“Perhaps, though I had not thought of it. But why not?” continued the perverse niece. “Mr. Villard, will you lead the first figure with me, on our opening night?”
“With the greatest pleasure in the world,” said he, with a thrill at his heart which he did not recognize.
Mrs. Soule sat down on a convenient window-seat.
“What would your father say?” she murmured.
“I never knew my father well enough to judge.” Salome answered, with a slight tinge of bitterness in her tone. “But I know what my grandfather would say. I am going to put a piano in here,—or would you have an organ?—and I intend that this hall shall be the rallying place of the young people. I’m also going to give a course of entertainments here during the winter, twice a week; I’m not going to begin with lectures and heavy ‘intellectual treats;’ but I will gradually lead up to them with concerts and even a minstrel show or two.”
“Salome,” gasped her aunt feebly from the window-sill.
“You see, if we begin by shooting over their heads, they won’t come at all,” said Salome. “But if we begin with something light and amusing, and not too far above their level, and gradually raise the tone of the entertainments, they’ll find themselves attending lectures and other sugar-coated forms of intellectual betterment, and like them; and never mistrust that I am working out a mission on their unsuspecting heads.”
“I’m glad you realize something of their present intellectual condition,” said John Villard, who had been unusually silent and grave while looking over the new building; “and realize that it’s only gradually that we can bring them, as a class, up to a higher grade as intelligent young people.”
“Oh, I do,” said Salome, “I’ve seen too much of them, myself, this summer. At first, I was appalled by the absolute lack of common knowledge among the average girls. But there are a few, I know, who have already improved the slight advantages they’ve had; and these few I shall rely on to help me by their influence in raising the rest; the ‘little leaven,’ you know. It seems to me, that only by raising the intellectual condition, and the educational aspiration, can we hope to accomplish anything of permanent value to the mills.”
“That is the only way,” was Villard’s response. “And, Miss Shepard,” he said, hurriedly, for the others had already scattered through the girls’ wing, leaving them alone, “I want to say that, as I believe you have found the only true solution to the main questions of the labor problem, I pledge myself to heartily sustain you in every way. You have only to command me, and I am ready.”