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 each Wednesday, 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 father and 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 have been 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!