“Boardman,” supplied Ellen.
“Miss Boardman, the fact is that we are trying to do something which is beyond us, something we ought never to have undertaken. But we didn’t know we were undertaking it, you see. And now that it is begun, it must not fail. All the wonderful American good-will which has materialized in that room full of packing-cases must not be wasted, must get to the people who need it so direly. It began this way. We had no notion that we would have so great an affair to direct. My niece and I were living here when the war broke out. Of course we gave all our own clothes we could spare and all the money we could for the refugees. Then we wrote home to our American friends. One of my letters was published by chance in a New York paper and copied in a number of others. Everybody who happened to know my name”—(Ellen heard afterwards that she was of the holy of holies of New England families)—“began sending me money and boxes of clothing. It all arrived so suddenly, so unexpectedly. We had to rent this place to put the things in. The refugees came in swarms. We found ourselves overwhelmed. It is impossible to find an English-speaking stenographer who is not already more than overworked. The only help we get is from volunteers, a good many of them American society girls like that one you....” she paused to invent a sufficiently savage characterization and hesitated to pronounce it. “Well, most of them are not quite so absurd as that. But none of them know any more than we do about keeping accounts, letters....”
Ellen broke in: “How do you keep your accounts, anyhow? Bound ledger, or the loose-leaf system?”
They stared. “I have been careful to set down everything I could remember in a little note-book,” said Mrs. Putnam.
Ellen looked about for a chair and sat down on it hastily. When she could speak again, after a moment of silent collecting of her forces she said: “Well, I guess the first thing to do is to get a letter-file. I don’t know any French, so I probably couldn’t get it. If one of you could go....”
The pretty young lady sprang for her hat. “I’ll go! I’ll go, Auntie.”
“And,” continued Ellen, “you can’t do anything till you keep copies of your letters and you can’t make copies unless you have a typewriter. Don’t you suppose you could rent one?”
“I’ll rent one before I come back,” said Eleanor, who evidently lacked neither energy nor good-will. She said to Mrs. Putnam: “I’m going, instead of you, so that you can superintend opening those boxes. They are making a most horrible mess of it, I know.”
“Before a single one is opened, you ought to take down the name and address of the sender, and then note the contents,” said Ellen, speaking with authority. “A card-catalogue would be a good system for keeping that record, I should think, with dates of the arrival of the cases. And why couldn’t you keep track of your refugees that way, too? A card for each family, with a record on it of the number in the family and of everything given. You could refer to it in a moment, and carry it out to the room where the refugees are received.”
They gazed at her plain, sallow countenance in rapt admiration.