There was more to the jolly letter and Beth read it over and over again. She was delighted to hear from Larry; she was delighted, too, to know that he had succeeded in winning his first case. Still she wondered. Why had Larry been silent and kept away from the house during the summer, and now had become such a steady visitor at the Bemis Street cottage?
She knew she had her parents’ sanction to write to Larry, and she did so in reply to his letter. She told him much about the school and Molly, and something about the other girls. She wrote of what she studied and how she took hold of athletics. But one thing she did not mention. She said nothing about the “Silk Stocking Hospital.” She was not ashamed of working to earn money for her schooling; yet, somehow, she shrank from discussing that point with Larry.
The hospital, so-called, had become an established institution long before the holidays. Beth sometimes found it difficult to keep up with the principal activities of her school life—her lessons, the compulsory athletic work, and her stocking darning.
Miss Hammersly was sharper with her, Beth thought, than with the other girls, for the very reason that Beth was striving to do extra work.
“I want to see you succeed, Miss Baldwin,” the principal said to her on one occasion; “but in earning money for your tuition, you must not lose any of the advantages which the money is supposed to pay for. I approve of your attempt at independence only in so far as you neglect no lessons or other activities that a normal schoolgirl is supposed to obtain in an establishment of this kind. You must retain your interest in every item of school life and work, or your course here will fail of its end.”
Beth took this advice to heart. She neglected nothing which she believed was for her mental or physical benefit. With Molly she won a place on the Second Five at basket-ball; and before Christmas week she had proved herself the superior of most of the girls on the ice.
The river was frozen from the docks to the bend soon after Thanksgiving, and now Beth and Molly Granger usually ran down the bluff and spent the hours between daylight and dark, and before supper, on their skates. Molly admitted the exercise woke her up after the long day in classes and gave her spirit for the study hour before bedtime.
Beth was not allowed to sit up later than the other girls, so she usually disappeared right after supper and sat in Number Eighty, working, with her darning-basket beside her, until the half-past eight bell. Then she joined Molly in studying for the next day’s recitations.
She lost that general social hour between supper and the first bell; so it was true her personal acquaintanceship among her fellow-students did not rapidly expand. Yet many came to her for help in the “hosiery department.”
“That Baldwin girl in the South Wing darns so nicely,” one girl said to another. “Why throw these perfectly good stockings away?”