Larry looked away. He coughed, tried to clear his throat, attempted to say something, and then suddenly looked around to find his hand empty and that the door had been gently closed behind him.
Beth went trippingly up to her next recitation, appeared as usual at supper, and spent some time at her mending afterward. When Molly came upstairs, the two chums spent an hour conning the problems for the next day, and Beth showed no shadow of the pain that throbbed within her with every beat of her pulse.
When the lights were out, however, and a wind-driven moon peered in at the window of Number Eighty, South Wing, it caught Beth Baldwin lying wide-awake upon her pillow, and that pillow wet with bitter, bitter tears. She was busily engaged in burying a friendship that had begun with her very first childish remembrances.
This day—the one on which Cynthia Fogg departed and Larry Haven called—was the last day of mark for Beth in this year at Rivercliff School.
Of course, other important things happened—very important, indeed, to Miss Hammersly’s graduating class. But little save lessons and the usual grind of daily duties seemed to stir the life of the freshmen and the sophomores.
Beth continued to mend and patch for her clientele up to the very last week of school. She would carry home nearly one hundred dollars with her.
Mrs. Ricardo Severn had continued to be Beth’s very good friend. Although the girl earned quite all she was paid at the big stone house on the Boulevard in mending Mrs. Severn’s drawn-work and laces, she was really of the most value through her cheering presence.
But the foreign maid and the parrot continued to look askance at the pretty schoolgirl, whom the former continued to announce as “Miz Baldwig.” As for Mr. Dennis Montague, or “Dennis Mudd,” as the bird preferred to call himself, he stared always at Beth with little, evil, red eyes, and the girl was careful never to go too near when the cage door was open.
“And, my dear,” begged Mrs. Severn, “don’t ever ask him if he wants a cracker. That always throws Mr. Montague into a rage!”
Beth saw Mrs. Severn the Saturday afternoon before school closed for the year. The lady dismissed her kindly, making Beth promise that, if she should come back to Rivercliff for another term, she would take up her work at Severn Lodge just where she laid it down.