The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne

l about, she wanted to know the occupants of every shabby old surrey that drew up at the post-office while the mail was being "sorted." But if the conversation turned to mere idle talk and specul

d later, "made you afraid t

e is, while her mother thinks she is taking a music lesson?" demanded Mrs. Burgoyne, suddenly ent

she's a silly little thing, and I imagine her people are very se

t there is beginning to be a little talk about Katherine

thing about it! I wouldn't for the world-I never dreamed-one wo

arried women who know how mischievous tha

ore was said at the time. But both she and Mrs. Adams were a little uneasy two or three days later, when, returning from a motor trip, t

t story at all," said Mrs. B

Thorne, you are clandestinely meeting Joe Turner d

as I passed the gate. Mrs. Thorne was standing there, and I asked if it wasn't a Ban

bright child!"

wice, and she's a nice little thing. She doesn't care tuppence for the Turner boy, but he's musical, and she's quite music-mad, and now and then they 'accidentally' meet. Her father won't let anyone see h

!" said Mrs. Carew audaciously. For she

who came to have a real affection and respect for her, fully appreciated. Mrs. Burgoyne would tell him, when they met in some hour of life or death, that she was "making friends." It was quite true. She was the type of woman who cannot pass a small child in the street. She must stop, and ask questions, decide disputes and give advice. And through the children she won the big brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers of Old Paloma. Even a deep-rooted prejudice against the women of her class and their method of dealing with the less fortunate could not prevail against her disarming, friendly manner, her simple gown and hat, her eagerness to get the new baby into her arms; all these told in her favor, and she became very popular in the shabby little settlement across the bridge. She would sit at a sewing-machine and show old Mrs. Goodspeed how to turn a certa

begged one little sickly mother, and when she loaned George Manning four hundred dollars to finish his new house, and get his wife and babies up from San Fr

r and killed her husband five years before. Mrs. Burgoyne put it as a "surprise for Viola," and Mrs. Peet, whose one surviving spark of interest in life centred in her three children, finally permitted carpenters to come and build a porch outside her dining-room, and was actually transferred, one warm June afternoon

for you if I was rich and you po

id Mrs. Burgoyne, bus

n do for her," pursued the invalid. "But

take a job," agreed Mrs. Burgoyne. "There, how's tha

it costs," persisted Mrs. Peet, "thi

er be my present t

oth knew it. Mrs. Burgoyne would not stay to see Viola's face, when she came home from the hospital to find her mother watching the summer stars prick through the warm darkness, but Viola came up to the Hall that same evening, and tr

th his wife for a rubber of bridge, as Viola departed. "Whereever I g

Mr. Valentine comes. No, I'm not a socialist. But I can't help feeling that there's SOME solution for a wretched problem like that over

a little timidly, for she held a theory that she was not "smart." "I thou

e legislated some thousands of new babies into magnificent institutions. Nurses mixed their bottles, doctor

aid the doctor, shaking a t

me way. Groups are getting smaller and smaller, a dozen girls with a matron in a cottage, and hundreds of girls 'farmed out' with good, responsible women, instead of enormous refectories and dormitories and schoolrooms. And the ideal solution will be when every individual woman in the

" asserted Mrs. Brown, "wouldn't laws for

e an amount of money that would amaze you! Who buys the willow plumes, and the phonographs, and the enlarged pictures, and the hair combs and the white shoes that are sold by the million e

on they all need," suggested the doctor, who had been audi

ated. "Why, I knew a little Swedish woman once, who r

T!" ejaculat

t, too. One son is a civil engineer, now, and the da

they EAT, do

every day, for three cents. They were beautiful children. They went to free schools, and lectures, and galleries, an

LD solve it then," c

lectively, "Book education won't certainly.

ter class to go and live amon

es that they will begin to value cleanliness, and simplicity, and the comforts they can afford. You know, Mary Brown," said Mrs. Burgoyne, turning

and me!" cried M

n her chair with a relieved sigh. "We women," she went on vigorously, "have mismanaged every

pipe, "that's heresy! I refuse to listen to it. My wife is

have we all done? We manage our houses, and dress

ce, inexperienced young girl just out of normal school, who has fifty or sixty of them to manage, and of whose ideas upon the big questions of life we know absolutely nothing. We say lightheartedly that 'girls always go through a trying age,' and that we suppose boys 'have to come in contact with things,' and we let it go at that! We 'suppose there has always been vice, and always will be,' but we never stop to think that we ourselves are setting the poor girls of the other world such an example in the clothes

work, with children,"

most ignorant and untrained of our foreign people? Our girls pour into the factories, although our husbands don't have any trouble

sleep at home," su

much rather not sleep at home," said Mrs. Burgoyne, "it's the

knows that he has certain unimportant things to do, but he sees me taki

every improvement that comes to ours comes from men. They invent our conveniences, they design our st

one your own work for twen

us to rise to fresh emergencies every hour of your life. A person like myself is handicapped. I can't demonstrate that I believe what I say. Everyone thinks me merely a little aff

ver be any the wise

easant girl at Domremy, for instance; there was that gentle saint who preached poverty to the birds; there was Eug

come to him!" ch

d hero-worship. "Well, and there was one more, the greatest of al

ere, and giving the people their fill of wine one day, and of bread and fishes the next, might be

DO?" demanded Mrs. Brow

nd out," said Mrs. B

s half a cure," ended