Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/288

270 girls from Miss Crawdon’s school had been called upon to help in various ways. In the end the Bazaar had been a great success, and after all expenses were paid, three hundred dollars remained for the beneficiaries. But, alas! the money was put in the hands of Brenda for safe-keeping, and  the temptation to show her independence proved too strong. Without the knowledge of the others, who were equally interested, she took two hundred dollars of the money to  the North End to show to Mrs. Rosa, the poor Portuguese  woman, for whom they hoped to expend the money. The plan was to remove Mrs. Rosa and her family to Shiloh,  a country town, where people in the first stages of consumption were often greatly helped, or even cured. The money raised at the Bazaar was to establish the family in  a home of their own, and the change was expected to  benefit the children as much as the mother.

When Mrs. Rosa saw the two hundred-dollar bills she begged Brenda to let her keep it in the house over night,  and Brenda had weakly consented. Soon after her departure from Mrs. Rosa’s, a young man of Mrs. Rosa’s nationality had appeared, who claimed the payment of a  large debt which he said Mrs. Rosa had owed his mother. On this pretext he had taken the two hundred dollars from the sick woman, and had then gone away from Boston. The report was that he had gone to South America.

Brenda, of course, was very much blamed both by her own family and by all the girls who had interested themselves in the Bazaar. Poor Mrs. Rosa, indeed, might have suffered had not Julia come forward with an offer to