He was talking from his desk at the store and as he began to argue she dismissed him firmly.
“Please don’t be cross, Billy. You ought to be as glad as I am that we didn’t do it. No; never again! Cheer up; that’s a nice boy!”
She hung up on his angry reply.
Nan spent all day at home virtuously addressing herself to household affairs, much to the surprise of the cook and maid.
Mamie Pembroke stopped to leave a huge bunch of chrysanthemums for Mr. Farley. He sent for her to come to his room and asked her all about the evening at the Settlement House. Mamie’s appearance added to his happiness. He had been deeply grieved when Mamie and the Harrington girls dropped Nan; it was a good sign that they were beginning to evince a renewed interest in her. He attributed the change in their attitude to Nan’s abandonment of Copeland and the Kinneys, never dreaming in his innocence of the quiet missionary work that Eaton had been doing with the cautious mothers of these young women.
“You’d better give Nan some work to do on some of your charity schemes, Mamie. She’s been shut up here with me so much she hasn’t got around with the rest of you girls as I want her to.”
“Oh, don’t think I do so much! Mamma does it for the whole family. I’m sure Nan does as much as any of the girls.”
“Thanks for your kind words, Mamie; you know perfectly well they dropped me from the Kindergarten Board for cutting all the meetings. But I think we all ought to help in these things. It certainly opened my eyes to see that crowd down there last night; I had no idea the Settlement had grown so big.”
“I wish you and Mamie would go down and look at the Boys’ Club sometime. They’ve only got a tumble-down house, but they’re talkin’ of doin’ something better. A poor boy has a mighty hard time. When I was a boy down on the Ohio—”
The story was a familiar one to Nan, and as he talked her thoughts reverted to the will in which his provisions for the Boys’ Club had so angered her.