Tom whistled. “Then I bet you have your hands full.”
“Well, I certainly hate having them empty,” returned Betty, beginning again on the stockings.
CHAPTER II
MONTANA MARIE O’TOOLE DAWNS UPON HARDING COLLEGE
Betty Wales always insisted that the O’Tooles’ visit had nothing whatever to do with her decision to go back to Harding.
“I see through you, Mademoiselle,” Will teased her. “You think you’ll be getting ready to be married about next year, and you’re taking your last chance to say a long farewell to your beloved Harding,—also to save your three-decker, secretary-tutor-tea-shop salary for a grand and elegant trousseau.”
“Will Wales——” began Betty fiercely, and then relapsed into haughty silence (accompanied by the faintest blush) as the only proper treatment of such unfounded accusations.
Nan was amused, and Dorothy relieved, of course, that her favorite sister was to be within call again. At first Mr. Wales agreed, rather soberly, that it would be foolish to neglect such good opportunities; but before she left home Betty had made him laugh so heartily at a few of her pet business theories, mostly adapted from Mary Brooks Hinsdale’s Rules for the Perfect Tea-Shop, that he accepted her decision as a huge joke—just another of Betty’s whims, having no painful connection with the ebb of the family fortunes.
But Mother, with the illogical perversity that is proverbially feminine, took the amazing position, for her, of Marie O’Toole’s ardent defender and champion.
“If you’re not going back chiefly on that poor child’s account,” she told her daughter Betty, “why, I’m ashamed of your unsympathetic nature. I never was so sorry for any one”—she had been present on the occasion of the O’Tooles’ second call. “She’s so sweet and pretty,—and so ignorant of all the things that other sweet, pretty girls learn from their mothers. She must know how strangely Mrs. O’Toole strikes nice people, but she doesn’t act annoyed or embarrassed, or try to keep her mother from making those dreadful remarks. Mrs. O’Toole says that they have never been separated, and that she doesn’t know how she can live next winter without Marie.”
“Betty thinks they can safely prepare for a grand family reunion after mid-years,” laughed Will.