“I’m glad of it,” said Betty, generously. “She’ll be a lovely goddess, she’s so pretty and graceful. Well, let me help you girls with your costumes, as long as I haven’t any of my own to fuss over. I can get an inexpensive, ‘simple sailor suit’ ready-made.”
Betty turned in at her own gate, and after their good-bys the other girls went on.
“It’s just horrid,” said Dorothy; “I know how bad Betty feels about it, and I’m going to ask Miss Whittier to change it somehow.”
“She won’t do it,” said Jeanette; “I wish she would, but I know she’ll say if she changes one she’ll have to change others, and it’ll be a regular mix-up.”
And that’s just what Miss Whittier did say, though in different words.
“No, my dear,” she said kindly, but decidedly, when Dorothy told her about it. “I’m sorry Betty is disappointed, but several of the girls have already asked to change their parts, and I’ve been obliged to say ‘no’ to each; so of course I can’t make an exception in favor of Betty.”
This settled it, and Betty accepted her fate, outwardly with a good grace, but secretly with a rebellious heart.
“It’s such a mistake,” she said to her mother, “for girls like Kate Alden and May Jennings would like to have only simple costumes to prepare. And they have to rig up as Martha Washington and Mary, Queen of Scots! Either of them would rather have Grace Darling, and only have to get a ‘simple sailor suit!’”
“It is too bad, Betty dear,” said her mother; “I’m just as sorry as I can be. But I can’t see any help for it, so we must submit.”
“Yes; I know it, and I’m not going to growl about it any more. But it does make me mad!”