“You’ll have to ask somebody else about that,” said the young man. “What I don’t know about this Rube state! I never was in it before.” He spoke as though he were very proud of the fact.
Betsy turned and went over to the older man who had told them about the Vaughans.
Molly trotted at her heels, quite comforted, now that Betsy was talking so competently to grown-ups. She did not hear what they said, nor try to. Now that Betsy’s voice sounded all right she had no more fears. Betsy would manage somehow. She heard Betsy’s voice again talking to the other man, but she was busy looking at an exhibit of beautiful jelly glasses, and paid no attention. Then Betsy led her away again out of doors, where everybody was walking back and forth under the bright September sky, blowing on horns, waving plumes of brilliant tissue-paper, tickling each other with peacock feathers, and eating pop-corn and candy out of paper bags.
That reminded Molly that they had ten cents yet. “Oh, Betsy,” she proposed, “let’s take a nickel of our money for some pop-corn.”
She was startled by Betsy’s fierce sudden clutch at their little purse and by the quaver in her voice as she answered: “No, no, Molly. We’ve got to save every cent of that. I’ve found out it costs thirty cents for us both to go home to Hillsboro on the train. The last one goes at six o’clock.”
“We haven’t got but ten,” said Molly.
Betsy looked at her silently for a moment and then burst out, “I’ll earn the rest! I’ll earn it somehow! I’ll have to! There isn’t any other way!”
“All right,” said Molly quaintly, not seeing anything unusual in this. “You can, if you want to. I’ll wait for you here.”
“No, you won’t!” cried Betsy, who had quite enough of trying to meet people in a crowd. “No, you won’t! You just follow me every minute! I don’t want you out of my sight!”
They began to move forward now, Betsy’s eyes wildly roving from one place to another. How could a little girl earn money at a county fair! She was horribly afraid to go up and speak to a stranger, and yet how else could she begin?