Then Frances stepped close, and laid her hand on Jim’s arm.
“You are kind—and good,” she said earnestly. “I don’t know why you should take us in here, and bother about us at all.”
“Don’t, Missy!” murmured Jim, keenly wounded. “Who should care for you and the little lad, if not me?”
“Nobody would, Jim; nobody. And I don’t see why you should. But indeed I do want to help, and to share the work all I can. I shall soon find out—and I’ll beg Elizabeth to teach me.”
“No!—no!” Jim was touched at his tenderest point. “You’ll do naught here but what pleases you, Missy. ’Tis for men to work and make beautiful homes for their lady-folk.”
“Girls work now as well as boys, Jim,” returned Frances rather wistfully. She had been wont to dream of the life-work which should be hers some day—of voluntary, altruistic toil among the poor and suffering of the great city; not of humdrum daily tasks which could claim no more fascinating name than the prosaic one of duty.
“I cannot see as that’s right, Missy,” said Jim; and Frances looked with a certain pity at this lad born out of due time—this old-fashioned believer in the right of woman to be worked for, and set apart and worshipped. If he could have heard Miss Cliveden’s impassioned voice as she urged her pupils to remember their sacred claim to share with men the glorious task of making history!
Jim was utterly out of date. He bent his head and kissed reverently the little fingers resting on his arm; then caught up his hammer and began afresh to work for his “lady-folk” with all his peasant might.
Frances went slowly back to her comrade.
“Jim will make us keep the room,” said the girl with conviction; “and I do not believe I even thanked him properly.”