“Oh, Breck, isn’t life beautiful?” said Jane, but in the corner of her eye was a tiny unshed tear. “It is so beautiful I wish everybody knew how beautiful it is, all the poor little sick children and tired mothers.”
“Why, honey, I was just thinking the same thing. I don’t know why being happier than I’ve ever been in my life should make me think of the suffering children on the East Side, but it has somehow. Those gulls shouldn’t make me think of little half-starved children over on Avenue A. Heaven knows there is nothing white about them, except their little pinched faces, but they do all the same.”
“I know why you are thinking of them!” exclaimed Jane. “It is because this place would be such a corking one to bring the kids to. Let’s have our scheme be not just a money making one but one to help somebody besides ourselves. Oh Breck, let’s try to have some of those little creatures here with us every summer.”
“Jane, Jane, what a girl you are!” and Breck wished there weren’t so many little tow-headed boys on the island, for he felt he’d like to try to make Jane understand a little better how much he adored her but the little Grays were trotting along by their side totally unconscious of how out of place they were.
CHAPTER XI
DEBATE AND JUST TALK
Frances, led on by Tim’s interested questions, had been giving that wounded young man a glowing account of the Camp Fire movement in general and of their own group in particular. She had told him of the splendid effect it had on the spirit of the girls at Hillside, of the wonders it had worked on the characters of Blanche Shirley and Emmeline Cerrito.
“And you have no idea how much fun we have had together. Even work is fun when we all work together. Last year, we were all down on Jane’s big farm in Kentucky when the harvest had just begun. It happened that there was an excursion for the negroes scheduled for the same day and all the hands, house servants, yard boys, stable boys, even down to the smallest pickaninnies on the place, just took temporary French leave. Mr. Pellew was terribly upset. You see, he had engaged the machines and everything. Anyway, Ellen and Mabel got busy in the kitchen and cooked for simply rafts of people, the rest of us went out in the fields with Jack and Mr. Pellew and he said that we worked just as well as the men and that we were lots more conscientious.” Frances said this with a rather defiant air, because she had often found that the young men of her acquaintance were inclined to doubt female prowess in any line other than fancy sewing.