Of course, Cynthia was her senior, and, after all, a much more sophisticated girl than Beth. Yet the latter felt somewhat responsible for the freckled one.
At least, had it not been for her and Molly, Cynthia Fogg would not have come to Rivercliff School to work. And it hurt Beth to think that she was going away under such circumstances.
She believed the madam must have really liked the strange girl, or she would never have kept her so long; for Cynthia had done none of her work well. Miss Small whispered that Cynthia had been the slowest and most careless girl that had ever worked in the house—and yet Madam Hammersly had borne with her.
When Beth saw Cynthia to bid her good-bye she did criticize the freckled girl’s course. “You might have tried to please the madam—she was so kind to you,” Beth said.
“Goodness me!” smiled Cynthia. “Are housemaids ever grateful? I didn’t know it. And, to tell the truth, Miss Baldwin, I don’t think they have much to be grateful for.
“I was put at the top of the house to sleep, in a stuffy little room with a window that would open only a few inches at the bottom, and with the coarsest of bed clothing, and a rag of a carpet on the floor. We were expected to keep our rooms neat, and there was little pleasure in doing so, for they were so ugly—and everything in them so ugly—that one could not make them livable. My bureau had only three legs and the mirror was cracked. And in the cold weather! Why, the halls up there are barely warm. You can’t tell me anything about what maids have to put up with hereafter. When I go back——”
“Go back where?” asked Beth, pointedly. “To the institution you ran away from?”
“Well! And if I did it would be no worse, at least,” and Cynthia’s wonderful eyes smiled again, lighting up her freckled face and making it very attractive for the moment.
“But don’t you worry over what is to become of me, dear girl! I have nearly a hundred dollars, and it will last me a long time. I am all right. I will write you when I get settled.”
That afternoon Beth stole down in Cynthia’s discarded cap and apron, opened the north drawing-room and began her dusting. The madam was on hand, evidently to see if Beth kept her part of the contract, and hardly had Beth begun her work when Cynthia, dressed for departure, appeared in the reception hall.