“It is if you have promised it to some boys who don’t ever have anything nice only what they get at our house; and who save their pennies that they spend on beer, and cider, and cigars to get it.”
Wise Susie, indignation in every word, yet well controlled, and aware before she finished her sentence that she was deeply interesting her audience! How they questioned her? What was this? Who did it? Who thought of it? When did they begin it? Who came? How did they get the money to buy their things? Susie, thoroughly posted, thoroughly in sympathy with the entire movement, calm, collected, keen far beyond her years, answered clearly and well. Plainly she saw that this lady in a silken gown was interested.
“Well, if this isn’t a revelation!” said Mrs. Farley at last. “A young men’s Christian association not only, but an eating-house flourishing right in our midst and we knowing nothing about it. Did you know anything of it, daughter?”
“No, ma’am,” said Ermina. “But I knew that splendid Nettie was trying to do something for her brother; and that nice boy who used to bring eggs was helping her; it is just like them both. I don’t believe there is a nicer girl in town than Nettie Decker.”
Mrs. Farley seemed unable to give up the subject. She asked many questions as to how long the boys stayed, and what they did all the time.
Susie explained: “Well, they eat, you know; and Norm doesn’t hurry them; he says they have to pitch the things down fast where they board, to keep them from freezing; and our room is warm, because we keep the kitchen door open, and the heat goes in; but we don’t know what we shall do when the weather gets real cold; and after they have eaten all the things they can pay for, they look at the pictures. Jerry’s father sends him picture papers, and Mr. Sherrill brings some, most every day. Miss Sherrill is coming Thanksgiving night to sing for them; and Nettie says if we only had an organ she would play beautiful music. We want to give them a treat for Thanksgiving; we mean to do it without any pay at all if we can; and father thinks we can, because he is working nights this week, and getting extra pay; and Jerry thinks there will be two chickens ready; and Nettie wishes we could have an organ for a little while, just for Norm, because he loves music so, but of course we can’t.”
Long before this sentence was finished, Ermina and her mother had exchanged glances which Susie, being intent on her story, did not see.
She was a wise little woman of business; what if Mrs. Farley should say: “Well, I will give you a chicken myself for the Thanksgiving time, and a whole peck of apples!” then indeed, Susie believed that their joy would be complete; for Nettie had said, if they could only afford three chickens she believed that with a lot of crust she could make chicken pie enough for them each to have a large piece, hot; not all the boys, of course, but the seven or eight who worked in Norm’s shop and boarded at the dreary boarding-house; they would so like to give Norm a surprise for his birthday, and have a treat say at six o’clock for all of these; for this year Thanksgiving fell on Norm’s birthday. The storm held up after a little, and Susie, trudging home, a trifle disgusted with Mrs. Farley because she said not a word about the peck of apples or the other chicken, was met by Jerry coming in search of her. The molasses was boiling over, he told her, and so was her mother, with anxiety lest the wind had taken her, Susie, up in a tree, and had forgotten to bring her down again. He hurried her home between the squalls, and Susie quietly resolved to say not a word about all the things she had told at the Farley home. What if Nettie should think she hadn’t been womanly to talk so much about what they were doing! If there was one thing that this young woman had a horror of during these days, it was that Nettie would think she was not womanly. The desire, nay, the determination to be so, at all costs had well nigh cured her of her fits of rage and screaming, because in one of her calm moments Nettie had pointed out to her the fact that she never in her life heard a woman scream like that. Susie being a logical person, argued the rest of the matter out for herself, and resolved to scream and stamp her foot no more.
Great was the astonishment of the Decker family, next morning. Mrs. Farley herself came to call on them. She wanted some plain ironing done that afternoon. Yes, Mrs. Decker would do it and be glad to; it was a leisure afternoon with her. Mrs. Farley wanted something more! she wanted to know about the business in which Nettie and her young friend next door were engaged; and Susie listened breathlessly, for fear it would appear that she had told more than she ought. But Mrs. Farley kept her own counsel, only questioning Nettie closely, and at last she made a proposition that had well nigh been the ruin of the tin of cookies which Nettie was taking from the oven. She dropped the tin!
“Did you burn you, child?” asked Mrs. Decker, rushing forward.