The crimson car was pretty well filled with packages when Lucia had finished her shopping, for why should they wait to have things delivered when they wanted to see them right away? And Lucia sent the car home, telling Betty that her mother might want it and that there was no use in keeping Horace waiting around while they had lunch down town.
Betty assured Lucia that any arrangement was satisfactory to her, as they entered a pretty tea room and lingered over their lunch, ordered by Lucia after consultation with Betty. Chicken salad and toothsome desserts figured largely in the order and Betty was sure that she would want nothing that afternoon; yet Lucia was serving such a “complete” afternoon tea! But a few hours make a great difference in young appetites.
Clothes bothered Betty a little. She hoped that her frock was proper for an “afternoon dress;” but she felt sure that many of the girls would not dress elaborately, in spite of their coming to a house presided over by a countess. Some of the girls could not, she knew.
When Miss Street and Miss Hogarth arrived in pretty but quiet frocks, Betty felt that everybody would be “all right” for clothes. Lucia herself must have had ideas on the subject; for she wore a dress that she had worn to school. Mathilde and a few of the late joiners, who had been largely influenced by Lucia’s membership, were more or less elaborately dressed; but clothes ceased to have much part in Betty’s thoughts, as she consulted with Miss Street and Miss Hogarth and the committee about the meeting. The countess came in to welcome the girls and their leaders most cordially. She well knew that the girls would have felt defrauded if they had not had a glimpse of her, as Betty gleaned from some little remark she made to Lucia. Two sewing machines were in the rear drawing room and Giovanna and Lina, in pretty caps and aprons were ready for work.
This arrangement was a surprise to Miss Street and Miss Hogarth, who thanked the countess warmly and remarked that they might have planned to have something beside clothes for dolls sewed that afternoon if they had realized what an opportunity it was. To this Countess Coletti replied that she would be glad to furnish machines and maids and house room some other time if the girls were sewing for the poor. She left the room with pleasant regrets and presently Betty heard the car starting to take her to some engagement or a shopping tour.
It was a petty scene, with the girls, their bright expressions and young figures, their thimbles and sewing bags or boxes, the little heaps of bright materials or filmy white or laces, wide or narrow, and dolls of all sorts, either in the girls’ laps or upon the tables. On the walls above them were several fine reproductions of famous paintings and an etching or two. Objects of art had largely been removed from this room to make place for chairs and folding tables and the machines. It seemed a pity to drop any threads or scraps upon that “gorgeous” oriental rug.
Betty clapped her hands for order. “While you get ready to begin sewing girls, Miss Street and Miss Hogarth will tell you what the plans are. The committee, too, may have some information to give you, and I’ll call on the chairman now to speak of them. I am too new as president to know much about what the ‘Y. W.’ does at Christmas time, except a few of the results. I will ask Lilian Norris to explain.”
Some of the girls were threading needles and beginning to sew on edges, or to fit little garments to their dolls, according to the state of progress to which the process had arrived.
“I’ve been talking to Miss Street and Miss Hogarth, girls, and this is what we are to do. You know we decided to adopt a family; and as the Woods family is such a nice one and needs everything so badly, our leader thinks we might as well take them. Please put it to vote, Betty, and then I’ll tell the rest.”
Betty, widely smiling at Lilian’s business-like methods, put the question, with a unanimous “Aye” as the result.