"That Vacation Savings Fund—may I ask what it is?"
"You may, indeed, young man," she answered, and talked glibly as she danced, occasionally imitating a strain of music with mocking sounds. "It's an attempt a lot of us old women have been making to teach the poor woiking goil what we can't learn ourselves; namely, to save up money—la-de-de-da-de-da! The poor things slave like mules and they're paid like slaves—te-dum-te-dum!—yet most of them never think of putting a penny by for a rainy day, or what's more important—ta-ra-rum!—a sunny day.
"So Willie Enslee's mother, and Mrs. Clifton Ranger, and the Atterby girls, and a gang of other busybodies got ourselves together and cooked up a scheme—la-de-de-da-de-da!—to encourage the girls to stay home—ta-ra-rum!—from a few moving-picture fêtes and cut down their ice-cream-soda orgies a little, and put the pennies into a fund to be used in giving each of them—te-dum-te-dum—a little holiday when her chance came—te-di-do-dee!"
"Splendid!" said Forbes. "Did it work out?"
"Rather. We started with forty girls, and now we've got—how many do you suppose?"
"A hundred and fifty."
"Eight thousand! And they've saved fifty thousand dollars!"
"That's wonderful!" Forbes exclaimed, stopping short with amazement. Instantly they were as battered and trodden by the other dancers as a planet would be that paused in its orbit.
"Come on, or we'll be murdered!" cried Mrs. Neff, and dragged him into the current again.
Forbes looked down at her with a different feeling. This typical gadabout, light-minded, cynical little old woman with the girlish ways, was after all a big-hearted toiler in the vineyard. She did not dress as a Sister of Charity, and she did not pull a long and philanthropic face, but she was industrious in good works.