I want to be near to them--to
help them. I want to do something--oh, I should like so to speak!"
"We should be glad to have you make a few remarks at present," Mrs.
Farrinder declared, with a punctuality which revealed the faculty of
presiding.
"Oh dear, no, I can't speak; I have none of that sort of talent. I have
no self-possession, no eloquence; I can't put three words together. But
I do want to contribute."
"What _have_ you got?" Mrs. Farrinder inquired, looking at her
interlocutress, up and down, with the eye of business, in which there
was a certain chill. "Have you got money?"
Olive was so agitated for the moment with the hope that this great woman
would approve of her on the financial side that she took no time to
reflect that some other quality might, in courtesy, have been suggested.
But she confessed to possessing a certain capital, and the tone seemed
rich and deep in which Mrs. Farrinder said to her, "Then contribute
that!" She was so good as to develop this idea, and her picture of the
part Miss Chancellor might play by making liberal donations to a fund
for the diffusion among the women of America of a more adequate
conception of their public and private rights--a fund her adviser had
herself lately inaugurated--this bold, rapid sketch had the vividness
which characterised the speaker's most successful public efforts.
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