Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/237

 a rare first edition, perhaps the most stirring event in his life in Middletown, had never aroused him to any thing like the eagerness with which he heard the Loyettes helplessly bemoaning their inability to do anything for their oldest child, Rosalie, a slim girl of seventeen. Her drawing-teacher at school had said that the child had an unusual gift for designing, and a manufacturer of wall-paper, who had seen some of her work on a visit to the Woodville factory, had confirmed this judgment and said that "something ought to be done for her."

"But what?" her parents wondered with an utter ignorance of the world outside of Woodville which astonished J. M.

"Why don't you send her to a school of design?" he asked.

"Vat is zat?" asked Papa Loyette blankly, and "We have no money," sighed Maman.

J. M. stirred himself, wrote to the director of a school of design in Albany, consulted the priest of the parish, sent some of Rosalie's work, and asked about scholarships. When a favorable answer came, he hurried to explain the matter to the Loyettes and offered to provide the four dollars a week necessary for her board at the Catholic Home for Working Girls, of which the priest had told him. He went to bed that night with his heart beating faster from the reflection of their agitated joy than it had done for years. He could not get to sleep for a long time, such a thrill of emotion did he get from each recollection of Maman Loyette's broad face bathed in tears of gratitude.

After this they fell into the way of asking him about all their problems, from the management of difficult