Aunt Keren began to have visitors when people found out where she had taken refuge, elderly and impressive ladies who toiled up the three flights that led to the Patty-Pans, their furs hanging, their breath short, to present themselves at the door, pantingly reproachful in their tone as they asked for Miss Bradbury. Miss Bradbury's lawyer came, the insurance adjuster came, several times, and Aunt Keren had such heavy mails that Happie daily sat down to the task of replying to her letters with dismay. Most of these letters were appeals for help; for money for every imaginable charity, individual and collective, and for the weight of Miss Bradbury's name on boards and committees and lists of "patronesses." Happie began to realize that Aunt Keren, for all her eccentricities of plain garments, must be known widely as a fountain of beneficence. As Happie drew checks, under Aunt Keren's instruction, for her to sign, she began to see that Miss Keren could not be an elderly lady of straightened means, in which light the young Scollards had always looked on her, for her donations in this month alone were mounting up amazingly.
One afternoon the two Keren-happuchs were at work on the elder's correspondence by two o'clock, lunch having been over and out of the way early because it was the day for Polly and Penny to go to dancing school, to which Laura had taken them, remaining at home that morning for the purpose.
Miss Keren watched Happie's absorbed face as she sealed the note in which she had gently refused the request of a young woman for help to go abroad and cultivate her genius for art, and drew up Miss Keren's check book to make out a check of ten dollars for coal and groceries to a family which was, it seemed, among her constant dependents.
"Happie," said Miss Keren, so suddenly out of a silence of several minutes that the end of Happie's figure nine, as she wrote the year date, went far below the line in the jump she gave, "Happie, if you had an income, what would you do?"
Happie looked at her adopted aunt unseeingly, as she considered. Then she dimpled and laughed. "I should live on it, Aunt Keren," she said.
"Live within it, if you wanted to be happy in reality, and not in name only," said Miss Keren. "What do you think you would do first if money, a fairly large income, fell into your hands?"
"First of all I should give motherums warning that she had to stop foreign corresponding for that firm down in town. Then I should hunt up a house and set her in it, and not let her do one thing but be dear and sweet and idle for an endless time. Then I should buy Margery lots of lovely things—she is so pretty! Maybe I wouldn't, though, for I can see that she looks altogether too pretty in Robert Gaston's eyes now! But maybe I would, and then take her abroad where he couldn't see her. Then I'd begin Laura's musical education—that really is important. And get a splendid, life-size doll for Penny, and lots of things for good little Polly, and send them to a fine school—and for my dearest old Bob—oh, I don't know! Buy him a partnership in a great business, or something. Why, Aunt Keren?"
Miss Keren had listened to Happie's list of benefactions with a smile in her eyes. "For no reason, Keren-happuch, my dear, except that your doing these things for me made me wonder how you would use money if you had it," she said. "And nothing for Happie?"
"Oh, I suppose I should buy her lots of things between times; every time I went out, probably. And I know I should buy her cases and cases of books," said Happie, resuming her task. "But I'm sure I shall always have to grub along, because I don't mind doing it as much as most girls. I believe I've a contented mind, Aunt Keren."
"There is no doubt of that, my namesake, and you have no idea what a blessing it is. Cultivate it all your life. It can be cultivated or lost, Happie. Dear me, the bell! Just when we were so comfortably settled for a long afternoon! It is some one for me, almost certainly. I must fly, Happie, and you will ask the visitor to wait for me a few moments." Aunt Keren went through to her room, which had been Bob's before her coming, and Happie opened the door after she had hastily gathered up the scattered papers on which she had been at work. But she dropped Aunt Keren's check book in her hurry, and it lay in long black evidence on the lightest figure of the rug.