“You know some of them are quite unlike us but Miss Westcott says they’ll improve—that being with us will make them more gentle. And you have no idea how they are improving. And as for Dorothy’s nursery, it’s just booming. There is a waiting list a mile long,” and she chatted on, entertaining the girls with her talk.
At the next and last Council Meeting, the girls received honors for having slept three months out of doors, for learning to swim, and rowing twenty miles on the Muskingum River, and for sailing a boat without help for fifty miles. They also received extra honors for cooking, and for learning and making a mattress out of the twigs of trees; for long walks, and for washing and ironing, which the girls did well.
Whenever she looked at Nora, Ethel’s conscience troubled her. She seemed to feel her own unworthiness. Mrs. Hollister suggested to Mr. Casey that Nora should visit them for a couple of months in the city.
“I’ll gladly let her go to ye next winter, Ma’am, but not to visit. I would like her to be wid a grand lady like yourself, and if you’ll let me pay her board I’ll consider it a great favor. And if she might go to some fine school, Ma’am, where she could learn how to be a lady and stay at your house I would pay any price.”
At first Mrs. Hollister objected to the money part, but Mr. Casey begged so hard that, realizing what Nora had done for Ethel, she felt she should be willing to do anything to benefit her. So she consented.
“You can put me anywhere,” said Nora, “I will be like one of your family.”
Mrs. Hollister put her arm around the girl.
“My dear,” she said, “the best I have ought not to be good enough for you. It’s little enough for me to take you, and I should like to do so without having your father pay me a penny.”
So it was all arranged. In November, Nora was to become an inmate of the Hollister household.
Ethel had made up her mind to give the girl her room, she taking one on the top floor.