"May I trouble you to step into the back parlor, Dr.Aberthwaite," she said; and then;"May I have the pleasure of presenting to you Mrs.Henderson Bell--my mother?"
"Wasn't it great!" said Mrs.Weatherstone; "I was there you see,-- I'd come to call on Mrs.Bell--she's a dear,--and in came Mrs.Thaddler--""Mrs.Thaddler?"
"O I know it was old Aberthwaite, but he represented Mrs.Thaddler and her clique, and had come there to preach to Diantha about propriety--Iheard him,--and she brought him in and very politely introduced him to her mother!--it was rich, Isabel.""How did Diantha manage it?" asked her friend.
"She's been trying to arrange it for ever so long.Of course her father objected--you'd know that.But there's a sister--not a bad sort, only very limited; she's taken the old man to board, as it were, and I guess the mother really set her foot down for once--said she had a right to visit her own daughter!""It would seem so," Mrs.Porne agreed."I _am_ so glad! It will be so much easier for that brave little woman now."It was.
Diantha held her mother in her arms the night she came, and cried tike a baby.
"O mother _dear!_" she sobbed, "I'd no idea I should miss you so much.
O you blessed comfort!"
Her mother cried a bit too; she enjoyed this daughter more than either of her older children, and missed her more.A mother loves all her children, naturally; but a mother is also a person--and may, without sin, have personal preferences.
She took hold of Diantha's tangled mass of papers with the eagerness of a questing hound.
"You've got all the bills, of course," she demanded, with her anxious rising inflection.
"Every one," said the girl."You taught me that much.What puzzles me is to make things balance.I'm making more than I thought in some lines, and less in others, and I can't make it come out straight.""It won't, altogether, till the end of the year I dare say," said Mrs.
Bell, "but let's get clear as far as we can.In the first place we must separate your business,--see how much each one pays.""The first one I want to establish," said her daughter, "is the girl's club.Not just this one, with me to run it.But to show that any group of twenty or thirty girls could do this thing in any city.Of course where rents and provisions were high they'd have to charge more.I want to make an average showing somehow.Now can you disentangle the girl part front the lunch part and the food part, mother dear, and make it all straight?"Mrs.Bell could and did; it gave her absolute delight to do it.She set down the total of Diantha's expenses so far in the Service Department, as follows:
Rent of Union House...$1,500
Rent of furniture...$300
One payment on furniture...$400
Fuel and lights, etc....$352
Service of 5 at $10 a week each...$2,600
Food for thirty-seven...$3,848
Total...$9,000
"That covers everything but my board," said Mrs.Bell.
"Now your income is easy--35 x $4.50 equals $8,190.Take that from your $9,000 and you are $810 behind.""Yes, I know," said Diantha, eagerly, "but if it was merely a girl's club home, the rent and fixtures would be much less.A home could be built, with thirty bedrooms--and all necessary conveniences--for $7,000.
I've asked Mr.and Mrs.Porne about it; and the furnishing needn't cost over $2,000 if it was very plain.Ten per cent.of that is a rent of $900 you see.""I see," said her mother."Better say a thousand.I guess it could be done for that."So they set down rent, $1,000.
"There have to be five paid helpers in the house," Diantha went on, "the cook, the laundress, the two maids, and the matron.She must buy and manage.She could be one of their mothers or aunts."Mrs.Bell smiled."Do you really imagine, Diantha, that Mrs.
O'Shaughnessy or Mrs.Yon Yonson can manage a house like this as you can?"Diantha flushed a little."No, mother, of course not.But I am keeping very full reports of all the work.Just the schedule of labor--the hours--the exact things done.One laundress, with machinery, can wash for thirty-five, (its only six a day you see), and the amount is regulated; about six dozen a day, and all the flat work mangled.
"In a Girl's Club alone the cook has all day off, as it were; she can do the down stairs cleaning.And the two maids have only table service and bedrooms.""Thirty-five bedrooms?"
"Yes.But two girls together, who know how, can do a room in 8minutes--easily.They are small and simple you see.Make the bed, shake the mats, wipe the floors and windows,--you watch them!""I have watched them," the mother admitted."They are as quick as--as mill-workers!""Well," pursued Diantha, "they spend three hours on dishes and tables, and seven on cleaning.The bedrooms take 280 minutes; that's nearly five hours.The other two are for the bath rooms, halls, stairs, downstairs windows, and so on.That's all right.Then I'm keeping the menus--just what I furnish and what it costs.Anybody could order and manage when it was all set down for her.And you see--as you have figured it--they'd have over $500 leeway to buy the furniture if they were allowed to.""Yes," Mrs.Bell admitted, "_if_ the rent was what you allow, and _if_they all work all the time!"
"That's the hitch, of course.But mother; the girls who don't have steady jobs do work by the hour, and that brings in more, on the whole.
