel, with a white Tam o'Shanter, completed the costume. Milly had planned that Mrs. Halsey should have the making of these costumes while at the Pier.
A fund was contributed with which to purchase a trophy for the prize player. It rose quickly to a hundred and fifty dollars, and a meeting was held to decide what the trophy should be. Most of the members thought that a gold pin in the shape of a racket, with a pearl ball, manufactured by Tiffany, would be the correct thing, and this idea would certainly have been adopted if Milly had not turned the current by a neat little speech.
"I am sure," she said, "that we do not want to vulgarize our club by making it professional, and a prize of any great money value would certainly do this. So I move that the prize be a simple wreath of laurel tied with a white ribbon, on which the date of the tournament and name of the club be printed." The members all agreed that this would be in better form, but asked what was to be done with the money already contributed. Then Milly rose to the occasion, and flung out the banner of the Home.
"It seems as if we had no right to be romping in this delicious fresh air while poor children are gasping in the vile smells of the city."
The Fresh-Air Fund and the Working Girls' Vacation Society were both popular charities, and were proposed by different members as proper recipients of our funds. Milly was ready to agree to this, but one young man, supposed until that day to be a mere gilded youth, without an idea above his neckties, suggested that it was always pleasanter to be the distributer of one's own benefits, and moved that the club get up a little Fresh-Air Fund of its own. "We might rent a cottage down here and send for a dozen or so young beggars, and take turns in caring for them."
A general laugh followed this remark. "What would you do, personally, Mr. Van Silver?" asked one of the girls.
"I would put my coach and four-in-hand at the service of the enterprise," he said, "and make myself expressman and 'bus driver. I'd take the children out to drive every day, for one thing."
Everyone insisted that they would like to see him do it, but he persisted until they were convinced of his sincerity. Mr. Van Silver's patronage had given an aristocratic stamp to the enterprise, and some one now proposed that they rent a cottage for the children for the season.