“Of course not, silly. Though most likely Miss Whittier guessed.”
“But you said Jeanette would just as lief tell it.”
“Well, she might tell it to us, not to any one else. I declare, Betty, you don’t seem to have any gumption about some things!”
“No,” said Betty, rather meekly, for she was often bothered by her lack of “gumption” about matters which were new to her experience.
On reaching her own home, she went straight to her mother with the story.
Mrs. McGuire sat reading in the pleasant library, and looked up with a loving smile as Betty entered rather abruptly.
“And will you tell me, Mother,” she concluded, after she had poured out her indignation, “why Jeanette should get so angry at what I said?”
“You can’t understand, deary,” said her mother, smoothing Betty’s tangled dark curls, “that peculiar pride which revolts at accepting anything of money value from anybody outside one’s own family. It is, perhaps, especially a New England trait, and your own Irish heart is so big it leaves no room for the Puritan instincts which are also yours by inheritance. But Dorothy is right, dear, and you must not repeat your offer to Jeanette, though I, too, am sorry that it is not possible.”
“But, Mother, if I could think of some way to give her a dress without letting her know where it came from, wouldn’t that do?”
“Hardly, dear. She would know at once that you had sent it, and would, of course, be offended.”