Saturday grew into bath-day; soap-suds suggested bubbles; and the ducking and the bubbling were a frolic altogether.

Then Hazel wished they could be put into clean clothes each time; wouldn’t it do, somehow?

But that would cost.  Luclarion had come to the limit of her purse; Hazel had no purse, and Desire’s was small.

“But you see they’ve got to have it,” said Hazel; and so she went to her mother, and from her straight to Uncle Oldways.

They counted up,—­she and Desire, and Diana; two little common suits, of stockings, underclothes, and calico gowns, apiece; somebody to do a washing once a week, ready for the change; and then—­“those horrid shoes!”

“I don’t see how you can do it,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley.  “The things will be taken away from them, and sold.  You would have to keep doing, over and over, to no purpose, I am afraid.”

“I’ll see to that,” said Luclarion, facing her “stump.”  “We’ll do for them we can do for; if it ain’t ones, it will be tothers.  Those that don’t keep their things, can’t have ’em; and if they’re taken away, I won’t sell bread to the women they belong to, till they’re brought back.  Besides, the washing kind of sorts ’em out, beforehand.  ’Taint the worst ones that are willing to come, or to send, for that.  You always have to work in at an edge, in anything, and make your way as you go along.  It’ll regulate.  I’m living there right amongst ’em; I’ve got a clew, and a hold; I can follow things up; I shall have a ‘circle;’ there’s circles everywhere.  And in all the wheels there’s a moving spirit; you ain’t got to depend just on yourself.  Things work; the Lord sees to it; it’s His business as much as yours.”

Hazel told Uncle Titus that there were shoes and stockings and gowns wanted down in Neighbor Street; things for ten children; they must have subscriptions.  And so she had come to him.

The Ripwinkleys had never given Uncle Titus a Christmas or a birthday present, for fear they should seem to establish a mutual precedent.  They had never talked of their plans which involved calculation, before him; they were terribly afraid of just one thing with him, and only that one,—­of anything most distantly like what Desire Ledwith called “a Megilp bespeak.”  But now Hazel went up to him as bold as a lion.  She took it for granted he was like other people,—­“real folks;” that he would do—­what must be done.

“How much will it cost?”

“For clothes and shoes for each child, about eight dollars for three months, we guess,” said Hazel.  “Mother’s going to pay for the washing!”

“Guess?  Haven’t you calculated?”

“Yes, sir.  ‘Guess’ and ‘calculate’ mean the same thing in Yankee,” said Hazel, laughing.

Uncle Titus laughed in and out, in his queer way, with his shoulders going up and down.

Then he turned round, on his swivel chair, to his desk, and wrote a check for one hundred dollars.