“‘Do you suppose you are the only person who has aunts, Miss Granger?’”
“Never mind, my dear,” said Stella. “Perhaps all of them won’t come to the exercises.”
“Not all come?” cried Molly. “That would be awful. Seven is the perfect number in aunts. I could not spare one of the dears. Why, if Aunt Celia, Aunt Catherine, Auntie Cora, Aunt Carrie, Aunt Charlotte, Aunt Cassie and Aunt Cyril did not appear at Rivercliff to see me graduate, I—I—— Well! I should not feel as though I were graduated, that’s all!”
All this only a day or two before the great occasion. Beth was taking home to one of her best customers the last piece of work she would do at Rivercliff School. As she crossed the Boulevard she was suddenly conscious of an old-fashioned family equipage, a pair of fat bay horses, a fat footman and a fatter coachman, which drew across her line of vision and stopped. And there was a fat brown hand, on which sparkled several diamonds, waving to her from the carriage window.
It was Mrs. Ricardo Severn. She beckoned Beth to come near.
CHAPTER XXX
VOCATIONAL
“My dear child! How well you are looking!” drawled Mrs. Severn, just as though she had seen Beth only the week before and that their intercourse had been quite calm and placid.
Beth did not know just what to say; so, as Ella would have remarked, “she said it with a vengeance!” She stood perfectly still.
“My nephew, Roland, keeps me posted regarding you, my dear,” continued the lady.
“Ah—indeed? I have not seen Mr. Severn for a fortnight, I believe,” said Beth, feeling vastly uncomfortable.