This was rather hard, for we had secretly hoped, all along, that Milly's father would help us, and now she had made it a point of pride not to ask him. He behaved very well, however, for although he bantered us cruelly on our Utopian enterprise, he bought a button-hole bouquet of his own violets from Milly, paying a five-dollar bill for it and neglecting to ask for change, and then took Miss Prillwitz, Madame, Emma Jane Anton, Miss Sartoris, and Miss Hope successively out to supper. He purchased, too, an alabaster model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which Madame had contributed on condition that it should be sold for not less than twenty dollars, and which we had feared would not be disposed of, as we had voted that there should be no raffling. Madame was greatly interested in the fair; it drew attention to her school, and she smiled on everyone—a self-constituted reception committee. She was even gracious to the cadet band which had serenaded the school in the fall term. The cadets to a man invited Milly out to dinner. She went with each of them in succession, and as the viands were sold à la carte, she bravely ordered the more expensive dishes over and over again, enduring a martyrdom of dyspepsia for a week in consequence.
Of course Jim was present, and his mother. Adelaide was attentive to both; there seemed to be a mutual attraction that kept them together, and whenever Adelaide left Mrs. Halsey, and taking up her baton (Milly's curling-stick), led her orchestra, Mrs. Halsey's eyes followed her with a strange wistfulness. Winnie, with her usual heedlessness, had neglected to introduce Adelaide to Mrs. Halsey when she called on her in the court, and she now turned to Jim and asked her name. It happened that Jim thought that she referred to the pianist instead of to Adelaide, and he replied that the young lady in question was Miss Hope, the music-teacher. Mrs. Halsey gave a little sigh of disappointment, and continued her spell-bound gaze. I was about to correct the mistake which I was sure Jim had made, when it was announced that Mrs. Le Moyne, the celebrated interpreter of Robert Browning, would kindly recite a poem of Mrs. Browning's. Mrs. Halsey and Jim moved nearer the rostrum, and my opportunity for explanation was lost. If I had known the effect that the name of Adelaide Armstrong would have had upon Mrs. Halsey, chains could not have kept me in my gondola—so many invisible gates of opportunity are closed and opened to us all along life's pathway!
The poem recited was, most appropriately, "The Cry of the Children." Tears welled into the eyes of many a mother as the practiced art of the speaker rendered most feelingly the pathetic words:
"But these others—children small,
Spilt like blots about the city
Quay and street and palace wall—
Take them up into your pity!
Patient children—think what pain
Makes a young child patient yonder;
Wronged too commonly to strain
After right, or wish or wonder;
Sickly children, that whine low
To themselves and not their mothers,
From mere habit, never so—
Hoping help or care from others;
Healthy children, with those blue
English eyes, fresh from their Maker,
Fierce and ravenous, staring through
At the brown loaves of the baker.
Can we smooth down the bright hair,
O my sisters, calm, unthrilled in
Our hearts' pulses? Can we bear
The sweet looks of our own children?
O my sisters! Children small,
Blue-eyed, wailing through the city—
Our own babes cry in them all;
Let us take them into pity!"
That poem was worth a great deal to our cause. Those of the mothers of our Ten who were present were won to us at once.