She liked women, anyhow, and had the deepest sympathy for their struggle to arrange in a decent pattern the crude masculine and crude childish raw material of their home-lives. She liked too the respect of these women for her, the way they all asked her advice, and saved up perplexities for her to solve. Today, for instance, she had scarcely taken out her thimble when Mrs. Prouty passed over a sample of blue material to ask whether it was really linen as claimed—when anybody with an eye in her head could see that it was not even a very good imitation. After that, Mrs. Merritt said she had noticed that Paisley effects were coming in. Would it be possible to drape one of those old shawls—she had a lovely one from her grandmother—to make a cloak—to simulate the wide-sleeved effect—without cutting it, you know—of course you wouldn’t want to cut it!
Mrs. Knapp said she would think it over, and as she rapidly basted the collar on the child’s dress she was making, she concentrated her inner vision on the problem. She saw it as though it were there—the great square of richly patterned fabric. She draped it in imagination this way and that. No, that would be too bungling at the neck—perhaps drawn up in the middle. …
They felt her absorption and preserved a respectful silence, sewing and glancing up occasionally at her inward-looking face to see how she was progressing. Their own minds were quite relaxed and vacant. Mrs. Knapp had taken up the problem. What need for anyone else to think of it? They had such confidence in Mrs. Knapp.
Presently, “I believe you could do it this way, Mrs. Merritt,” she said. “Mrs. Anderson, hand me that piece of sateen, will you, please. See, this is your shawl. You make a fold in the middle, so, halfway up—and catch it between with a. …” They laid down their work to give their whole attention to her explanation, their eyes following her fingers, their minds accepting her conclusions without question.
She felt very happy, very warm, very kind. She loved being able to help Mrs. Merritt out this way. Dr. Merritt was such a splendid doctor and so good always to Henry and Helen. And she loved helping somebody to make use of something, to rescue something fine, as she had rescued the sofa. It would be a beautiful, beautiful cloak, especially with Mrs. Merritt’s mink neckpiece made over into a collar, a detail that came into her mind like an inspiration as she talked.
Yes, she was very happy the afternoons when the Guild met.
Mr. Prouty usually brought his rosy-gilled face and round collar into the Guild Room before the group broke up and chatted with the ladies over the cup of tea which ended their meetings. He had something on his mind today—that was evident to every one of those married women the instant he stepped into the room. But he did not bring it out at once, making pleasant conversation with the preoccupied dexterity of an elderly clergyman. As he talked, he looked often at Mrs. Knapp’s dark intense face, bent over her work. She never stopped for tea. And when he said in his well-known, colloquial, facetious way, “Ladies, I’ve got a big job for you. Take a brace. I’m going to shoot!” it was towards Mrs. Knapp that he spoke.
He tried to address himself to them all equally as he made his appeal, but unconsciously he turned almost constantly to the keen attentive eyes which never left his for an instant as he talked. He spoke earnestly, partly because he feared lest the Presbyterians might steal a march on him, and partly because of a very real sympathy with the wretched children whose needs he was describing. When he finished, they all waited for Mrs. Knapp to speak.
She said firmly, “There’s just one thing to do. A good visiting nurse attached to our parish work is the only way we could get anywhere. Anything else—baskets of food, volunteer visiting—they never amount to a row of pins.”
The feeble, amateur, fumbling plans which they were beginning to formulate fell to earth. But they were aghast at her.
“A nurse! How ever could we get the money to pay one?”
“Only big-city parishes can hope to. …”
“We could if we tried!” she said, quelling them by her accent. She looked around at them with burning eyes. She was like a falcon in a barnyard. “A visiting nurse would cost—let us say a thousand a year.”
“Oh, more than that!” cried Mr. Prouty.
“Not if we supplied her with lodging and heat. Why couldn’t we arrange the little storeroom at the head of the stairs here in the Parish House for a bedroom for her? We could. …”
“How could you heat it? There’s no radiator there.”
“There’s a steam-riser goes through that room. I noticed it when we were putting the folding chairs away last week. That would make it warm enough. We could furnish it by contributions, without its costing a cent in cash. Everybody has at least one piece of furniture she could spare from her house—in such a cause. About the pay, now. We have more than four hundred dollars in the Ladies’ Guild Treasury, and next Christmas our Bazaar ought to bring in two hundred more; it always does.
