Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/41

Rh "And clothes! What do you think we better do?"

"You have no immediate relatives, as I remember?" Mr. Dodge mused.

"None but our great-aunt, Miss Pelham," Ken said, "and she lives in Los Angeles."

"She's very old, too," Phil said, "and lives in a tiny house. She's not at all well off; we should n't want to bother her. And there is Uncle Lewis."

"Oh, him!" said Ken, gloomily.

"It takes three months even to get an answer from a letter to him," Felicia explained. "He's in the Philippines, doing something to Ignorants.'

"Igorrotes, Phil," Ken muttered.

"He sounds unpromising," Mr. Dodge sighed. "And there are no friends who would be sufficiently interested in your problem to open either their doors or their pocket-books?"

"We don't know many people here," Felicia said. "Mother has n't gone out very much for several years."

Ken flushed. "And we'd rather people did n't open anything to us, anyhow," he said.

"Except, perhaps, their hearts," Mr. Dodge