“Of course it’s awful to suddenly drop from having your gowns from Paris, a maid, a private turnout, and keeping open house—or rather houses—and all that, to a flat somewhere in Brooklyn, with a sick mother, and trying to work off your music for a living,” said one shrill voice; “but then it is an awful bore, too, for us to have her on our minds. This concert is only the beginning, I suppose.” “Julia plays delightfully, and we all have more or less chamber music during the winter, and one of us might take her to Lenox or Newport this summer,” said another, in a reproving tone; “and then among us all there are plenty of children for her to teach.” “If she plays and sings for us all winter, that is sufficient reason why we shall be sick of her next summer,” said the first voice. “You know how it was with Mrs. Darcey Binks and her Creole songs. We thought we could not get enough of her. She thought she was settled here for life, and biff! the Spanish mandolin players knocked her out the second season. As for lessons, if you take up some one half out of charity, and then go South in the middle of a term, they will always whine about it, and you feel mean; a professional can take care of herself and always gets even, but doesn’t let you know it.” “I wish we could think of something newer than a concert, that would make a hit and a pot of money,” said Lucy Dean, not bragging of the fact that she had already asked Julia Garth to come and live with her, and been refused kindly but firmly. “What can you suggest, Brooke? you are always overflowing with ideas, even if some of them are too good for this world.” Brooke, thus challenged, half rose in her chair so that she faced both tables, and said: “I do not believe in offering Julia what she would accept as work and you consider as charity; it is false pretence on both sides! We can easily make up a Christmas purse for her among ourselves, without giving her the pain of the advertising of a benefit concert, and all the talk of it. Then when she has a chance to know where she stands,—her father only died a month ago, poor child,—I will get my father or yours” (motioning to Lucy) “to give her _real_ work for _real_ pay, and with no charitable tag hanging to it. She has kept household accounts and sometimes been her father’s private secretary. I saw her last week, and what she wants and is able to do is real work and plenty of it to make her forget, not charity coddling to make her remember.” “Mercy on me! don’t cut us up like cheese sandwiches, with your sarcasm!” ejaculated Lucy, “and clutch that chair so, as if you had claws. Your eyes remind me of a hawk that perches in a cage over in the park opposite my window, and glares all day long at the silly sparrows outside!”