CHAPTER XXXVOCATIONAL
“Mydear child! How well you are looking!” drawled Mrs. Severn, just as though she had seen Beth only the week before and that their intercourse had been quite calm and placid.
Beth did not know just what to say; so, as Ella would have remarked, “she said it with a vengeance!” She stood perfectly still.
“My nephew, Roland, keeps me posted regarding you, my dear,” continued the lady.
“Ah—indeed? I have not seen Mr. Severn for a fortnight, I believe,” said Beth, feeling vastly uncomfortable.
“Oh, my dear! Then you haven’t heard the news,” cried Mrs. Severn.
“What news?” asked Beth.
“About poor Mr. Montague. About my poor parrot,” said the lady.
“I have heard nothing about the parrot—no,” admitted Beth.
“Why, we took up that heavy carpet in my room ten days ago and what do you think?”
“Oh, Mrs. Severn!” exclaimed Beth, suddenly interested and excited. “Did you find——?”
“Ever so many things I had missed—yes,” said the lady, complacently. “The poor dear had been taking and hiding things under the edge of the carpet, along the mopboard under the windows. That sunburst of mine was found right under the bay window. Wasn’t that funny?”
Beth thought of the grief and shame the loss of the sunburst had caused her, and she could not, for the life of her, extract an iota of humor from the fact.
“But that was just like the wretched creature,” went on Mrs. Severn. “Will you believe it? That parrot had deceived me for years and years. Quite twenty years I have owned him. But now I have sent him away for good.”
And the selfish old woman drove away, leaving Beth something to be thankful for, but feeling that Mrs. Ricardo Severn was a very unfeeling person.
The graduation of Beth and her classmates was really a very pretty occasion; Miss Hammersly declared (as usual) that no finer class of girls had ever left her rooftree.
Rivercliff was crowded on that day, and the great central room of the gymnasium was used for the dance and reception at night. Of course, everybody was present—including the perfect numberin aunts. Likewise, Mrs. Baldwin came as the guest of Mrs. Haven.
Really, to see and hear Mrs. Haven one might have thought that “our Beth” was her daughter instead of Priscilla Baldwin’s oldest child.
“And do you remember, Priscilla,” said Larry’s mother, wiping her eyes when the blue-ribboned diplomas were given out, “how we planned, years and years ago, that my Larry and your eldest girl should marry?”
“That was a long time ago,” said Mrs. Baldwin, rather primly.
“But they do make a wonderfully good looking couple together,” whispered Mrs. Haven a little later, when Larry stood with a group of the girls, which included another of the graduation day guests—Miss Freylinghausen. Cynthia had one arm around Beth and another around Molly, and looked to be enjoying herself.
Before the dancing began that evening, Larry sent up word to Number Eighty where Beth had served tea, to ask that the occupant of that room would give him a few moments of her time. And Beth tripped down in her new evening frock in answer to the summons. Evidently, Larry had laid his plans with wit and judgment. He led her into the madam’s room—and it was empty.
“See what I have for you to-night, Beth,” hesaid, eyeing her laughingly, yet admiringly. He opened the box he carried and displayed its contents.
“With the compliments and love,” he said, his voice shaking a little, “of Mrs. Euphemia Haven—God bless her! Your Great-grandmother’s corals, Beth. They are to be yours again. She never intended to keep them for herself, but wants you to have them back now to wear—and for your very own.”
Beth looked at him—looked away—tried to say something, and Larry added, softly:
“You can’t refuse them, Beth—you can’t. You would quite break the Mater’s heart, dear—and mine!”
“How long are you really going to teach school, Beth?” demanded Ella some weeks later, after Beth had been to the State capital and passed her examination before the school board.
“Two years at least, my dear.”
“My goodness! do you suppose Larry will ever wait that long?”
“Larry will have to wait, my dear,” said the elder sister, firmly. Then her eyes suddenly sparkled. “He must wait, at least, until he can accomplish one particular thing.”
“What is that?” the flyaway sister demanded.
“Until he can afford to pay the cook’s wages out of his earnings as a ‘limb o’ the law.’”
It was about this time, too, in the lazy summer following Beth’s graduation that she received a letter from Molly Granger, in which was the following:
“So he agrees we are to wait till Captain John comes home to marry Aunt Carrie, and then we shall have a double wedding. At least two of ‘the Granger girls’ will not die old maids.“I am awfully glad, Beth Baldwin, that you went to work for Mrs. Ricardo Severn. Otherwise, I am quite sure that I would never expect soon to sign myself, ‘Mrs. Roland Severn, née J. Molly Granger, no longer F. W.’”
“So he agrees we are to wait till Captain John comes home to marry Aunt Carrie, and then we shall have a double wedding. At least two of ‘the Granger girls’ will not die old maids.
“I am awfully glad, Beth Baldwin, that you went to work for Mrs. Ricardo Severn. Otherwise, I am quite sure that I would never expect soon to sign myself, ‘Mrs. Roland Severn, née J. Molly Granger, no longer F. W.’”
“What’s the good, I want to know,” said Marcus Baldwin, one night, evidently having thought hard and long upon the problem, “for you girls to go in for the highbrow ed. and then get married right smack off?”
“Not marrying ‘right smack off!’” denied Ella, vigorously. “Our Beth is going to teach at least two years.”
“Well, that jolly girl isn’t.”
“She’s going to teach after she is married, and so is Mr. Severn,” laughed Beth, “unless Mrs. RicardoSevern remembers him very liberally indeed.”
“Well, a whole lot of you higher-ed. girls do marry right off,” repeated Marcus.
“And why not? We’re better fitted for life, no matter what it brings to us, if we have had a good education. Oh,” declared Beth, now quite grown up, “I am not sorry that I fulfilled my resolve.”
THE END