“For you do it much nicer than I can get it done at home, Baldwin,” cried one.
“I tell you, Beth, you are an institution,” Mamie Dunn declared. “I don’t know what we should do without you. I, for one, would go in rags.”
So Beth did not have much time to worry over Mrs. Severn’s odd action. She merely comforted herself by saying that rich old ladies—especially with parrots and foreign maids—are apt to be fanciful.
Miss Hammersly called Beth into her office for a special interview on one of the days soon after the opening of the term.
“I am pleased to see you with us for another year, Beth,” she said, with that shade of cordiality with which she always received her second year pupils. “You have come, I presume, fully prepared to take up your studies with renewed vigor and a steady application?”
“Oh yes, Miss Hammersly,” Beth said cheerfully. “I love to study.”
“And you will—ahem!—make no engagements which will interfere with recitations or study hours?”
“No,” and Beth flushed a little. “Madam Hammersly tells me she has engaged a girl to do my dusting.”
“Yes; at my suggestion,” said the principal. “Besides, I think it debarred you from proper physical exercise—which you need, Beth.”
“Yes, Miss Hammersly. I will try to make it up in some other way,” said the girl, doubtfully. With both Mrs. Severn’s work and the dusting lost, Beth was worried about the future.