“I say we’d better get it. Ten dollars ain’t much. We boys can go that much. I’ll go it myself somehow if the others don’t.”
“Well, really, ladies, I suppose it’s a very good bargain,” said Mr. Talcut rubbing his hands and smiling.
“Then we’ll take it,” said Joe, nodding decidedly to Mr. Thorpe; “I’ll go the other ten dollars, and the boys can help, if they like.”
“But really Margaret, my dear,” said Mrs. Ketchum quite distressed, “a den, don’t you know, is not a place for——”
But the others were all saying it was just the picture, and she was not heard. Mr. Talcut was giving the address and orders about the sending. None of them seemed to realize that Mrs. Ketchum had not given her consent, and she, poor lady, had to gracefully accept the situation.
“Well, it’s really a very fine thing, I suppose,” she said at last, somewhat hesitatingly, and putting up her lorgnette to take a critical look. “I don’t admire that style of architecture, and that table-cloth isn’t put on very gracefully; it would have been more artistic draped a little; but it’s really very fine, and quite new, you say, and of course the artist is irreproachable. I think Mr. Stanley will appreciate it.”
But she sighed a little disappointedly, and wished she had been able to coax them to take the nymphs. She would take pains to let Mr. Stanley know that this had not been her choice. The idea of having to give in to those great boors of boys! But then it had all been Margaret Manning’s fault. She was such a little fanatic. She might have known that it would not do to let her see a religious picture first.
CHAPTER III
It was Margaret Manning’s suggestion that it should be presented quietly. Some of the others were disappointed. Mrs. Ketchum was one of the most irate about it.
“The idea! After the school had raked and scraped together the money, that they should not have the pleasure of seeing it presented! It’s a shame! Margaret Manning has some of the most backwoods’ notions I ever heard of. It isn’t doing things up right at all. There ought to be a speech from some one who knows how to say the right thing; my husband could have done it, and would if he’d been asked. But no, Margaret Manning says it must be hung on his wall, and so there it hangs, and none of us to get the benefit. I declare it is a shame! I wish I had refused to serve on that committee. I hate to have my name mixed up in it the way things have gone.” So said Mrs. Ketchum as she sat back in her dim and fashionable parlor and sighed.