Chapter 7 THE FRIENDLY TERRACE ORPHANAGE

Priscilla's engagement, instead of interrupting her intimacy with her chums on Friendly Terrace, seemed to intensify it. Up to the night that she had walked with Horace in the park, and he had claimed her on the score of an affection dating back to Babylon, Priscilla had rather enjoyed informing Peggy and others that she would be unable to join in their plans for the evening, as she was expecting a caller. But now all this was changed.

Instead, when Horace called up to suggest coming out, he was very likely to hear that his sweetheart of Babylonian days had an imperative engagement with Peggy, or Ruth, or Amy, or more probably with all three.

It was after an evening spent at a moving picture house that Peggy made a suggestion destined to have more momentous results than she dreamed. They had gone early to avoid the crowd which a popular film is likely to draw even in the warmest weather, and at nine o'clock they were occupying chairs on Peggy's porch, and discussing the heat. "How about ice cream?" inquired Amy, fanning herself with a magazine some one had left in the hammock.

Before any one could answer, Peggy had interposed with her astonishing suggestion. "Girls, I move we adopt a French orphan."

Amy forgot her interest in ice cream. "A French orphan," she gasped, "What for?"

"Well, there are plenty of reasons from the orphan's standpoint, and several from ours, it seems to me. Do you know we're getting extravagant."

"Oh, Peggy," Ruth reproached her. "Why, as far as clothes go, I never got along with so few in my life."

"I didn't say we were extravagant in clothes. But do you know, we're getting to spend lots of money for little, no-account things. How many nights this week have we been to a movie?"

The question was a rhetorical one, as Peggy knew the answer as well as any one. But nevertheless Amy replied, "We've been three times, but one night the boys took us."

"It costs just as much, no matter who pays. There are four of us; and at twenty-five cents apiece, that makes a dollar an evening. Three dollars a week for movies, just for us four."

"Goodness," exclaimed Amy in as astonished a tone as if this very simple arithmetical calculation had been beyond her. "That does seem a lot."

"And that's not all," continued Peggy. "We've had ice cream, or ice cream soda, or something of the sort, at least three times this week, and these days you can't go near a soda fountain for less than fifteen cents, and you're more likely to pay twenty or twenty-five. If we call our bill two dollars, that's putting it pretty low. Five dollars, altogether."

"That is too much, Peggy," Priscilla agreed. "Unless you stop to count up, you wouldn't believe how much you can spend and all the time think you've been economical. But why the French orphan?"

"Well, it's awfully hard work saving by main strength, and it's easy enough if you have something to save for. If I happen to feel hungry for ice cream-"

Amy groaned. "Don't!" she said in a hollow voice. "If we're not going to have any, for pity's sake don't talk about it."

Peggy heartlessly ignored her friend's protest. "If I'm hungry for ice cream, it doesn't do me much good to tell myself that I had a dish night before last. I'll just think, 'Oh, well, what's twenty-five cents!' But if I'm saving up for something, it's a different matter. We found that out when we were paying for our Liberty Bonds."

"Won't it cost a great deal to adopt an orphan?" asked Ruth doubtfully.

"Why, we won't have to pay all its expenses. But there are lots of French children left without fathers and mothers, who have some relative who can give them a home if they have a little extra to help them out. I think forty dollars will do it."

"Forty dollars a year?" Amy exclaimed in amazement.

"I'm pretty sure that's it. Mrs. Alexander was talking to me about it just the other day, and I'm certain she said forty dollars."

"Then let's adopt an orphan right away," cried Amy. "And we'll have money enough left for sodas."

"Why, of course I didn't mean we should give up all our good times," Peggy exclaimed. "Only it seemed to me we were getting a little too extravagant. Then if you all agree, I think I'll go and telephone Mrs. Alexander that we'll take an orphan. She's worried because people aren't as interested as they ought to be."

It was while Peggy was at the telephone that a small girl appeared, carrying a large bundle. "I've brought home Mrs. Raymond's dress," she said shyly, looking from one to another of the occupants of the porch.

"Mrs. Raymond isn't home, but Miss Peggy is. She's telephoning now, but she'll be out in a minute," said Priscilla.

"You'd better sit down and rest while you wait for her," suggested Ruth kindly, pushing forward a porch rocking-chair. The small girl accepted the invitation and looked smaller than ever in the capacious depths of the big chair.

Peggy came out beaming. "Mrs. Alexander is perfectly delighted, girls. She says-Why, hello, Myrtle!"

"Hello, Miss Peggy," returned the girl with the bundle. "I brought home your mother's dress. Aunt Georgie couldn't get it finished any earlier."

"Mother gave you up for to-night, Myrtle. She left at eight o'clock, but I think I know where she put the money."

Peggy's conjecture proved correct. She brought out the amount of the dressmaker's bill, and having counted it before Myrtle's eyes, she folded the bills carefully and stuffed them into Myrtle's diminutive pocket book. "Shall you be glad when school opens, Myrtle?" she asked pleasantly.

"I'm not going to school any more, Miss Peggy."

"What! You're going to leave school?"

"Aunt Georgie can't afford to keep me any longer. Everything is so high," sighed the child, with a worldly-wise air that would have seemed funny had it not been so apparent that she knew what she was talking about.

"But you can't be nearly fourteen, Myrtle," protested Peggy. "And you were doing so well in school."

"I'm twelve in September, but Aunt Georgie can get permit for me to work, if she can't afford to keep me in school."

"Would you rather work than go to school?" asked Amy, rather tactlessly.

The eyes of the little girl filled. She sniffed bravely as she fumbled for her handkerchief.

"I like school better," she explained, a catch in her voice. "But I don't like to be a burden."

There was a brief silence on the porch as the little figure went down the walk, and then Priscilla murmured pityingly, "Poor child!"

"It's a shame," exclaimed Peggy warmly. "She's a bright little thing. She's not twelve till September, and she's ready for the high school already. If she could go to school four years more she'd probably be able to earn a good living, but she'll never do very well if she stops school now, for she's not strong enough for heavy work."

"It almost seems a pity," Ruth suggested, "that we've just adopted a French orphan. It seems there are orphans right at home who need help just as much."

Peggy sighed. "I'm not sorry about the French orphan. I suppose we can't imagine the need over there. But I do wish we could do something for Myrtle."

"Peggy Raymond," warned Amy. "Don't let your philanthropy run away with you, and get the idea that we're an orphan asylum. One orphan is all we can manage."

"Yes, of course," Peggy agreed hastily. "Only I was wondering-poor little Myrtle!"

"Can't her aunt afford to give her an education?" Priscilla asked, "Or is she stingy?"

"Oh, I suppose it's pretty hard for Miss Burns to get along with everything so expensive. She's not a high-priced dress-maker, and besides she's mortally slow; one of the puttering sort, you know. At the same time," added Peggy, "I mean to see her and have a talk with her about Myrtle."

Peggy was as good as her word. As postponement was never one of her weaknesses, she saw Miss Burns the following day, and the faded little spinster shed tears as she discussed Myrtle's future.

"Of course I know she ought to go on through high school," she sobbed. "She's been at the head of her class right up through the grades, and if she could finish high school, she wouldn't need to ask any odds of anybody. But I've laid awake night after night thinking, and I can't see my way to do it."

"If you had a little help, Miss Burns, I suppose you could manage, couldn't you? What is the very least you could get along on and let Myrtle stay in school?"

"Why she can't earn a great deal of course," said Miss Burns, wiping her eyes. "She's not old enough for a sales-woman, and she's not strong enough for any hard work, and she don't know anything about stenography."

"And what is the very least you think you could take in place of having Myrtle go to work?"

Miss Burns was one of the people who have a constitutional aversion to answering a direct question, but Peggy's persistence left her no loop-hole of escape. Cornered at last, she expressed the opinion that she could do with a hundred dollars. For some reason not quite clear in her own mind, Peggy had hoped it might be less, and her face showed her disappointment. "You think that is the very least you could get along on, Miss Burns."

"I'm afraid it is, Miss Peggy. Maybe I should have said a hundred and fifty. Look at the price of coal."

"Oh, I know," Peggy agreed. "Well, perhaps something will come up so Myrtle won't have to leave school. I'm sure I hope so."

Peggy repeated the substance of her conversation with Miss Burns to her three chums that afternoon as they were on the way out to Amy's Aunt Phoebe's. For in their efforts to circumvent the high cost of living, the Friendly Terrace girls had begun making weekly or even semi-weekly visits to the country. The season had been a favorable one for all garden produce, but Mr. Frost was finding it difficult to get anything like the help he needed. The girls went out into the garden, picked and pulled what they wanted, paid a price which, compared with the charges in the retail markets, seemed extremely reasonable, and came home with loaded market baskets and a tinge of sunburn in their cheeks. The weekly saving paid their car-fare many times over, and the fact that they all were together lent a festive air to the enterprise.

Peggy's three friends listened silently to their story of her visit to Miss Burns. Peggy's generosity was always leading her to attempt things far too big for her. The girls had stood by her loyally in the matter of the French orphan, but there they drew the line. A second orphan was too much.

"I'm sorry," Amy said, with an air of dismissing the subject. "But I don't see that we can do anything for her."

"You don't think, do you," Peggy hesitated, "that we could give a little entertainment-"

"Oh, Peggy, people are bored to death with benefits and drives, and to try to raise money for a little girl nobody knows about would be hopeless, especially when she's no worse off than thousands of others."

"I suppose that's so," Peggy replied, and reluctantly dropped the subject. Under her submission was a persistent hope that something might happen to aid her in the matter she had so much at heart. But the last thing she or any one else would have thought was that such assistance would come from Uncle Philander-Behind-His-Back.

Mr. Frost had been having an unusually hard time with help and was in an exceptionally bad humor. He was one of the men who, when out of sorts, invariable relieve their minds by criticism of the opposite sex. He had heard the girls chattering as they picked the lima beans, and doubtless that furnished the text for his ill-natured sermon.

"Women's tongues do beat all," he declared, as the girls came to the house to pay their reckoning. "It's small wonder they don't count much when it comes to work. They get themselves all wore out talking."

"I think we do some other things beside talking," declared Peggy, dimpling in a disarming fashion.

"And I can't see that we say any sillier things than men do," added Amy.

"O, men can talk or be quiet, just as they please, but a woman's got to talk or die. You couldn't pay her enough to get her to hold her tongue."

"You could pay me enough," said Peggy with spirit.

"Me, too," Amy cried.

Uncle Philander-Behind-His-Back sneered contemptuously. "Why, I'd give you four a hundred dollars to hold your tongues for a week."

"Girls," cried Peggy turning to her friends, "I move we take him up on that."

Had Uncle Philander-Behind-His-Back been less disagreeable, less contemptuous, the girls might have hesitated, for a week of silence is an ordeal to the least voluble. But Mr. Frost's sneers, combined with Peggy's enthusiasm, swept them off their feet.

"Yes, we'll take you up," Amy cried, and Priscilla and Ruth nodded approval.

Uncle Philander was a little taken aback, and showed it. "You understand when I said hold your tongues, I meant it. If there's an aye, yes, or no out of any of the four of you, it's all off."

"Of course," agreed the four girls in chorus.

Mr. Frost was plainly growing nervous. "Of course I haven't any way to keep tab on you."

"Philander," cried his wife, bristling with indignation, "If you think Amy or any of her friends would lie for the sake of money-"

"No, I didn't mean that," he half apologized. "I put all four of you on your honor. Not a word out of you, not so much as an ouch."

"But we can write notes and explain to our families, of course," cried Peggy.

"Of course," cried Amy, as Mr. Frost hesitated. "And talk on our fingers. All you said was tongues."

"You can write all the notes you want to," conceded Uncle Philander generously. Now that he had time to think of it, he was convinced that the conditions he had imposed could not possibly be complied with. Who had ever heard of four lively girls maintaining an unbroken silence for a week? His hundred dollars was safe.

After some discussion it was decided that the week should begin the following morning, to give the girls ample chance to explain their singular undertaking to their friends. And then the four started off with their heavy baskets, chattering excitedly, as if in the hopes of saying in the few hours remaining before bed time, all they would ordinarily have said in the next seven days.

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