Brenda's Bargain: A Story for Girls

by Helen Leah Reed

But Miss South had no doubt as to what she should do. Here was the chance, that had once seemed so far away, of carrying out her plans for a model school. She found that it was wisest for her to retain the old house for her purpose, as she could neither sell it nor rent it to advantage. The neighborhood was not what it had once been. Almost all the older residents had moved away; two families or more were the rule in most of the houses in the street, and not so very far away were several unmistakable tenement-houses. Miss Crawdon's school had left the street a year or two before, and if she should sell the house no one would buy it for a residence. Julia, who was to be her partner in the new scheme, thought the Du Launy Mansion far better suited to their purpose than any house they could secure elsewhere.

"The North End would be more picturesque, and we could do regular settlement work among those interesting foreigners. But there is more than one settlement down there already, and here we shall have the field almost to ourselves."

Changes and additions to the house had been made during the summer, and not one of Julia's intimates, excepting those who were to live in the Mansion, had been permitted to see it. Nora and Edith and Brenda had implored, Philip had teased, but all had been refused. "You must wait until everything is in readiness."

When, therefore, Brenda and Nora one morning found themselves walking up the little flagged walk to the old Du Launy House, they speculated greatly as to the changes in the house. Outside, on the front at least, there had been no alterations, and everything looked the same as on that morning when the mischievous girls had ventured to pass under the porte-cochère to apologize for breaking a window with their ball. It was the same exterior, and yet not the same. It had, as Brenda said, "a wide-awake look," whereas formerly almost all the blinds had been closed, giving an aspect of dreariness. Now all the shutters were thrown back, blinds were raised, and fresh muslin curtains showed at many windows instead of the heavy draperies of Madame Du Launy's time.

In place of the sleek butler who had seemed like a part of the furnishings, permanent and unremovable, Angelina opened the front door, beaming with satisfaction at the dignity to which she had risen. Indeed she fairly bristled with a sense of her own importance, and answered their questions in her airiest manner.

"Oh, Manuel's doing finely at school, Miss Barlow. I can't be spared much now to go to Shiloh, but I was there over Sunday, and my mother's got two boarders, young women that work in the factory and don't make much trouble for her. So you see I'm not so much needed at home. John's got a place, too, in the city this winter, so that I'll see him sometimes," and Angelina giggled in her rather foolish way.

As she ushered them into the sitting-room Julia emerged from the shadows of the long hall to greet them, and then there was a confusion of sounds, as Nora and Brenda eagerly asked questions at the very moment when Julia was trying to answer them.

"Yes," said Julia, as they sat down in the reception-room, "this is the same room where I first saw Madame Du Launy, the day I took Fidessa home. But you've both been here since?"

"Oh, yes, and I can see that it hasn't been so very greatly changed. There's that picture of Miss South's mother that brought about the reconciliation, as they'd say in a novel," responded Nora gayly. "I'm glad that you haven't made the reception-room as bare as a hospital ward; I had my misgivings, as I approached the door."

"Oh, we wished this to be as pleasant and homelike as possible; you can see that there are many things here that I had in my room at Cambridge," and she pointed to a Turner etching, and a colonial desk, and an easy-chair that Brenda and Nora both recognized.