“Well! that is too far ahead to worry about. Lots of things can happen in a year,” agreed the happy-go-lucky Molly. “Maybe some rich old uncle will die and leave you money.”
“But there isn’t any rich uncle—nor any uncle of any kind,” laughed Beth.
“Well! that’s good, too,” declared the optimistic Molly. “There won’t be any poor uncle, then, to come and live on your folks. Always be thankful!”
Jolly Molly’s sunny disposition was just the tonic Beth needed after her interview with Maude Grimshaw. In fact, a naturally serious and thoughtful girl like Beth easily found her counterpart in Molly Granger.
“We live on the sunny side of the street,” Molly frequently proclaimed. “So why not smile? Send dull Grouch flying to the tall timber. ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow’—there are lessons!”
Which was not literally true, for this was said on a Saturday. That day Molly spent in introducing her new chum to all the nice girls she knew. As, after all, “nice” was a very elastic word with Molly Granger, the girls Beth met were of all sorts.
Yet they had one thing in common. They were all well dressed. Beth saw plainly that her simple wardrobe, prepared by her mother with such tender care and love, was going to set her a little apart from the other girls, and mark her as from another world than theirs. Some of the good friends of Molly, even, looked askance at Beth’s gingham.
However, Beth determined to say nothing in her letter, which she retired to her own room to write, about this condition of affairs. She put nothing but love and happiness in the epistle to the family at home, although she had overheard one girl ask Molly:
“Say! does she wear that ugly calico because she likes it or on a bet?”
The jolly girl, however, had foreseen the comments and the amazement of her friends over Beth’s plain clothes; and wherever she could, she repeated (and the story lost nothing in her telling) the interview Beth had had with Maude Grimshaw.