The lad looked at the pretty girl at his side and said earnestly: “Doris, I can’t understand why you are so kind to me, a no-account Irish boy who isn’t anybody and never will be anybody.”
Doris laughed. “Danny, would you mind if we changed the subject? I wish to do the talking, so you be as quiet as a little brown mouse while I tell you my glorious plan, but first of all I want to thank you for the beautiful bookrack that you carved for me. It’s hanging on the wall of my room this very minute and my prettiest books are in it.” Then, laying her hand on the boy’s arm, she added: “Danny, please don’t call yourself good-for-nothing. It is not right for us to speak that way of the gifts that God has given us. Mother thinks that the carving of the bookrack shows that you have unusual talent and that the wild rose design is very pretty.”
The boy’s face glowed with pleasure. “Oh, Doris,” he said eagerly, “do you really think that maybe, sometime, I could make good with my designing? You don’t know what it would mean to me if I could.”
“It would mean a whole lot to me, too, Danny,” the girl said, rising. “Now we must go back to join the others, but there, I have forgotten the very thing that I wanted to ask you, which is this: Are you willing that I send the bookrack to a friend of Mother’s who is an artist? He would be able to tell just which course of training you ought to have.”
“Good angel, would you do it for me?” the boy asked eagerly. “Then I wouldn’t have to be just groping in the dark. I’d know better how to plan my life.”
These two joined the others, who had not missed them. Merry was talking to Geraldine and Doris joined them.
“Why didn’t Myra Comely come to your dinner party?” the president of the “S. S. C.” was asking their hostess. “You invited her that night at our house.”
Geraldine nodded. “And, more than that, I dropped her a card telling her the date and that I would send my brother after her, but she ’phoned early this morning that her mother had caught a severe cold that might develop into pneumonia and she could not possibly leave her.”
“Poor girl!” Doris said. “I’m glad tomorrow will be Saturday again. I shall drive around and see if there is anything I can do for them. Mother would want me to. She likes Myra ever so much. She wanted to meet her when she returned the laundry last Thursday, and she said she thought her an unusually fine girl. Myra told Mother that she had hoped to be able to go through Teachers’ College that she might care for her mother, who is not strong. But now I suppose she will have to give up, just as she is about to graduate from High.”
“O, I hope not!” Merry said. Then three of the boys approached to claim them as partners for a dance.