"Then, perhaps," he comfortably suggested, "it's a sign you're not intended
to get rid of it."
"What _do_ you mean?"
"Why don't you go on," he irresponsibly adventured further, "and establish
a Social Union?"
"Do you _mean_ it?"
"What was that notion of his"--they usually spoke of the minister
pronominally--"about getting the Savors going in a co-operative
boarding-house at Fall River? Putney said something about it."
Annie explained, as she had heard it from him, and from the Savors since
his death, the minister's scheme for a club, in which the members should
contribute the labour and the provisions, and should live cheaply and
wholesomely under the management of the Savors at first, and afterward
should continue them in charge, or not, as they chose. "He seemed to
have thought it out very carefully. But I supposed, of course, it was
unpractical."
"Was that why you were going in for it?" asked the doctor; and then he
spared her confusion in adding: "I don't see why it was unpractical. It
seems to me a very good notion for a Social Union. Why not try it here?
There isn't the same pressing necessity that there is in a big factory
town; but you have the money, and you have the Savors to make a beginning."
His tone was still half bantering; but it had become more and more serious,
so that she could say in earnest: "But the money is one of the drawbacks.
It was Mr. Peck's idea that the working people ought to do it all
themselves."
"Well, I should say that two-thirds of that money in the bank had come from
them. They turned out in great force to Mr. Brandreth's theatricals. And
wouldn't it be rather high-handed to use their money for anything but the
Union?"
"You don't suppose," said Annie hotly, "that I would spend a cent of it
on the grounds of that idiotic monument? I would pay for having it blown
up with dynamite! No, I can't have anything more to do with the wretched
affair. My touch is fatal." The doctor laughed, and she added: "Besides, I
believe most heartily with Mr. Peck that no person of means and leisure can
meet working people except in the odious character of a patron, and if I
didn't respect them, I respect myself too much for that. If I were ready to
go in with them and start the Social Union on his basis, by helping do
house-work--_scullion_-work--for it, and eating and living with them,
I might try; but I know from experience I'm not. I haven't the need, and to
pretend that I have, to forego my comforts and luxuries in a make-believe
that I haven't them, would be too ghastly a farce, and I won't."