Ella wrote: “Larry comes and potters around with papa in the old shop, sometimes for a whole afternoon at a time. I guess his clients aren’t keeping him so awfully busy. He isn’t so much fun as he used to be. But the other night he took all us kids to the picture show.”
Mr. Baldwin was up and about; but his strength did not return and the doctor would not hear of his attempting any regular work. Beth knew her father had half a dozen different inventions partly finished—Mr. Baldwin laughingly called them “dinkuses”—in the old shop in the back yard, over which he sometimes worked. He never expected to make anything of the machines.
It was several weeks after Beth began to work for Mrs. Ricardo Severn on Saturday afternoons that she heard again from Larry, and that in a most unexpected way. But first something happened to Cynthia Fogg.
All this time Beth had sought Cynthia from time to time when opportunity afforded, and showed the girl that she felt more than an ordinary interest in her. Cynthia was not of a particularly grateful disposition, perhaps; or else she did not consider that she needed the interest or sympathy of anybody. But with Beth she was always much franker than with any one else.
That she made a good waitress or maid it could not be said with truth. She did not, indeed, seem to care whether she really suited madam or not. Yet the madam, so particular and exact with every other girl on her staff, seemed rather lenient with Cynthia.
Was it because she felt Cynthia Fogg to be, somehow, different from the other maids in her employ?
Beth retained her habit of early rising. Sometimes, indeed, she worked a little before the first bell—especially as the days grew longer.
But almost always when she was up an hour or more before the rising bell rang, she took a run out of doors—a very excellent practice, indeed, for one working as hard as she did.
As, at that hour, only the front door was unlocked, Beth usually ran down that way. So she frequently saw Cynthia Fogg and spoke to her, as the latter dusted the furniture and woodwork.
Madam Hammersly, with her cambric handkerchief, which all her maids learned to fear, was always up early, and many a little talk did the madam and Beth have together. Sometimes, too, would Beth hear her complain to Cynthia of her lack of attention to her duties.