CHAPTER XI
AUNT SARAH was out, but Betty attacked her practising vigorously and with conscientious regard to her weekly lesson. Nevertheless though she was in the middle of a march when her time was up, she rose from the stool at once, as she wouldn’t have ventured to do had Miss Pogany been about. But though she made all haste to get down to the Harrows’, the girl wasn’t, as heretofore, all eagerness.
For she had to ask Mrs. Harrow if she would be willing to call to see Mr. Meadowcroft. All the while she had practised, that alarming necessity had weighed vaguely upon her mind, and now that she was free to consider it, Betty’s heart grew cold. She didn’t know how she should ever endure it. Mrs. Harrow would be shocked and indignant and outraged, and quite likely she would feel that it was all her fault (as, indeed, it was) and would think her impertinent. The girl was sorely tempted to refrain from delivering the message. Since it was a foregone conclusion that Mrs. Harrow wouldn’t be willing to go to the Phillips house, why should Betty excite her for naught and perhaps spoil the half-hour which was all she would have with Rose? But she couldn’t deceive Mr. Meadowcroft. Neither could she tell him she had been unwilling or afraid to do what he had requested. There was nothing to do but to put it through.
Mrs. Harrow refused, indeed, and in no uncertainterms, to enter Mrs. Phillips’s mansion. She had never liked Mrs. Phillips; and since Rose’s illness she had come to dislike her with intensity. Mrs. Phillips was the only person in the village who hadn’t called since Rose had been stricken with blindness. She hadn’t even sent a servant to inquire at the door. Moreover, she was said to have made a cruel pun as to the “Harrowing affair.”
But Mrs. Harrow’s bitterness was all for her. She was kindness itself to Betty. She had always been fond of the girl, and the shock and strangeness of it being over, she appreciated what she had done for Rose, and was increasingly grateful. Rose hadn’t, so far as her mother could judge, had a moment of unhappiness since the afternoon she had started out with Betty looking like her old self. Indeed, she had never before seemed so ecstatically happy. To-day when Betty came in the girl was in the midst of a gay waltz on the piano that she hadn’t touched before for over six months, and Mrs. Harrow smiled affectionately as she squeezed Betty’s hand.
The following day after school Betty stopped to report her unsuccess to Mr. Meadowcroft. She softened the refusal as well as she could, and he asked no embarrassing questions. Quite likely he understood.
“Very well, then, I shall be obliged to go to see her,” he remarked surprisingly.
Betty looked at him incredulously.
“How about right now—would this be a favorable moment, Betty?” he asked.
“Why, I don’t know—I mean, yes, sir, Mrs. Harrow would be home, but——”
The girl raised her soft eyes deprecatingly. But Mr. Meadowcroft apparently did not heed their appeal. He started to wheel himself over to the speaking tube. Then he reached for his crutches, pulled himself up, and hobbled across the room on them, awkwardly and with the impression of painfulness, Betty white and breathless the while, with downcast eyes. He ordered the carriage brought to the side door at once.
He bade Betty wait, saying he would take her home first. But when they got in, he gave the man the order to drive straight to the Harrow cottage. Betty longed to protest, but, child as she was, she understood that she couldn’t do that.
“I’ll do my very best, Betty,” he assured her, “and if you want to know the result, I shall be back at the house about five—surely by quarter past. And if you want to run in, you shall hear all about it.”
“O, I do!” cried the girl eagerly. “I’ll be so very glad to come, and—O, Mr. Meadowcroft, you are so very good to do this. I shall always remember it—all my life.”
“Nonsense! it’s nothing at all,” he declared. “But I’ll do my level best.”
The victoria drew up at the gate. Meadowcroft got out and told the man to take Miss Pogany home and return here for him. As they turned, he waved his hat and smiled.
As she saw him toiling laboriously up the flagged walk, tears came to the girl’s eyes and a lump to her throat. Her first drive in a victoria made no impression upon her. She couldn’t even tell Aunt Sarah whetherit was comfortable or whether there were springs in the seat. The conviction that she had been riding beside a hero so filled her with wonder and awe that there was no place for lesser sensations.