CHAPTER XXVI
MEANWHILE, Betty and Rose had been making their weekly visit to Millville with no difficulty other than that of securing the fee of three dollars every seven days. With a dollar and five cents to make up regularly (including ten cents for the fare from Paulding to Millville), and a loss of fifteen cents every time bad weather compelled them to use the train to or from school, Betty’s savings became exhausted and she had to appeal to Tommy. The boy not only turned in his weekly fares at once, which always amounted to the full ninety cents, but also pressed upon Betty five dollars he had saved since the first of January with this contingency in mind. During all that time, he had purchased no materials for his magic. Such tricks as he hadn’t already the requisites for gave way to those he could perform with what he had in store or to those which cost nothing but a certain amount of vigilance and perseverance in seeing that nothing was thrown away by any of his friends that might serve his purpose.
Betty asked frankly for the money and took it in the same spirit. She was touched by Tommy’s faithfulness but not distressed. For she knew how very grateful he would be when June came to have had a share in the miracle. Then, too, Tommy’s helping with the deficit seemed only a part of the general felicity of the plan as it was now going on. Wednesday after Wednesday she and Rose slipped quietly out of the school building,and it looked as if they might continue so to do indefinitely. Except for Tommy, Betty didn’t think any of their schoolmates realized what they were doing. And even if someone should find out, no one would tell. And Rose Harrow being in it, no one would dream of feeling aggrieved that they should evade the rules in this manner. No one begrudged poor Rose any little gratification she might have. Dr. Vandegrift was very encouraging and kinder on each occasion. He continued to give them his scientific explanations of the progress of the cure, which were of absorbing interest, and which Betty strove to remember to relate to Tommy, who would have gotten so much more out of them than she or Rose was capable of doing.
Rose, indeed, was rather bored. Her enthusiasm flagged. But she enjoyed their weekly flight from school as an escapade and was always eagerly ready for it. That point of view secretly distressed and grieved Betty, but she did not remonstrate with the lively Rose. It was, she believed, all-important that the blind girl should be serene and untroubled in order that the treatment might have the most favorable conditions under which to operate. And if regarding the serious matter as a prank kept up her spirits, Betty certainly wouldn’t have a word to say against it. For already Rose declared, when questioned, that her eyes felt better and that the dark-gray obscurity that was her only vision was becoming silver gray.
And yet Betty herself was not wholly happy. She had her moments of thrilling exultation and always she had the consciousness of a great end. But though untroubled in the actual process of breaking away from school eachWednesday, in the intervals between the ventures she suffered from hours of extreme depression. Imperative necessity though it was, the girl hated the thought of deceiving Mr. Meadowcroft. At such times, her fear returned that her schoolmates would see what she was doing and believe it to be sheer mischief and that she was unfaithful to and unworthy of the friend of whom she had been so proud. Moreover, assured as she was of the essential rightness of her conduct and of his ultimate approval, it began, none the less, to present itself as a barrier between Mr. Meadowcroft and herself. Before Christmas, some of the happiest hours she had known had been spent with him. Now she felt uncomfortable in his presence with a sensation that was almost as poignant as guilt.
Happily, however, he didn’t appear to feel any change. He remained at school until four every day to look over to-morrow’s lesson, returning home by the half-past four train, and it was only occasionally that Betty saw him. Such spare moments as she had from her practising and from studying with Rose she devoted to Tommy and his magic; for she longed to make up to him so far as she might for being shut out of the secret. But when she met Mr. Meadowcroft at South Paulding by chance, he was so pleased to see her, so charmingly kind, so wholly unaware of any shadow between them that the girl’s heart failed her and it would seem as if she couldn’t go on. And she tried to avoid chance meetings and to fill her already crowded days with yet more duties.
But the imperative necessity of secrecy, while more painful as it concerned Mr. Meadowcroft, was far more critical as it regarded Rose’s parents and Betty’s fatherand aunt. Suspicion aroused in them might easily prove fatal to their whole wonderful plan. Simply to be compelled to go back and forth to school by the train would ruin everything, and there was always the risk of losing their privilege of walking by arriving home late. On Wednesdays, the girls usually ran a great part of the way to South Paulding in order to be home within five minutes of the usual hour. Wherefore, when, on the fifth Wednesday since Mr. Appleton’s illness had taken him from school (he was now convalescing), the girls stole out by the back way towards the station and found the walking very slippery, Betty was almost overcome by dismay. A few days’ mild weather had softened the snow and taken much of it away. But since morning the thermometer had dropped suddenly to 20 degrees, and there was a coating of ice over everything.
Rose thought it part of the sport. Clinging rather more closely than usual to Betty, she laughed gaily. Even when they went down together, she enjoyed it. But Betty’s brow was troubled: they would be greatly impeded in getting home. She dared not wait for the four-thirty, for to-day there was no sewing-circle. Aunt Sarah would be home and would ask why they had not taken the earlier train. And alas! Aunt Sarah was capable of almost anything in the way of thwarting or ruining plans!
After a second tumble, a suggestion flashed through Betty’s mind. She decided that they would let Aunt Sarah and Mrs. Harrow believe that they had started to walk and lost the early train before they realized how slippery it was, and had thus been compelled to wait for the later train. A few weeks earlier, Betty would havebeen unutterably shocked to contemplate such prevarication or indirection, but to-day she was grateful that such an helpful suggestion should have come to her. The only difficulty was that Mr. Meadowcroft took that train, and would wonder what had kept them so late. He might not ask, but he would naturally expect to be told. Betty didn’t feel she could do by him as she planned to do by Aunt Sarah and Mrs. Harrow. She hadn’t worried Rose by letting her know how loath she was to use such methods; and now she said only that they would slip into the train after Mr. Meadowcroft boarded it, sit in the back seat, get out first at South Paulding and be out of sight before he alighted. And again Rose felt it was part of the fun.
In the endeavor to do this, however, they nearly lost the train, for Mr. Meadowcroft did not appear. They waited until the last moment, then scrambled on in a manner that would have frightened Mrs. Harrow sadly. And all the way home and afterwards until she saw Tommy, Betty suffered extreme anxiety. Perhaps something had happened to Mr. Meadowcroft. Suppose he had fallen on the ice on the way to the station!