Part 2

"I understand what she means, or thinks she means," responded Julia, as she laughingly advanced to the centre of the room, greeting the family cordially, while Agnes helped her remove her hat and coat.

"You've come for a week, I hope," exclaimed her uncle, kissing her.

"Oh, I shall be here several times in the course of the week, and I shall stay now overnight. But a whole week away from my work! Ah! Uncle Robert, you're a good business man, to suggest such a thing!" And, seating herself on the arm of Mr. Barlow's chair, Julia shook her finger playfully in his face.

"When do you have your house-warming?" asked Agnes, taking up the bit of sewing that she had dropped on Julia's entrance.

"We are not to have a house-warming, but later we shall invite you one by one, or perhaps two by two, to see the house."

"I suppose you've taken out all the good furniture, and in a certain way the Du Launy Mansion must be greatly changed."

"Don't speak so sadly, Aunt Anna; it is changed, and yet it is not changed. But I did not know that you were attached to the old house?"

"Hardly attached, Julia, for I was there only once, when I called on Madame Du Launy the year before her death. But in its style of architecture and its furnishings it seemed so completely an old-time house that I regret that it has had to be changed into an institution."

"Oh, no, please, Aunt Anna, not an institution; anything but that. Why, we mean to make it a real home, so that girls who haven't homes of their own will feel perfectly happy. Of course we have had to make some changes in the house itself, and remove some of the furniture, but when you visit us you will see that it is far removed from an institution."

"How many nationalities have you now, Julia? You had a dozen or two waiting admittance when you were last here, had you not?"

"There are to be only ten girls in the home, and there are still some vacancies. Indeed you are a tease, Uncle Robert."

Yet, although her uncle and aunt had teased her a little, Julia was not disconcerted, and when Agnes asked her to tell them something about the girls already in residence, she entered upon the task with great good-will.

"Well, first of all, Concetta. It's fair to speak of her first, because she's Miss South's protégée. She is the genuine Italian type, with the most perfectly oval cheeks, and a kind of peach bloom showing through the brown, and her hair closely plaited and wound round and round, and the largest brown eyes. Miss South became interested in her last year when she was visiting schools. She found that her father meant to take her out of school this year to become a chocolate dipper."

"A chocolate dipper! I've heard of tin dippers,--but--"

"Hush, Ralph, you are too literal."

"Yes," continued Julia, "a chocolate dipper. You know there's an enormous candy factory there on the water front, and most of the girls think their fortunes made when they can work in it. But after Miss South had visited Concetta a few times she thought her capable of something better, and so she is to have her chance at the Mansion. But her uncle Luigi was determined to make Concetta a wage-earner as soon as possible. She did not need more schooling, he said.

"Fortunately, however, Concetta has a godmother who, although a working-woman, dingily clad, and apparently hardly able to support herself, is supposed to have money hidden away somewhere. On this account she has much influence in the Zanetti family, and a word from her accomplished more than all our arguments. Concetta is now freed from the dirty, crowded tenement, and I feel that we may be able to make something of her. Then there is Edith's nominee, Gretchen Rosenbaum, whose grandfather is the Blairs' gardener. She's pale and thin, and not at all the typical German maiden. She has a diploma from school of which she is very proud, and she says that she wants to be a housekeeper. The family are very thankful for the chance offered her by the Mansion."

"The Germans know a good thing when they see it, especially if it isn't going to cost them much," said Ralph.

"Then," continued Julia, "there are my two little Portuguese cousins, Luisa and Inez, as alike as two peas in a pod. Angelina told me about them, and their teacher confirmed my opinion that it would be a charity to save them from the slop-work sewing to which their old aunt had destined them."

"How much of an annuity do you have to pay the aunt?" asked Ralph.

Julia blushed, for in fact, in order to give the girls the opportunity that she thought they ought to have at the Mansion, she had had to promise the aunt two dollars a week, which the latter had estimated as her share of their earnings for the next two years. Julia did not wholly approve of the arrangement, although she knew that only in this way could she help the two little girls.

"Hasn't Nora contributed to your household?"

"Oh, yes, the dearest little Irish girl; we can hardly understand a word Nellie says, though she thinks she talks English. Nora ran across her and a party of other immigrants one day when she had gone over to the Cunard wharf to meet some friends. Nellie and a half-dozen others had become separated from the guide who was to take them to their lodging-place in East Boston. They were near the dock, and Nora became very much interested in Nellie. She took her name and destination, and later went to see her, and the result is one of our most promising pupils; that is, we have a chance to teach her more than almost any of the others. But there! I'm ashamed of talking so much shop."

"Oh, no, it's most interesting. You haven't finished?"

"Well, there are two or three other girls, of whom I will tell you more some other time, and there are one or two vacancies. I wish, Brenda, that you could send us a pupil. I'm afraid that you won't have much interest in the school unless you have a girl of your own there."

"But I have--I will--that is--can't you see that I have something very important to tell you?" and thereupon Brenda launched into a glowing account of Maggie McSorley and the prospect of her going to the Mansion. "I just jumped at the idea when it came to me," concluded Brenda, "for I have had so many things on my mind this summer that I didn't make the effort that I had intended to find a girl for you. But now I shall do my utmost to persuade that cross-grained aunt, and I am bound to succeed."

"I wouldn't discourage you, but evidently you made little headway this afternoon," said her mother, "in spite of the pretty high price that you have paid for the pleasure of Maggie's acquaintance."

"Just wait, Mamma; just wait. When I really set out to do a thing I generally succeed. I found out to-day that Mrs. McSorley rather begrudges Maggie her home, although she feels it her duty to keep her. She says that Maggie has a way of upsetting things that is very trying, and she's had to give up to her the little room that she used to keep for a sitting-room. Oh, I'm certain that I can persuade her to spare Maggie."

Then the conversation drifted on to other sides of the work, and Julia's enthusiasm half reconciled Mr. and Mrs. Barlow to the fact that she was to be away from them.

"Home is a career, and we need you more than any group of strange girls possibly can," Mr. Barlow had protested, when Julia had shown him the impossibility of her settling down quietly at home.

"You have Brenda and Agnes. Suppose that I had gone to Europe for two or three years after leaving college. I am sure that then you would not have complained, for you would have thought this a thing for my especial profit and pleasure. Now when I shall be so near that you will see me at least once a week, you are not altogether pleased, because you think that I am likely to work too hard."

"Oh, papa needn't worry," cried Brenda; "I shall see that you have enough frivolity. You shall not overwork the poor little girls either. I feel sorry for them now, with you and Pamela and Miss South egging them on. But I have various frivolities in mind, and you must encourage me."

"I never knew you to need encouragement in frivolity. A little discouragement would be more likely to have a wholesome effect."

Thus they chatted, and Mr. Barlow, looking up from his evening paper from time to time, was convinced that Julia's new interests had certainly not yet taken away her taste for the lighter side of life.

Indeed, on the whole, he had no decided objection to the scheme that Julia and Miss South had started to carry out. As his niece's tastes so evidently ran in philanthropic directions, he knew that in the end she must be happiest when following her bent.

Miss South herself would have been the last to claim originality for the much-discussed school. There were other social settlements in the city, and one or two other domestic science schools in which girls had a good chance to learn cooking and other branches of household work. Yet the school at the Mansion had an object all its own. Miss South felt that each year many young girls drifted into shop or factory who might be encouraged to a higher ambition. For many of them evidently thought first of the money they could immediately earn, and there was no one to suggest that if they prepared themselves for something better they would later have more money as well as greater honor. So she tried to find girls willing to spend two years at the Mansion, while she watched them and advised them and guided them into what she believed would be the best avenue of employment for them. Some people thought that she meant to train all the girls to be domestics; others thought she aimed to keep them out of this occupation. She meant to train them all in housework so thoroughly, that, whether they entered service or had homes of their own, they should be able to do their work properly. She meant, if any of these girls showed special talents, to encourage them to pursue their natural bent.

"Would you let them study art or music?" some one had asked in surprise.

"Yes; why not?"

"Why, girls from the tenement districts!--it doesn't seem right to encourage them in this way."

"Oughtn't any young thing to be encouraged to follow its natural bent? It's a case of individuals, not of sections of the city."

"I've always been sorry," explained Miss South, "for the bright girls who drop out of school at fourteen that their ablebodied parents may snatch the little wages they can earn in the factories. The ten or twelve girls we may have here at the Mansion are very few compared with the hundreds who need the same kind of chance. But I am hoping that through these a broader influence may be exerted."

Although many critics naturally thought that Miss South did wrong in giving girls of a certain class ideas above their sphere, on the whole she was commended for undertaking a good work. There were some also who pitied Mrs. Barlow on account of Julia's partnership in the scheme.

"This is what comes of letting a girl go to college," and they wondered that Mrs. Barlow herself did not express more disapproval.

"You'll have only orphans," said Mr. Elton, a cousin of Mrs. Barlow's, who took much interest in the work; "for in my experience fathers and mothers of the working class are just lying in wait for the earnings of their half-grown daughters. To fill your school you will either have to kill off a few fathers and mothers, or else consider only orphans to be suitable candidates. To be sure, you might offer heavy bribes to parents. But of course you can get the orphans easily, if they have cruel aunts or stepmothers."

"As to cruel aunts," responded Julia, "judging from my own experience, as was said of Mrs. Harris, 'I don't believe there's no sich a person;' and in spite of Ovid and Cinderella, I have my doubts about cruel stepmothers."

"We'll see," said Mr. Elton. "At any rate, you'll have to bribe your girls, and when I meet them my first question will be, How much do they pay you to stay?"

One of the most delightful features in fitting up the house for its new use had been the eagerness to help shown by many of Miss South's former pupils.

Ruth, for example, in furnishing the kitchen, had said, "This will show that I have a practical interest in housekeeping, even though I am to spend my first year of married life in idle travel."

"With your disposition it won't be wholly idle," Miss South had responded.

"Well, I do mean to discover at least one or two new receipts, or better than that, some new articles of food, that I can put at the service of the Mansion upon my return."

"We certainly shall have you in mind whenever we look at these pretty and practical things."

III

BRENDA AT THE MANSION

One fine afternoon, not so very long after she had wasted her twenty dollars and made a friend of Maggie McSorley, Brenda in riding costume opened the front door. As she stood on the top step, somewhat impatiently she snapped her short crop as she gazed anxiously up Beacon Street.

On the steps of the house directly opposite were three girls seated and one standing near by. They were schoolgirls evidently, with short skirts hardly to their ankles, and with hair in long pig-tails. As she looked at them, by one of those swift flights of thought that so often carry us unexpectedly back to the past Brenda was reminded of another bright autumn afternoon, just six years earlier. Then she and Nora, and Edith and Belle, an inseparable quartette, had sat on her front steps discussing the arrival of her unknown cousin, Julia.

How much had happened since that day! Then she had been younger even than those girls across the street, and Julia, who had come and conquered (though not without difficulties) was now a college graduate.

But Brenda was not one to brood over the past, and when one of the girls shouted, "We know whom you're looking for," she had a bright reply ready.

Soon around the corner came the clicking of hoofs on the asphalt pavement. Brenda, shading her eyes from the sun, looked toward the west.

"Late, as usual, Arthur!" she cried, a trifle sharply, as a young man, flinging his reins to the groom on the other horse, ran up the steps toward her.

"Impatient, as usual!" he responded pleasantly, consulting his watch. "As a matter of fact, I'm five minutes ahead of time. But I'd have been here half an hour earlier had I known it was a matter of life and death."

The frown passed from Brenda's face. The two young people mounted their horses, and the groom walked back to the stable.

"Have a good time!" shouted one of the girls, as the two riders started off.

"The same to you!" cried Arthur.

"Ah, me!" exclaimed Brenda, as they rode on, "I feel so old when I look at those Sellers girls. Why, they are almost in long dresses now, and I can remember when they were in baby carriages."

"Well, even I would rather wear a long dress any day than a baby carriage," responded Arthur. "There, look out!" for they were turning a corner, and two or three bicyclists came suddenly upon them. Brenda avoided the bicyclists, crossed the car tracks safely, and soon the two were trotting through the Fenway.

The foliage on the banks of the little stream was brilliant, and here and there were clumps of asters and other late flowers. They rode on in silence, and were well past the chocolate house before either spoke a word.

"Why so silent, fair sister-in-law?"

"Oh, I was only thinking."

"No wonder that you could not speak. I trust that you were thinking of me."

"To be frank," replied Brenda, "that is just what I was not doing. In fact I was thinking of a time when I did not know of your existence."

"Mention not that sad time, mention it not! fair sister-in-law."

When Arthur used this term in addressing Brenda she knew that he was bent on teasing; for although her sister had married Arthur's brother, her engagement to Arthur, announced in June, might very properly be thought to have done away with the teasing title "sister-in-law."

"Don't be silly, Arthur," cried Brenda; "you can't tease me to-day. Several years of my life certainly did pass before I had an idea that you were in the world. I was thinking of the time before we knew each other, when I was so jealous of Julia."

"Jealous of Julia!"

"Oh, I hadn't seen her when I began to have this feeling."

"But why--what made you jealous if you hadn't seen her?

"I can't wholly explain. Perhaps it wasn't altogether jealousy. You see I didn't like the idea of her coming to live with us."

"You must have got over that soon. You and she have always seemed to hit it off pretty well since I've known you."

"Oh, yes, ever since you have known us; and I've always been ashamed of that first year. Though Belle led me on, just a little."

As Arthur still seemed somewhat mystified, Brenda described Julia's first winter in Boston; and she did not spare herself, when she told how she had shut her cousin out from the little circle of "The Four."

"Really, however, Nora and Edith were not at all to blame. They liked Julia from the first. Then what a brick Julia was when she made up that sum of money that I lost after we had worked so hard at the Bazaar for Mrs. Rosa."

Though Arthur had heard more or less about these things before, he enjoyed hearing Brenda narrate them in her quick and somewhat excited fashion.

"Why, you may believe that I really missed Julia when she was at Radcliffe, and I'm fearfully disappointed that she won't be at home with us this winter."

"She isn't going back to Cambridge, is she? I certainly saw her degree, and it was on parchment."

"Oh, Arthur, how you do forget things. I'm sure that I wrote you about the school that she and Miss South were to start."

"I was probably more interested in other things in the letter. But has she lost her money, and hence starts a school?"

"Arthur, I believe that you skip pages and pages."

"No, indeed, dear sister-in-law, but some pages sink more deeply in my mind than others. Has Julia lost her money, and therefore must she teach?"

"You are hopeless, though I believe that really you remember all about it. It's Miss South's scheme. You see she has that great Du Launy house on her hands, and it's a kind of domestic school for poor girls, and Julia is to help her."

"What kind of a school?"

"A domestic school; I think that's it; to teach girls how to keep house and be useful."

"Indeed! Then couldn't you go there for a term or two, Brenda? That kind of knowledge may be very useful to you some time."

Whereupon Brenda urged her horse and was off at a gallop, so distancing Arthur for some seconds before he overtook her. On they went through the Arboretum, and around Franklin Park, then over the Boulevard toward Mattapan and Milton. It was dusk when they turned homeward, and dark, as they looked from a height on the city twinkling below them.

As Arthur left her to take the horses to the stable Brenda called after him, "I may take your advice and enter the school for a year or two."

"We'll see," responded Arthur.

Now, although Brenda had no real intention of entering the new school, either as resident or pupil, she was deeply interested and extremely anxious to see what changes had been made in the Du Launy Mansion, and she was to make her first visit there a day or two after this ride with Arthur Weston.

The school itself was not as new as it seemed. It had existed in Miss South's mind long before she had a prospect of carrying out her plans. Many persons thought it a fine thing for her when she was able to give up her teaching and live a life of leisure in the fine old mansion with Madame Du Launy.

Yet Miss South had wholly enjoyed her work at Miss Crawdon's school, and she had said good-bye to her pupils with regret. Kind though her grandmother was, she had sacrificed more than any one realized in becoming the constant companion of an exacting old lady. Still, as this was the duty that lay nearest her, she devoted herself to it wholly.

Although Madame Du Launy had lived in a large and imposing house, containing much costly furniture, her fortune was smaller than most persons supposed. The larger part of her income came from an annuity that ceased with her death. Miss South had not enough money left to permit her to keep up the great house in the style in which her grandmother had lived; for out of it small incomes were to be paid during their lives to three old servants, and after their deaths this money was to go to Lydia South's brother Louis. To Louis also went the money from the sale of certain pictures and medieval tapestries that the will had ordered to be sold. As to the Mansion itself, Lydia South could do what she liked with it and its contents,--let it, sell it, or live in it.

"She'll have to take boarders, though, if she lives there," said some one; "aside from the expense it would be altogether too dreary for a young woman to live there alone."

But Miss South had no doubt as to what she should do. Here was the chance, that had once seemed so far away, of carrying out her plans for a model school. She found that it was wisest for her to retain the old house for her purpose, as she could neither sell it nor rent it to advantage. The neighborhood was not what it had once been. Almost all the older residents had moved away; two families or more were the rule in most of the houses in the street, and not so very far away were several unmistakable tenement-houses. Miss Crawdon's school had left the street a year or two before, and if she should sell the house no one would buy it for a residence. Julia, who was to be her partner in the new scheme, thought the Du Launy Mansion far better suited to their purpose than any house they could secure elsewhere.

"The North End would be more picturesque, and we could do regular settlement work among those interesting foreigners. But there is more than one settlement down there already, and here we shall have the field almost to ourselves."

Changes and additions to the house had been made during the summer, and not one of Julia's intimates, excepting those who were to live in the Mansion, had been permitted to see it. Nora and Edith and Brenda had implored, Philip had teased, but all had been refused. "You must wait until everything is in readiness."

When, therefore, Brenda and Nora one morning found themselves walking up the little flagged walk to the old Du Launy House, they speculated greatly as to the changes in the house. Outside, on the front at least, there had been no alterations, and everything looked the same as on that morning when the mischievous girls had ventured to pass under the porte-cochère to apologize for breaking a window with their ball. It was the same exterior, and yet not the same. It had, as Brenda said, "a wide-awake look," whereas formerly almost all the blinds had been closed, giving an aspect of dreariness. Now all the shutters were thrown back, blinds were raised, and fresh muslin curtains showed at many windows instead of the heavy draperies of Madame Du Launy's time.

In place of the sleek butler who had seemed like a part of the furnishings, permanent and unremovable, Angelina opened the front door, beaming with satisfaction at the dignity to which she had risen. Indeed she fairly bristled with a sense of her own importance, and answered their questions in her airiest manner.

"Oh, Manuel's doing finely at school, Miss Barlow. I can't be spared much now to go to Shiloh, but I was there over Sunday, and my mother's got two boarders, young women that work in the factory and don't make much trouble for her. So you see I'm not so much needed at home. John's got a place, too, in the city this winter, so that I'll see him sometimes," and Angelina giggled in her rather foolish way.