For a long, long time the more fortunate girls were too taken up with their own prospects to think very seriously of Bettie's; but one day Jean was suddenly astonished at the depth of misery that she surprised in Bettie's wistful, tell-tale eyes. After that, the girls openly expressed their pity for Bettie, who would have to stay in Lakeville. This proved even harder to bear than their light-hearted chatter; for it made Bettie pity herself to an even greater extent.
Of course, it would be several months before the hated school—Bettie, by this time, was quite certain that she hated it—would swallow up her dearest four friends at one sudden, hideous gulp; but remote as the date was, the interested girls could talk of very little else. No matter what topic they might begin with, it always worked around at last to "when I go away next fall."
"I can't have any clothes this spring," said Jean, when the girls, in a body, were escorting Henrietta home from her dressmaker's. "Mother's letting my old things down and piecing everything till I feel like a walking bedquilt. You see, I'm to have new things to go away with."
"Same here," asserted Mabel. "Only my mother's having a worse time than yours to make my things meet. My waist measure is twenty-nine inches and my skirt bands are only twenty-seven."
"Only twenty-seven," groaned shapely Henrietta.
"If you see a second Aunty Jane," said Marjory, skipping ahead to imitate the elder Miss Vale's prim, peculiar walk, "running round Lakeville all summer, you'll know who it is. She's cutting down two of her thousand-year-old gowns to tide me over the season. One came out of the Ark and she purchased the other at a little shop on Mount Ararat."
"Grandmother's making lists," laughed Henrietta, "of all the things mentioned in all the catalogues. When she gets done, probably she'll add them all up and divide the result by me; and that will give a respectable outfit for one girl."
"Poor Bettie!" said sympathetic Jean, squeezing Bettie's slim hand. "You're out of it all, aren't you?"
But this was too much for Bettie. She turned hastily and fled.
The girls looked after her pityingly.