“Oh, then this might have been among them. I wish I had thought.”
“I don’t believe it was. I know pretty well about the books that were sold. Still, it might have been.”
“Papa got his at a nauction,” Mabel went on; “he paid five dollars for a lot of books, and that is what I must try to do.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t have to do that. You might find it at that second-hand book store on Ninth street.”
“I never thought of that. I wonder if mamma will let us go down there this afternoon? I’ll ask her.”
Consent having been obtained, the two started forth, but only disappointment met them. “You’ll find it hard to get hold of that book,” the man in the store told them, smiling and looking at them curiously, as if he wondered what in the world they could want of such a thing. “Won’t some other book do?” he asked.
Mabel shook her head, but went away convinced that she must keep on trying, and that she had no right to put her money to any other use until she was satisfied that it was impossible to get the book.
She and Harold considered this their secret, and talked a good deal about it, so that Mabel had this comfort, while at school her two friends openly scorned her.
“Of course, we’ll invite her,” Marie was heard to say one day, “but I don’t suppose she’ll come; she’s too mean to spend ten cents to get in.”
A burning blush suffused Mabel’s cheeks, and she bent her head over her desk, feeling very much mortified, but she did not make an effort to change the girls’ opinion of her.