"But who would be members?" asked Bram, to whom, as usual, she first confided her scheme. "There would be nobody but ourselves."
"Well, we make up a pretty good number—eight of us here and five at Amity's. If we each give a cent a week there is—Thirteen times fifty-two is—"
"Six dollars and seventy-six cents."
"Then there are the Barretts—I think they would join in—and old Mr. and Mrs. Hollenbeck, and Chris and his wife and their children. Oh yes; you'd see we should have quite a good many members to start with, and more would come in. Anyhow, let's talk to Aunt Christian about it when we get her alone. We won't say anything to the others at first."
"You feel very differently about missions from what you did when you first came here, don't you?" said Bram, after a little silence, in which he worked diligently at his wood carving, while Marion elaborated the trappings of a magnificent camel, a design for one of the new slides which she was constantly adding to the famous lantern. "Don't you remember how I used to tease you asking you questions about what you had heard from your aunt? You used to be downright vexed at me."
"Because I had nothing to tell," returned Marion.
"But I don't see how you could help it, living with them as you did."
"You would if you knew how silly I was in those days."
"I say! Don't call my sister silly, if you please."
"Well, I was silly—a self-conceited, ridiculous simpleton," persisted Marion, vehemently dabbling her brush in the water-glass. "Bram, I would not tell you for anything how I used to spend hours and hours in dreaming of the great things I would do, and how I would be admired and looked up to. Oh, it just makes me provoked enough to box my own ears."