“I wish I were like you,” she said; “then I should know how to give him the right kind of advice.”
“Why, I should think the only thing to say was that he ought to try to make his father see that he’s trying,” began Betty doubtfully. “You can’t expect a person to believe right off that you are going to work hard, when you’ve always wasted your time before. Goodness, don’t you remember how long it took Eleanor Watson to get back her reputation? You just wouldn’t believe in her yourself, Babe.”
“That was very different. She—she wasn’t honest. Besides, if I’d been her father I’d have stuck by her.”
Betty smiled at Babe’s easy assumptions. “You can’t tell what you’d have done. But, anyhow, don’t feel so bad about it. They’ll just have to get along as they always have before.”
“Oh, no, they won’t!” Babe’s tone was tragic. “They—— Oh, Betty, I’ve just got to tell some one. John says he simply can’t stand it any longer. He’s talked to Mr. Benson about it, and he has been asking Mr. Trevelyan about the chances for a young man in Australia. Mr. Benson has some kind of a big business that his guardian is managing for him until he’s through college, and he says he will ask the guardian to give John a position there. But John thinks Australia would be better, because you can always earn more in a wild country, and then besides, if his father objected, he would be away off there and he could just go ahead with his plans.”
“Oh, Babe, how silly! Then he doesn’t want to finish his college course, after all the time he’s spent tutoring?”
Babe shook her head. “He doesn’t want to do that anyway. He says it will be only a waste of time. Whatever he does, he wants to go right to work. He’d be perfectly satisfied if his father would let him go to work in his business.”
“But what’s his dreadful hurry?” demanded Betty. “As long as his father wants him to finish college why doesn’t he do it, and then go to work? If he’s really in earnest about trying to please his father that’s what he ought to do.”
“Yes, but you see a year is a lot of time to lose, when you might be getting started in business. He wouldn’t expect his father to support him—that is, we wouldn’t want—we couldn’t——” Babe paused, blushing furiously. “Oh, Betty, don’t you see how it is? You’ve just screwed it out of me. Promise you won’t tell anybody.”
“Of course not,” laughed Betty. “A nice consistent man-hater you are, Babe.”