Hart’s aunt give a little jump, and said: “Why, William, that must be Mrs. Charles, the minister’s wife. What a pleasant-spoken lady she is! We met her husband just as we were driving into town.”
Hart said he come pretty near saying back to her, “The hell you did!”––Hart talked that careless way, sometimes––but he said he pulled up before it got out, and all he did say was, “Oh!”
“She must be at the head of the Dorcas Society that Mr. Hill was telling me about,” Hart’s aunt went on; “and like enough she manages the kindergarten, too. I suppose, William, it’s not surprising you haven’t said anything in your letters about the Dorcas Society––for all you were so liberal in helping 100 it––but I do think you might have told me about the kindergarten, knowing what a hobby of mine kindergartens are. I want to go and see it to-morrow morning, the first thing.”
“It’s––it’s not in running order just now,” Hart said. “Most of the children was took sick with the influenza last week, and there’s whooping-cough and measles about, and so the school committee closed it down. And they had to stop, anyway, because they’re going to put a new roof on. I guess it won’t blow in again for about a month––or maybe more. In fact, I don’t know––you see, it wasn’t managed well, and got real down unpopular––if it’ll blow in again at all. I’m sorry you won’t be able to get to it, Aunt Maria. Maybe it’ll be running if you happen to come out again next year.”
“Why, how queer that is, William!” Hart’s aunt said. “Mr. Hill told me it was the best kindergarten in New Mexico. But of course you know. Anyhow, I can see the schoolroom and the school fixtures, and Mrs. Charles can tell me about it when I go to the 101 Dorcas Society––and that’ll do most as well. Of course I must get to the Dorcas Society. Mrs. Charles will take me, I’m sure. It meets, Mr. Hill says, every Thursday afternoon.”
“Did he say where it was meeting now?” Hart asked. He was getting about desperate, he told Cherry afterwards; and what he wanted most was a chance to mash Hill’s fool head for putting him in such a lot of holes.
“Of course he did, William,” said Hart’s aunt; “and I’m surprised you have to ask––seeing what an interest you take in the Society, and how you’ve helped it along. It was just lovely of you to give them all those goods out of your store to make up into clothes.”
“That––that wasn’t anything to do,” Hart said. “What’s in the store comes with a big discount––same as melodeons. Sometimes I feel as if I was saving money giving things away.”
“You can talk about your generosity just as you please, William,” she went on. “I think it’s noble of you. And Mr. Hill said that Mrs. Major Rogers––who keeps the 102 Forest Queen Hotel, he said, and lets the Society have a room to meet in for nothing––said it was noble of you, too. I want to get to know Mrs. Major Rogers right off. She must be a very fine woman. She’s an officer’s widow, Mr. Hill says, and a real lady, for all she makes her living keeping a hotel out here on the frontier. If she’s a bit like that sweet-looking Mrs. Charles I know we’ll get along. I’m surprised, William, you’ve never told me what pleasant ladies live here. It must make all the difference in the world. Don’t you think it would do for me not to be formal, but just to go to Mrs. Major Rogers’ hotel to-morrow and call?”
“I guess––well, I guess you hadn’t better go right off the first thing in the morning, Aunt Maria,” Hart said. Thinking of his aunt going calling at the Forest Queen and running up against Tenderfoot Sal, he said, gave him the regular cold shakes. “And come to think of it,” he said, “it’s no use your going to-morrow at all. Mrs.––Mrs. Major Rogers, as I happen to know, went up to Denver yesterday; and she won’t be back, 103 she told me, before some time on in the end of next week––likely as not, she said, she wouldn’t come then.”