“It is great sport to see her take the stump, as I call it, and hold forth on woman suffrage. She talks beautifully, is so earnest and looks so sweet, and, as mumsie says, knows so little about it from a commonsense point of view. But when Cynthia Loretto suddenly appears and squelches her eloquence by witheringly ordering her to do something for her,—she bosses her dreadfully,—poor Jan drops from her pedestal and crawls about with the meekness of a mouse for the rest of the day. “I was afraid my dreams of teaching liberty were doomed to oblivion, for there don’t seem to be any girls about to form a club, when one day, while reading the paper, an inspiration came. _Fi-fo-fum_, I have written to Mrs. Van Vorst, and she is going to send me three little slum boys, and I am not only going to give them the joy-time of their lives, but teach them ‘Liberty and Humanity—your best.’ When I asked Mr. Banker if there would be any objection to having these little waifs, he not only consented, but said he would pay their way up here. Isn’t that the dandiest thing going? “Mother objected at first, but when I said I would teach them to wash the dishes—how I hate that job!—and to do chores about the house, she only said, ‘Well, you will have to make the bread then, for three hulking boys will eat a cartful,’—you know mother is the bread-maker. Then her eyes twinkled, and I had to hug her good and tight, for I knew she was just testing my ‘I can’ motto. “Janet thought the idea fine, but when Cynthia Loretto heard of it she declared that she hated boys, they were such horrid, smelly things,—one would have thought they were weeds,—and that _she_ would not have them in the house. Well, I was not going to be bossed by her, so promptly told her in my bestest manner—I am always very cool and sweet when _awfully mad_—what Mr. Banker had said. Well, that silenced _her_, but I can foresee that she will make trouble for my little liberty kids, for that’s what they’re going to be. “Did I tell you that Cynthia is an artist? Her studio is up in the little square cupola, or tower that crowns the house. Here she paints, and sleeps until all hours of the morning, for she slumbers in a beauty-mask—Janet let that out—and it has to be kept on until noon. Janet has to bring up her coffee every morning. At dinner my lady with ‘the manner’ and artistic temperament appears in a freakish get-up. Yesterday she was a Neapolitan maiden in a red skirt and blue bodice, with a rug for an apron, and a white cloth on her head. She dresses this way to create atmosphere, she declares, as she is her own model, and paints herself in a big mirror, that she got Sam to lug up from one of the lower rooms.