Cleena will keep the rooms in order, with occasional aid
from the girl members--after we secure them. A small sum, contributed by
each member, will run the whole concern. People who are as constantly
employed as these mill operatives have not the leisure nor means to
acquire a book education, but a more intelligent, wider-awake, more
receptive class is not to be found. Yet let nobody dare to approach them
with anything at all in the nature of 'charity' or mental almsgiving.
Your democrat beats your aristocrat in the matter of pride every time,
and that is a paradox for you to consider. I relinquish the floor."

"After having exhausted the subject," laughed Hallam. But the subject
had not been exhausted. Amy proposed the matter the very next day, at
"nooning," and secured the members as mentioned by her to Gwendolyn. In
a week the membership had doubled; and as soon as the affair was really
comprehended, that it was a mutual benefit organization in the highest
sense of the word, applications were plentiful.

Uncle Frederic had been a literal globe-trotter, and his journeyings on
foot made him able to discourse in a familiar way of things no
guide-book ever points out. Nor did Cleena's good cookery come in for
any poor show among these healthy, happy folk. The club paid for the
simple refreshments provided at their weekly "socials," and Cleena
prepared them. Even this day, for their out-of-door reunion, she had
made all the needful preparations, and had been so busy she had scarcely
remembered to keep a close watch upon Fayette.

"But troth, it's no more nor right he should take his bit fun with the
rest," she remarked to herself, as she pulled the last tin of biscuits
from the chimney oven and spread them with sweet butter and daintily
sliced tongue. "He's aye restless betimes; and--but it's comin', it's
comin', me blessed gossoon!"

But to whom Cleena's exclamation referred it would have been difficult
to say,--though possibly to Fayette, as her next words seemed to
indicate. For the good creature still "conversed with Cleena" in every
instance when she happened to be left alone, it being a necessity of
her friendly nature that she should talk to somebody.

"Me gineral's never got over the burro business yet, alanna! An' it do
seem hard how 't one has so little an' t' other so much. That Mr.
'Super' Metcalf now, as fine a man as treads shoe leather, never a doubt
I doubt, yet himself judgin' it fair, since the man