“Besides,” snorted Miss Ella Stowbody, “they’ve been fooling you, Mrs. Kennicott.  There isn’t any real poverty here.  Take that Mrs. Steinhof you speak of:  I send her our washing whenever there’s too much for our hired girl—­I must have sent her ten dollars’ worth the past year alone!  I’m sure Papa would never approve of a city home-building fund.  Papa says these folks are fakers.  Especially all these tenant farmers that pretend they have so much trouble getting seed and machinery.  Papa says they simply won’t pay their debts.  He says he’s sure he hates to foreclose mortgages, but it’s the only way to make them respect the law.”

“And then think of all the clothes we give these people!” said Mrs. Jackson Elder.

Carol intruded again.  “Oh yes.  The clothes.  I was going to speak of that.  Don’t you think that when we give clothes to the poor, if we do give them old ones, we ought to mend them first and make them as presentable as we can?  Next Christmas when the Thanatopsis makes its distribution, wouldn’t it be jolly if we got together and sewed on the clothes, and trimmed hats, and made them——­”

“Heavens and earth, they have more time than we have!  They ought to be mighty good and grateful to get anything, no matter what shape it’s in.  I know I’m not going to sit and sew for that lazy Mrs. Vopni, with all I’ve got to do!” snapped Ella Stowbody.

They were glaring at Carol.  She reflected that Mrs. Vopni, whose husband had been killed by a train, had ten children.

But Mrs. Mary Ellen Wilks was smiling.  Mrs. Wilks was the proprietor of Ye Art Shoppe and Magazine and Book Store, and the reader of the small Christian Science church.  She made it all clear: 

“If this class of people had an understanding of Science and that we are the children of God and nothing can harm us, they wouldn’t be in error and poverty.”

Mrs. Jackson Elder confirmed, “Besides, it strikes me the club is already doing enough, with tree-planting and the anti-fly campaign and the responsibility for the rest-room—­to say nothing of the fact that we’ve talked of trying to get the railroad to put in a park at the station!”

“I think so too!” said Madam Chairman.  She glanced uneasily at Miss Sherwin.  “But what do you think, Vida?”

Vida smiled tactfully at each of the committee, and announced, “Well, I don’t believe we’d better start anything more right now.  But it’s been a privilege to hear Carol’s dear generous ideas, hasn’t it!  Oh!  There is one thing we must decide on at once.  We must get together and oppose any move on the part of the Minneapolis clubs to elect another State Federation president from the Twin Cities.  And this Mrs. Edgar Potbury they’re putting forward—­I know there are people who think she’s a bright interesting speaker, but I regard her as very shallow.  What do you say to my writing to the Lake Ojibawasha Club, telling them that if their district will support Mrs. Warren for second vice-president, we’ll support their Mrs. Hagelton (and such a dear, lovely, cultivated woman, too) for president.”