Up-stairs, bedrooms for fifty girls, and each
one shall have a closet, if possible. We begin the foundations in five or
six weeks--as soon as the frost is out."
Susan Bates cleared a larger space, and appropriated more knives and
forks and spoons, and went on in a lower tone for Marshall's ear alone.
Jane strained to catch her words. She, saw her father blush once,
slightly, and then smile, as if partly flustered--as Jane herself phrased
it.
"What a dear good old sentimental soul she is!" thought the girl. "I'll
bet a cent she is asking pa to put up a dormitory for boys on the other
side of the campus!"
Mrs. Bates presently carried Jane and her mother into the library,
leaving the men behind to contemplate a litter of disordered wineglasses
and dishevelled napkins, and to smoke themselves out, in the course of
half an hour, to the women.
Mrs. Bates's talk, here as heretofore, was frankly personal. On a
previous occasion she had talked to Rosy's mother about Rosy; now she
exacted that Rosy's mother should talk to her about her own boy Billy.
"The best boy in the world; his father says he's making a splendid
business man." She took a cabinet photograph from over the fireplace.
"There; this is the latest, but it doesn't do him any kind of justice."
"Well, he's got a real _good_ face," said Eliza Marshall.
"And a real good-looking face, too," rejoined his mother, quickly. "Jane,
dear, run up to my room and get the one before this--that's something
like; second drawer on the left.
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