When Beth went to Hambro that second summer, however, for a brief visit with Molly and the aunts, she could not descry much change in her chum.
The summer was a busy one and a happy one for Beth. Her mother had held together the customers Beth had obtained the year previous. Indeed, there was a neat sign on the front door of the Bemis Street cottage, and almost daily carriages and automobiles from the better residential section of the town stopped before the house. Ella was learning to help in the work, too, and little Prissy was becoming a perfect housewife. The twins, Ferd and Fred, were sturdy youngsters, going to school and being helpful in vacation time in the garden. Marcus was a manly fellow and—whisper!—he had actually bought a safety razor!
That summer Beth found that she was more popular than ever in her home town. Mr. Lomax asked her to meet his class of girls who would graduate from the high school the next year, and tell them something about what it meant to attend a boarding school. It was at a lawn party, and a good many older people were present.
Beth did her best to inspire the girls with a desire to do as she had done. Some of them would have to follow her methods to a certain extent, for their parents were too poor to pay their full tuition at any school or seminary.
“I believe the prize is worth the work entailed, however,” Beth said, in the course of her simple address. “If I could not go back for my final year at Rivercliff I should feel well repaid for my struggle thus far. But if I am allowed to finish my course, I know I shall be better able to face the world and make my own way in it than I possibly could do if I had been prepared by any other means.
“The business college course is cheap and quickly gained; but the classical and English courses in a properly conducted school which confers an academic degree fit one for a better and higher position in business or professional life.”
Rather to her chagrin, but to Ella’s great delight, the county paper printed Beth’s speech in part. The flyaway sister went around repeating extracts from it, and proclaiming to all who would listen that Beth was bound to be an orator.
“A lecturer, anyway,” she insisted. “Our Beth will soon adorn the platform. In spectacles and a cap and gown, she will lead her sisters in charges for women’s rights, lecture on the noise nuisance, plead before legislatures for freedom from the trammels of fashion——
“By the way, B. B., Larry says that frock of yours is just stunning.”
“Oh, does he?” returned her sister, placidly.