“The dinner-bell of the house!” said Hen, sotto voce, as the orator sat down, smiling tiredly amid familiar applause.  “Don’t be discouraged yet, Cally.”

Director Pond, having been most flatteringly introduced, received an ovation, half for the man and his work, half from the wish of a kindly people to bid the stranger welcome.  He spoke half as long as the Mayor, and said four times as much:  so much space did he save by saying nothing whatever about the fair women of the Southland, and by absolutely avoiding all metaphors, tropes, synecdoches, or anacolutha.  Mr. Pond assaulted the Mayor’s apotheosis of charity, particularly as applied to his own institution.  He described the Settlement, not as a dispensary for old clothes, but as a cultivated personality, an enlightened elder brother gone to live with the poor.  It aspired to enrich life through living, said he, to bring light to the disinherited and the gift of a wider horizon....

Mr. Pond followed his thought with more imagination than one might have thought him to possess, and with a glow on his dark face such as had not been observed there the other day.  Cally, from the next to the last row, listened attentively enough; she recalled that she would see Mr. Pond this evening, perhaps sit next to him, at mamma’s Settlement dinner.  However, she reserved her chief interest for Hen’s friend V.V., who was so merciless in his attitude toward those who were not poor.  Mr. Pond spoke straightforwardly, not to say bluntly.  But she pictured Vivian as shaking the rafters with his shameless homicides and God-pity-yous....

“Once the bread and meat question’s settled, money is of secondary importance,” said the Director’s deep voice.  “Let’s get that well into our heads.  What the poor ask is that they shall not be born under disadvantages which the labor of their lifetimes can never remove....”

Only these two speakers had been announced.  When Pond sat down the formal exercises were over.  But as his applause died away, the president of the club rose again, sure enough,—­while Henrietta excitedly nudged Carlisle,—­and announced an added speaker, a guest of the club to-day, whom she described as the young father of the Settlement.  The president—­a tall, placid-faced woman, with a finely cut chin and a magnificent crown of silver hair—­had something to say about the spirit of pure idealism; and was sure that the members would be glad to hear remarks on the subject of the day from young Dr. Vivian, the missionary doctor of the Dabney House....

The few kind words elicited somewhat perfunctory plaudits, despite Hen Cooney’s single-handed attempt to stampede them into a triumph.  The Clubbers, truth to tell, were by now disposed to leave oratory and the uplift for small-talk and tea.

“There he is!” said Hen, clapping splendidly.