“Well, this is the point, Bernice. You ought to have more friends in Berwick. With your home and everything, you ought to be the most popular girl in town.”
“I’m not!” and Bernice laughed grimly.
“That’s partly your own fault, and partly not. Now, if you’ll persuade your father to retract that order and let my father stay in Berwick, I’ll make you popular,—I will honest!”
Dolly’s eyes beamed with earnestness. Her plea was out, now it was to follow it up.
“I know that sounds crazy,” she went on, “but think a minute, Bernice. Your father and mine are splendid business men, so perhaps we inherit their business talent. So let’s make a business deal. If I can make good, and put you in the front ranks of our crowd, will you try to coax your father to do what I want?”
“Why, Dolly Fayre, what an idea!”
“I know it. But I don’t want to leave Berwick, none of us do, and yet, we’ll have to go, unless your father changes the orders. I’d ask him myself, only I know he wouldn’t listen to me, but he would to you.”
“Does your father know you’re doing this?”
“Mercy, no! I wouldn’t have him know it for the world! It isn’t wrong, Bernice, and it isn’t underhanded or anything like that. You know yourself, how the railroad men are ordered here and there. Now it seems to me some one else might as well be sent to Buffalo, and my father left in the New York office, where he is now. Don’t you think so? If only your father will agree.”