“You are one out of thousands and thousands!” he said, emphatically.
A line more, and he signed the firm name with an unusually fine flourish.
“There! I've accomplished one letter. What do you want to do, Flossy?”
“I want Mr. Ried to have a room where he can invite one of my boys occasionally, and make him comfortable, and do for him what we cannot with our rooms; do for him what only a young man can do for a young man. I don't clearly know what I want further than that, but I see that one thing as a stepping-stone. Remember, I want all your thousands to have just as pleasant rooms, and I would like to help to bring it about, but I don't just now see the way.”
“Do you see the way to this?”
“No, but doesn't it seem as though we ought to be able to accomplish so much?”
“It does, certainly. What is your desire, Flossy? Do you want him to have a room in our house?”
She shook her head.
“No, that would not further my plan for those boys. I would like to have him here, and it would be a good thing for him,—at least I think it would; but I can see things which he could accomplish for these young men, set by himself, in a different part of the city. Besides, Evan, I have other plans for our rooms, entirely different ones, and some of them I am afraid you will think are very strange.”
He answered the doubt with a smile that said he had no fears of her or her plans.