"Everything has stopped for the want of things to do with," she said. "I don't see but that will be the trouble with what we want to do. Why, you can't do a single thing without money; and where is it to come from?"
"That is one of the things we must think up," Jerry said gravely. "I have thought about it some. This temperance business needs money. One of the troubles with boys like Norm is that they have no nice places to go to. Boys like to meet together and talk things over, you know, and have a good time, and how are some of them going to do it? The church isn't the place, nor the schoolhouse, and those fellows haven't pleasant homes; the only spot for them is the saloons. I don't much wonder that they get in the habit of going there. I have heard my father say that saloons were the only places that were fixed up, and lighted, where folks without any pleasant homes were made welcome. Why, just look at it in this town. There's your Norm. There are two fellows who go with him a great deal. If you meet one, you may be sure that the other two are not far away. Their names are Alf Barnes and Rick Walker. Neither of them have as decent a home as Norm's, oh! not by a good deal. And he doesn't feel like inviting them into your kitchen to spend the evening. Should you think he would?"
Warm as the day was, Nettie shivered. "I should think they would rather stay out in the street than to come there," she said.
"Well, now you see how it is. They don't stay in the streets, such fellows don't. Not all the time. They get tired, and sometimes it rains, and in winter it is cold, and they look about them for somewhere to go. There's a saloon, bright and clean; comfortable chairs, and good-natured people. It is the only place that says Come in! to such fellows. Why shouldn't they go in?
"I've heard my father talk about this by the hour. In big cities they have rooms warmed and lighted, and nicely furnished, on purpose for such young men; only father is always saying that they don't begin to have enough of them; but in such a town as this, I would like to know what the boys who haven't nice homes to stay in, are expected to do with themselves evenings? One of these days, when I am a man, that is the way I am going to use all my extra money. I'll hunt out towns where the fellows have just been left to stay in the streets, or else go to the rum-holes, and I'll fit up the nicest kind of a room for them. Bright as gas can make it, and elegant, you know, like a parlor; and I'll have cakes, and coffee, and lemonades, and all those things, cheaper than beer, and serve them in fine style. Wouldn't that be a fine thing to do?"
"Then the first thing," said Nettie, "is a room."
Jerry turned round on his horse and looked full at her and laughed. "You talk as though it was to be done now," he said. "I was telling what I would do in that dim future, when I become a man."
"We might begin pieces of it now. Norm will be too old when you are a man; and so will those others. There is our front room. If we only had some furniture to put in it. My Auntie Marshall made some real pretty seats once, out of old boxes; she padded them with cotton, and covered them with pretty calico, and you can't think how nice they were. I could make some, if I had the boxes and the calico."
"I could get the boxes," said Jerry. "I know a man in the blacksmith shop who has a brother in the grocery down at the corner, and he could get boxes for us of him, I'm pretty sure. He is a nice man, that blacksmith. I like him better than any man in town, I believe. I could fix covers on the boxes myself, and do several other things. I have a box of tools, and I often make little things. I say, Nettie, let's fix up the front room. I've often wondered what there was in there. Would your mother let us have it?"
"She would let us have most everything, I guess," Nettie said thoughtfully, "if she thought it would do any good."