"Uncle Dick won't mind if I'm as black as an Indian," said Betty confidently, spreading out her strong little brown right hand and eyeing it critically. "With all the traveling he's done, I guess he's seen people more tanned than I am. You're sure there wasn't a letter this morning?"
"The young ones said there wasn't," returned Mrs. Arnold, changing her cool iron for a hot one, and testing it by holding it close to her flushed face. "But I don't know that Ted and George would know a letter if they saw it, their heads are so full of fishing."
"I thought Uncle Dick would write again," observed Betty wistfully. "But perhaps there wasn't time. He said he might come any day."
"I don't know what he'll say," worried Mrs. Arnold, her eyes surveying the slender figure leaning against the sink. "Your not being in mourning will certainly seem queer to him. I hope you'll tell him Sally Pettit and I offered to make you black frocks."
Betty smiled, her peculiarly vivid, rich smile.
"Dear Mrs. Arnold!" she said, affection warm in her voice. "Of course I'll tell him. He will understand, and not blame you. And now I'm going to tackle those weeds."
The screen door banged behind her.
Betty Gordon was an orphan, her mother having died in March (it was now June) and her father two years before. The twelve-year-old girl had to her knowledge but one single living relative in the world, her father's brother, Richard Gordon. Betty had never seen this uncle. For years he had traveled about the country, wherever his work called him, sometimes spending months in large cities, sometimes living for weeks in the desert. Mr. Gordon was a promoter of various industrial enterprises and was frequently sent for to investigate new mines, oil wells and other large developments.
"I'd love to travel," thought Betty, pulling at an especially stubborn weed. "I hope Uncle Dick will like me and take me with him wherever he goes. Wouldn't it be just like a fairy story if he should come here and scoop me out of Pineville and take me hundreds of miles away to beautiful and exciting adventures!"
This enchanting prospect so thrilled the energetic young gardener that she sat down comfortably in the middle of the row to dream a little more. While her father lived, Betty's home had been in a small, bustling city where she had gone to school in the winter. The family had always gone to the seashore in the summer; but the only exciting adventure she could recall had been a tedious attack of the measles when she was six years old. Mrs. Gordon, upon her husband's sudden death, had taken her little daughter and come back to Pineville, the only home she had known as a lonely young orphan girl. She had many kind friends in the sleepy country town, and when she died these same friends had taken loving charge of Betty.