"Miss Ellis, I've taken your chair, haven't I?"
"It doesn't matter where I sit, Miss Vail. This one does well enough for me," she answered, virtuously.
Jane sat down on a footstool near the window. "Do take it—not that there's any cloying luxury, even there! Is it in the constitution of Hope House to have only hideous and uncomfortable furniture?"
"You cannot know much about this sort of work, Miss Vail, or you'd realize that our funds are always limited, and that we must conserve them for necessities." It was a depressingly warm day, and the superintendent felt it and showed it, and she reflected bitterly that Jane Vail was the sort of person who was warm and glowing in January, when normal people were pinched and blue, and cool and crisp in September, when those who had to keep right on working, no matter what the weather was, had pools of perspiration under their eyes and shirtwaists adhering gummily to their backs. And she always wore things in summer which gave out cunning suggestions of shady brooksides, and managed—in that theatrical way of hers—the effect of bringing a breeze in with her.
"I wonder," said Jane, "if my silly little paper people get the breath of life blown into them and my play goes over and I have regal royalties, if I couldn't do something for Hope House?"
"You could, indeed, God save you kindly for the thought," said Michael Daragh, happily. "If your play'll run to it, you could be buying us two bathtubs and——"
"The linoleum in the kitchen"—Miss Ellis forgot her bitterness for a moment—"is simply in shreds!"
"I will not!" said Jane, crisply. "Bathtubs and linoleum, indeed! Wring them out of your Board! I shall give you a Sleepy Hollow couch with bide-a-wee cushions, and deep, cuddly armchairs and a lamp or two with shades as mellow as autumn woods! And some perfectly frivolous pictures which aren't in the least inspiring or uplifting,—and every single girl's room shall have a pink pincushion!" Then at their blankness, she softened. "Oh, very well,—you shall have your tubs and your linoleum, if you'll let me humanize the rest of the house,—will you?" She came to her feet with a spring of incredible energy. "Come along, Miss Ellis,—let's have a look upstairs! We don't need you, M.D.—this is woman-stuff."
The superintendent pulled herself upstairs with a sticky hand on the banister, "Well, I don't know where you'd begin, Miss Vail. Everything's threadbare...."
They went through drab halls and into drab rooms where drab occupants greeted them drably, and Jane ached with the ugliness of it. Wasn't it going to be fun—if the play went over "big"—to vanquish this much of the hideousness of the world?