The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.), Marshall P. Wilder [best books to read in your 20s txt] 📗

"Katherine—give it up, dear—" The man looked down into the earnest eyes of the girl as she sat in the shadow of a palm in the conservatory at the Morrison's. Strains of music from the ball-room fell on unheeding ears and she sighed as she looked up at him.

"I can not turn back now, Everett," she said. "Ever since that day I spent down on the east side I have looked at life from a different standpoint. A message came to me then and I must listen. For a year I have been preparing myself to take my part in this work. To-morrow I take possession of what is called a model flat, and I hope to teach those poor little children something besides the three R's. To tell them how to take a little sunshine into their dismal homes." She looked like some fair saint with her face illumined with love of humanity.

"Might I venture to suggest that there is plenty of room for sunshine in an old house up the Avenue," said the man wistfully.

The girl looked up quickly—"Don't, Everett, give me six months to see what I can do—then I will answer the question you asked me last night."

"Oh, my dear, my dear," he said, "you do not know how I hate to have you go down there. My sympathy with the great unwashed is not[Pg 152] deep enough for me to be willing to have you mingle with them. Then, to be quite honest, I have found them rather a happy lot."

"Listen, Everett," said the girl. "Come down to me a month from to-night and I will show you that I am right and you are wrong."

"A whole month!" the man protested.

"Yes, a whole month—"

The sun was shining into the front windows of a room on the first floor of a high tenement down on the east side. A snow-white bed stood far enough from the wall to allow it to be made up with perfect ease. In front of it stood a screen covered with pretty chintz; white muslin curtains hung at the windows; everything was spotless from the kalsomined ceiling to the oiled floors, where a few bright-colored rugs made walking possible. As Katherine Anderson explained to some scoffing friends who came down to take luncheon with her.

"Everything is clean and in its proper place and the object-lesson is invaluable to these poor children. If you go into their homes you will find that the bed is a bundle of rags in some dark closet, while the front room is kept for company. Here I show them how easily this sunny room is made into a sitting-room by putting that screen in front of the bed and then there is a healthful place to sleep. You may think that I am over-enthusiastic, but I enjoy my classes and I assure you they are all day long, for besides the usual schoolroom work we have cooking classes, physical culture, nature classes and little talks about all sorts of things. I have one girl who I know is going to be a great novelist, she[Pg 153] has such an imagination," said Katherine. "Her big sister always has a duplicate of anything of mine the child happens to admire, and the other day she came rushing in with the tale that 'burglars' had broken into their house the night before and stolen twenty bottles of ketchup and 'some preserts.'"

"Had they?" asked the guest. "What peculiar taste in burglary!"

"No," laughed Katherine; "she has no big sister and their house is one back room four flights up."

Four weeks had passed since the Morrison dinner, and Katherine was tired. Then, too, she was not altogether sure that her mission was a success. Was she wishing for the fleshpots of upper Fifth Avenue, or was it just physical weariness that would pass with the night? She had sent off a note in the morning: