"It's a pretty hot day," ventured Mrs. Peabody uncertainly, when Betty, at the dinner table, announced her intention of walking to Glenside that afternoon. "Maybe, dearie, if you wait till after supper, some one will be driving over."
"Horses ain't going a step off this farm this week," said Mr. Peabody impressively. "They're working without shoes, as anybody with any interest in the place would know. If some folks haven't any more to do than gad around spending good money, it's none of my affair; but I don't aim to run a stage between here and Glenside for their convenience."
Dinner was finished in silence after this speech, and immediately after she had helped Mrs. Peabody with the dishes, Betty went up to her room to change her dress. She did not mind the walk; indeed she had taken it several times before, and knew that one side of the road would be comparatively shady all the way.
Betty took an inexplicable whim to put on her prettiest dress, a delicate pink linen with white collars and cuffs that Mrs. Arnold had taught her to embroider herself in French knots. She untied the black velvet ribbon she usually wore on her broad-brimmed hat and substituted a sash of pink mull.
"You look too nice!" exclaimed Mrs. Peabody when the girl came downstairs. "Don't you think you should take an umbrella, though? Those big white clouds mean a thunder storm."
Betty laughingly declined the umbrella, and, promising Mrs. Peabody "something pretty," started off on her walk. Poor Mrs. Peabody, though Betty was too inexperienced to realize it, was beginning, very slowly it is true, but still beginning, to break under the long strain of hard work and unhappiness. Betty only knew that she was pitifully pleased with the smallest gift from the town stores.
"If I don't see a girl of my own age to speak to pretty soon," declared Betty to herself, walking swiftly up the lane, "I don't know what I shall do! Bob is nice, but, goodness! he isn't interested in lots of things I like. Crocheting, for instance. I never was crazy about fancy work, but now I'm kind of hungry for a crochet needle."
Half way to Glenside a farmer overtook her, and after the pleasant country fashion offered her a "lift." Betty accepted gladly. He lived, as she discovered after a few minutes' conversation, on the farm next to the Peabodys, and he had heard about her and knew who she was.
"When you get time," he said kindly, when she told him she was going to Glenside, "walk through the town and out toward Linden. There's quite a nursery out that way, and you'd like to see the flowers. Folks come from the city to buy their plants there."
At the nearest crossroads to Glenside he turned, and Betty got out, thanking him heartily for the ride. It was a matter of only a few moments now to reach Glenside, and she found herself in the town much sooner than she had counted on. So when the drug-store clerk said he would have her pictures developed and printed within an hour if she could wait, Betty determined to wait instead of having them mailed to her. She had a sundae and bought some chocolates for Mrs. Peabody, and then remembered the farmer's remark about the nursery.