ROUNDING OUT ANOTHER YEAR
It may have been well for Beth Baldwin’s advancement in her studies and
for her financial prosperity, that the foregoing incidents had taken
place. It shut the young girl more within herself and left her mind
freer for study and work.
Those girls who were sorry and ashamed because of countenancing a mean
act, even to a slight degree, tried at first to shower favors upon
the occupant of Number Eighty, South Wing; at least, they all brought
her work for her needle. But Beth knew her friends now--there was no
question of that. They were few, and they were loyal, but they took up
very little of Beth’s time.
As the term progressed she secured other and better paying occupation
for her free hours, and outside of school. But she heard nothing more
from Mrs. Ricardo Severn nor of the lost sunburst.
Molly and she sometimes talked about it. The mystery, if not the
suspicion, still overhung Beth. She was inclined to believe that the
foreign maid might know more about the disappearance of the sunburst
than anybody else.
“She may not have stolen it because she wished to profit financially by
the deed,” Beth said to Molly. “But for some reason she always showed
her dislike for me, and she may have done this deliberately to ruin me
in Mrs. Severn’s estimation.”
“I don’t know who else would have done it--unless it was that parrot
you tell about,” Molly said, laughing shortly.
Beth did not go home for the Christmas holidays because of her outside
work, and at Easter, the intermission was too short to make a visit to
Hudsonvale worth while.
News from home continued to be encouraging throughout the school year.
Mr. Baldwin steadily improved in health, for he worked out of doors. He
never went back to the Locomotive Works, but the family managed very
well, indeed. There was hope of something being done with one of his
inventions. Larry Haven had an interest in that, and Beth knew that
Larry had supplied the funds for the patent fees and other necessary
expenses connected with the matter.
On her part, Beth was doing splendidly. Miss Hammersly was vastly
pleased with her standing in her classes. From the time they had
visited Mrs. Ricardo Severn--and Mr. Montague--together, Beth and the
school principal had been very good friends, indeed. Miss Hammersly
seldom displayed so much affection for any pupil as she did for Beth.
Molly was doing well, too, and at the close of the second year in June
Beth stood first in her class and Molly was not far down on the roster.
“But it never _would_ have happened, Bethesda, if it hadn’t been for
you. I was ashamed to be left so far behind a girl who had so much on
her hands when I had so little. But I am afraid it has made me very
serious-minded,” and she shook her head gloomily.
“Oh, nonsense, Jolly Molly!” laughed Beth. “You will never be a ‘grave
and reverend seignior’--and because of more than the disbarment of sex.
A _senior_ you will be; but always a jolly one.”
“Nay, nay, my child!” quoth Molly. “When I come back to Rivercliff
next autumn, I shall begin signing myself, ‘J. Molly Granger.’ I shall
abandon my full name, and let my jocundity be represented by an initial
only.”
When Beth went to Hambro that second summer, however, for a brief visit
with Molly and the aunts, she could not descry much change in her chum.
The summer was a busy one and a happy one for Beth. Her mother had held
together the customers Beth had obtained the year previous. Indeed,
there was a neat sign on the front door of the Bemis Street cottage,
and almost daily carriages and automobiles from the better residential
section of the town stopped before the house. Ella was learning to help
in the work, too, and little Prissy was becoming a perfect housewife.
The twins, Ferd and Fred, were sturdy youngsters, going to school and
being helpful in vacation time in the garden. Marcus was a manly fellow
and--whisper!--he had actually bought a safety razor!
That summer Beth found that she was more popular than ever in her home
town. Mr. Lomax asked her to meet his class of girls who would graduate
from the high school the next year, and tell them something about what
it meant to attend a boarding school. It was at a lawn party, and a
good many older people were present.
Beth did her best to inspire the girls with a desire to do as she
had done. Some of them would have to follow her methods to a certain
extent, for their parents were too poor to pay their full tuition at
any school or seminary.
“I believe the prize is worth the work entailed, however,” Beth said,
in the course of her simple address. “If I could not go back for my
final year at Rivercliff I should feel well repaid for my struggle thus
far. But if I am allowed to finish my course, I know I shall be better
able to face the world and make my own way in it than I possibly could
do if I had been prepared by any other means.
“The business college course is cheap and quickly gained; but the
classical and English courses in a properly conducted school which
confers an academic degree fit one for a better and higher position in
business or professional life.”
Rather to her chagrin, but to Ella’s great delight, the county paper
printed Beth’s speech in part. The flyaway sister went around repeating
extracts from it, and proclaiming to all who would listen that Beth was
bound to be an orator.
“A lecturer, anyway,” she insisted. “Our Beth will soon adorn the
platform. In spectacles and a cap and gown, she will lead her sisters
in charges for women’s rights, lecture on the noise nuisance, plead
before legislatures for freedom from the trammels of fashion----
“By the way, B. B., Larry says that frock of yours is just stunning.”
“Oh, does he?” returned her sister, placidly.
“Yes. I think you are snubbing Larry.”
“I have no time for boys,” responded Beth.
“Boys! No less!”
“Larry is a boy to me,” Beth declared, in her very haughtiest way.
“I don’t care,” said Ella, mischievously. “He is beginning to come to
me for comfort when you throw him down.”
It really did seem as though Larry Haven was striving to show Beth
that he had not lost his interest in her or in her career. When Beth
first came home that second summer, Larry was frequently at the Baldwin
cottage. Whether Beth actually snubbed him, or not, as Ella said, he
disappeared soon after, going away for a long outing with Mrs. Haven;
so the Baldwins did not see him again until Beth had gone back to
Rivercliff in September.
Rather to Beth’s surprise, Larry wrote to her soon after she reached
school--something he had not done for fully a year and a half. The
letter sounded just as though their old intimacy had never been broken,
and that the young lawyer was still quite as much her friend and
well-wisher as ever.
She was, for some time, undecided whether to answer or not, and how to
answer. But finally she replied in a pleasant, brief letter. Larry’s
epistle was like himself--exuberant:
“The Mater lugged me around from one watering place to another this
summer--there was no getting away from her, poor dear!--and kept me
at it so late that you had flitted from the home nest on Bemis Street
when I got back to Hudsonvale and my clamoring clients. I never go
away on a vacation without expecting to find the heaped-up bodies
of exhausted and desperate clients before my office door in the
Hudsonvale Block. However, all I found were several insistent roaches
from the bakery downstairs and heaps of dust, for I declare, Devine
had not been in to clean up for a month!
“What I started to tell you about, Beth, was a girl I met at
Saratoga. Fact is, it was the second time I had met her. I am almost
tempted to declare it was the third. I spoke to you once of Miss
Emeline Freylinghausen. Do you remember the girl who passed me coming
out of Rivercliff School when I was going in the day I called to see
you? Do you remember her? You said she was a servant, just discharged.
“Well, if you could once see Miss Freylinghausen, you’d say she was
the speaking image of that person--that maid-servant! I had met Miss
Freylinghausen in New York; and now I have seen a good bit of her at
Saratoga. She is an odd girl--frank, I should say, and rather blunt
in speech--but not at all the sort of girl that one could put this
question to: ‘Have you ever been a servant-maid?’ Ha! ha! Ho! ho! and
likewise He! he! Fancy asking that of one of the Freylinghausens of
Philadelphia!
“Yet, to tell the truth, Beth, that was exactly what I was tempted
to ask. Not particularly because Miss Freylinghausen looks so much
like that discharged maid I saw at Rivercliff, but because the
Philadelphia heiress has taken up what she calls a serious work in
life. It’s quite the fad, I believe, nowadays for girls like her to
do social work and the like. She has a hobby, and has interested the
Mater in it, too. At least, I hear that Miss Freylinghausen is to
appear at Hudsonvale some time this coming winter to prance a little
on her hobby-horse for the delectation of the Hudsonvale ladies.”
A good deal more there was in the same strain in Larry’s sprightly
letter; and it was all interesting to Beth. But this about Miss
Freylinghausen and her resemblance to Cynthia Fogg, was what impressed
Beth the most; for she chanced to remember now that it was Maude
Grimshaw who had first noticed that resemblance between Cynthia and the
heiress to the Freylinghausen millions.
Beth had not heard from Cynthia since the year before. That odd girl
seemed to have quite dropped out of her life; yet somehow Beth had a
feeling that they would meet again. Madam Hammersly had told Beth once
that no holiday went by but that she received a card or some little
remembrance from Cynthia; but an address was never added to the strange
girl’s signature.
As for Maude Grimshaw, she did not appear at Rivercliff at the opening
of this fall semester. It was whispered that her marks had been so low
the spring previous that she could not have gone on with her class
without many conditions, and would have been dropped before Christmas.
So there passed out of Beth’s school life a very unpleasant and
annoying influence. Yet, who was to say that Maude Grimshaw’s treatment
of the girl from Hudsonvale had not been good discipline for the
latter?