"Just think," Happie added from the doorway. "An hour ago we were without prospects, and since then mother has had her letter, Aunt Keren has given us her blessing, and has promised to help us, and she is going down to-morrow to look up our room, and to bring up Ralph and Snigs! I never heard of such an eventful hour outside the theatre, and there of course you watch years pass at a matinée. Won't Gretta and Bob be dumbfounded? Don't you want to come with me, Margery, and hear the crash when I break the news?"
"Put that way I believe I must come," laughed Margery, as she followed her sister.
There was no "crash" audible in the library where Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard lingered, but they heard a wild whoop from Bob, and then a clamor of voices as he and Gretta and Laura poured out questions, and Margery and Happie answered them as excitedly.
"Dear Miss Keren, you are so good to me and my children!" said Mrs. Scollard, as she saw that Miss Keren was listening to the babel in the room beyond in the highest satisfaction. "Think of all that we owe you already! And now you offer to be responsible for the girls financially, and to let them try this scheme of theirs! I can't bring myself to the point of feeling less than guilty to allow you to do so much."
"You may feel perfectly innocent, Charlotte, for I should do it in one form or another whether you would or no," affirmed Miss Bradbury. And when she said a thing she left little room for doubt that she meant every word that she said. "I have certain plans tucked away in the back of my head in regard to your children," she continued, "and I shall certainly carry them out. Don't forget, Charlotte, that in all the world there is no one who has the claim of kindred upon me; no one with closer ties between us than bind me to you, my beloved friend's daughter, and to her grandchildren, your children. So I shall look after them as far as I can. So much for that part of it, and never let me hear you allude to obligations again! As to the rest, I am not, privately, especially sanguine about the success of the plan these girls have made, and yet it really is a good one, if their inexperience and youth do not defeat it. I thoroughly approve of helping people to carry out their own ideas, however, and not in trying to force one's own upon them. So--unless you had objected--I should like to be responsible for the beginnings of the attempt, and let the girls consider what I expend as a debt to be repaid. I shall back them, Charlotte; that's all."