But Bill's apology was somewhat awkward. It appeared under the caption, _Well-meaning but Mis-informed and Misguided Philanthropists_, and sounded very much like betting the Coral Strand Missionary Circle a new hat that the $160 they had raised during the preceding year would have shriveled by the time it reached its destination until it would buy no more than $1.60 worth of shoes for the naked heathen babies.
The special meeting followed; for, regardless of the truth or falsity of Bill's charges, the cause of foreign missions had received a body-blow. The community--never over-enthusiastic on the subject--was now equipped with a full-fledged excuse for refusing to make any further contributions. A flimsy excuse, to be sure, but the flimsier an excuse is, the better it serves its purpose.
It soon proved to be the sense of the meeting that something of a public nature must be done to recover the lost prestige of the Coral Strand Missionary Circle, and to counteract the insidious effects of "that Busby man's dastardly attack on the fair name and fame of the circle."
Several plans were suggested and discussed and discarded before Mrs. Westfall considered that the psychological moment had arrived to spring on the meeting an idea that had come to her in the night, undoubtedly in answer to her earnest prayer for guidance, but at last she stood before her dear sisters, faintly flushed with enthusiasm and holding in her hand a pink folder with which she gesticulated from time to time as she made a few introductory remarks. Finally she opened the folder and read from beginning to end the descriptive matter concerning the Inter-State Correspondence School course in _Philanthropy--the Science of Giving_. She read selected quotations from the world's most cheerful givers: from Andrew Carnegie's essay on _Gainful Giving_, from Hettie Green's monograph on _Making Every Cent Count_ and from other of the authorities.
"My idea," she went on to explain as she laid aside the pink folder, "is to have the Coral Strand Missionary Circle as a body, take this course, so that hereafter we shall be known as a society of Graduate Philanthropists!"
A storm of discussion followed, but above its raging the nasal tones of Mrs. Electa Mandeville could be heard distinctly.