CHAPTER XIIITHE SUNNY SIDE
“Peek-a-boo!”
Beth started from her chair, hastily wiped her eyes, and turned to see Molly Granger peering in at the door of the passage between the two rooms.
“Oh, my dear!” cried Beth, with half a sob. “I thought you had gone.”
“Did you hear me bang the door?” demanded Molly, standing culpritwise before her chum with her hands behind her back. “Well! when that door is bangedit doesn’t latch! There was method in my madness.”
“Goodness!”
“So you thought I had truly gone and wouldn’t hear all that nasty Princess Fancyfoot had to say?”
“Why—why—— Did you?”
“Did I what?” asked Molly.
“Hear her?”
“I listened,” proclaimed Molly, unblushingly. “I glory in the fact. I am an eavesdropper. Byso doing I learned good instead of evil about myself. And I learned something else.”
Beth was silent.
“I learned what a perfectly loyal friend you are, Beth Baldwin! You are a dear!” and Molly flung her arms about the other’s neck and kissed her warmly. Beth returned the caress; she had never met a girl before whom she found as dear as this jolly creature.
“What a really hateful thing that Maude Grimshaw is!” said the new pupil, after a pause.
“What did I tell you?” cried Molly. “And so sneering! Not that what she says can hurtus. Maybe she would have given you a tidy sum to change rooms with Laura Hedden.”
Beth laughed and tossed her head. “I’ll get money other ways—or go without,” she said.
“Is it really a fact that you need to earn money if you stay here in school? Are your folks as poor as you told Maude?” asked Molly, hesitatingly.
“I’m all right for a year. But after that—the deluge!” Beth replied.
“Well! that is too far ahead to worry about. Lots of things can happen in a year,” agreed the happy-go-lucky Molly. “Maybe some rich old uncle will die and leave you money.”
“But there isn’t any rich uncle—nor any uncle of any kind,” laughed Beth.
“Well! that’s good, too,” declared the optimistic Molly. “There won’t be any poor uncle, then, to come and live on your folks. Always be thankful!”
Jolly Molly’s sunny disposition was just the tonic Beth needed after her interview with Maude Grimshaw. In fact, a naturally serious and thoughtful girl like Beth easily found her counterpart in Molly Granger.
“We live on the sunny side of the street,” Molly frequently proclaimed. “So why not smile? Send dull Grouch flying to the tall timber. ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow’—there are lessons!”
Which was not literally true, for this was said on a Saturday. That day Molly spent in introducing her new chum to all the nice girls she knew. As, after all, “nice” was a very elastic word with Molly Granger, the girls Beth met were of all sorts.
Yet they had one thing in common. They were all well dressed. Beth saw plainly that her simple wardrobe, prepared by her mother with such tender care and love, was going to set her a little apart from the other girls, and mark her as from another world than theirs. Some of the good friends of Molly, even, looked askance at Beth’s gingham.
However, Beth determined to say nothing in her letter, which she retired to her own room to write, about this condition of affairs. She put nothing but love and happiness in the epistle to the family at home, although she had overheard one girl ask Molly:
“Say! does she wear that ugly calico because she likes it or on a bet?”
The jolly girl, however, had foreseen the comments and the amazement of her friends over Beth’s plain clothes; and wherever she could, she repeated (and the story lost nothing in her telling) the interview Beth had had with Maude Grimshaw.
“That’s the sort of girl Beth Baldwin is,” Molly said, out of her new chum’s hearing, of course. “She is true blue, she is! And it isn’t that she doesn’t need the money. She does. She’s only got enough to pay for this first year’s schooling, she tells me; and she is determined to get three years at Rivercliff in order to teach. I know she’s the kind of girl who will succeed. Most of us here at Rivercliff are a lazy pack——”
“Speak for yourself, Jolly Molly!” cried one.
“That’s all right, Bertha Pilling. I don’t have to hire a prime to come in every morning and put a cold key down the neck of my nightgown to get me out of bed in time for breakfast,” shot backMolly, and the other girls giggled delightedly, for Bertha was a lie-abed.
“At any rate,” Molly continued, “Beth wants to earn all she can toward her next year’s tuition in these two semesters.”
“Why! what can a girl like her do?” demanded a senior. “Fancy trying to earn money at Rivercliff. She might borrow it.”
“Beth Baldwin isn’t of the borrowing kind,” said Molly, staunchly. “She’s earned some money this summer. She told me so.”
“What doing? Picking berries?” cried one girl. “She comes from the country, doesn’t she? I have a cousin who lives on a farm, and she earned six dollars one summer picking berries. Her father put enough more to it to pay for a piano and Madge is always telling about her piano that she earned by picking berries!”
When the laughter over this story had passed, Molly said:
“Why, Beth Baldwin posed for an artist. She told me the woman used her in painting a magazine cover.”
“What magazine?” demanded the senior, suddenly diving for the magazine shelf of her study table. “I thought I’d seen that face before.”
“Yes,” said Molly, whimsically. “Beth wears her face in front at present.”
“Smarty! Miss Baldwin has rather a striking phiz.”
“Hasn’t she?” cried the enthusiastic Molly.
“And here she is!” exclaimed another girl, who had likewise been going over the magazines. “No mistaking it for anybody else. That’s Miss Baldwin, sure enough,” and she showed the cover of the magazine so that all could see.
“How clever!” drawled another girl. “Fancy posing for a famous artist.”
Molly was delighted that she had interested these girls—some of the wealthiest in the school—in her chum. But a very unpleasant experience was to arise out of the event for Beth. That, however, was in the future.
Beth had time in this first very busy day at the school to think of Cynthia Fogg; but it was not until Sunday morning that she saw the freckled girl again.
On Sunday morning the rising bells rang an hour later than on other days. Beth, having entirely recovered from the weariness caused by her journey and her broken sleep on the boat, awoke at her usual time—and they had been early risers at the little cottage on Bemis Street. Mr. Baldwin always went to the locomotive works at half-past six.
The sun was just peering above the eastern hills.Beth’s windows faced the south and the farther shore of the river. Mist was rising from the surface of the stream, and the few boats plying up and down the current were scarcely outlined in it.
Up on the bluff the air was clear enough, and the banks of red and yellow branches across the river were beautiful in appearance. Up-stream Beth could see tall pillars of smoke rising through the fog from the factory chimneys at Jackson City—not as many of them smoking as usual, however, because of the day.
The air was too sharp for her to stand at the window for long; she went about her bath and her dressing so as not to arouse Molly in the next room. She put on the dress she had traveled in. She thought she would wear that on Sundays. Then she ventured out of her room and along the corridors to the front stairway.
She saw nobody, nor did she hear anybody until she had descended to the second floor, and there, as she started down the staircase, she heard a mighty yawn from the hall below.
Beth peered over the balustrade. There was somebody stirring below and in a moment she caught sight of a girl in cap and apron, waving a feather-duster at the pictures as though she expected, by so doing, to conjure the dust off of them.
Beth went down quietly, intending to go out by the front door; but at the bottom of the flight of stairs she came face to face with the maid, and saw that it was Cynthia Fogg.
“My aunt!” ejaculated the freckled girl, smiling as though she really was glad to see Beth. “Isn’t this the greatest place you were ever in?”
“I think it’s quite wonderful,” admitted Beth.
“So many girls! I never dreamed of so many before—never!” laughed Cynthia.
Beth wondered what kind of asylum it was from which Cynthia had run away.
“How do they treat you, Beth Baldwin?” asked the maid, curiously.
“Oh, very nicely—those to whom I have been introduced,” Beth replied.
“Don’t you find them proud and stuck up at all?” was the shrewd query that followed.
“Well—there may be some who are addicted to that sin,” laughed Beth.
“They tell me there are none but rich girls here,” went on Cynthia Fogg. “Philo Grimshaw’s daughter is one. Philo Grimshaw, you know, is the big soap manufacturer. The Grimshaws never let people forget that they have money, and people can never forget how the money is obtained,” and Cynthia’s mellow laugh did not sound as kind as usual.
Beth thought it not right to discuss the characters of the girls with one of the maids. Perhaps Miss Hammersly or the madam would not like it. So the girl from Hudsonvale said:
“Do you like the madam, Cynthia?”
Cynthia looked up from her dusting, and there was a queer look on her features. “Hist!” she said. “Here she comes. Watch her.”
Beth had not heard her coming, but looking upward she saw the madam at the head of the stairs. She had not met her since the first evening when she and Molly, with Cynthia Fogg, had had their interview with her. Now, while Madam Hammersly was descending the staircase, Beth had a better opportunity to scrutinize her.
She certainly was a very prim old lady. She was dressed in rustling silk, every fold of which lay just so. Her cap was wonderful in its starchiness; the lace at her throat and wrists was beautiful. In one hand she carried a fine cambric handkerchief which, now and then as she descended the stairs, she touched to the spindles of the railing or flirted into the carvings, glancing at it sharply through her eyeglasses to see if any dust lurked there.
Cynthia winked drolly at Beth. “If she catches us leaving anything undone,” whispered the freckled girl, “good-night!”
Beth stepped aside, waiting to greet the madam when she reached the hall. The lady greeted her with a smile.
“Good morning, Miss Baldwin. You are an early riser,” she said.
“Yes, Madam. I am used to getting up early. May I go out upon the grounds?” Beth asked.
“Surely. Take a run about the estate. There is just frost enough in the air to make it invigorating.”
Then, as Beth turned toward the door, she heard the madam say to Cynthia:
“There is dust on the balustrade. See my handkerchief, girl? Begin at the top of the flight and come down carefully. I will have thoroughness from you girls, or I will have nothing.”
Beth heard Cynthia utter a faint groan. Then she slipped out of the door into the open air.