Molly was heart-broken. “Beth Baldwin! you’ll never leave Rivercliff before your three years are finished—never! Don’t tell me such a horrid thing!”
“I don’t see how it can be helped,” her chum said. “It is a dreadful blow to my hopes. Don’t say much about it, Molly dear, or I shall cry.”
Molly was already frankly sobbing. She ran into her own room and came back again in a moment with her purse. The contents of this she dumped into Beth’s lap.
“There!” she sobbed. “You can have all I’ve got—only say you’ll stay. There’s most as much as you sent home. I’ll willingly go without bonbons and ice-cream sodas and furbelows and all the rest of it, if you’ll take it, dear, and say you’ll stay the three years out. I’ll give you all my pocket-money!”
“You dear goosie!” cried Beth, hugging her closely in her arms. “Oh! how glad I am that I have such a friend. But I can’t take your money, Molly. It would be right for neither you nor for me. You need bonbons and furbelows just as much as I need money for other expenses. No, no, dear! ‘Take back thy gold!’ I am Independent Elizabeth—and you must not tempt me.”
Resolved, as before, to earn all the money possible, Beth did not neglect her studies. Even Miss Hammersly had to admit that her standing averaged better and better as the months went on. She was among the few first students in the so-called freshman class.
In Easter week Beth made seventeen dollars by mending and repairing lace and silk hose. The news that one of the girls did fine mending spread outside of the school. Between Rivercliff School and the town of Jackson City was a suburban district occupied by many wealthy and well-to-do people. Some orders began to come to Beth from these households.
The girl sent for a special thread and began to make a specialty of repairing the fine lingerie of her more fortunate fellow-students. And this work increased steadily.
Saturday afternoon at Rivercliff was always free. Beth, as the spring advanced, began to refuse to spend this holiday with Molly and her friends. “Four whole hours to myself!” she proclaimed to her disappointed chum. “I cannot spare them, my child. I must make hay while the sun shines.”
“But the sun isn’t shining to-day,” said Molly, pouting.