“It will be better to ask out there,” she decided. “Then if she should cry——”
But Dora did not cry. She answered Betty’s questions in her most matter-of-fact fashion. It was not the girls; they had been more than kind. It was nothing at Harding; it was the way things had turned out at home. Her father had hurt his hand in a harvesting machine. There had been heavy doctor’s bills, and while he was still helpless a barn, stored with the fall crops of hay and potatoes, had burned to the ground. So he could not afford to keep Dora at Harding any longer. A letter had come that morning. Perhaps next year she could come back, but at present there was nothing to hope for.
“And I don’t think I shall ever come back,” said Dora sadly. “I can have a place now in the school of our district, and I guess that is what I was meant for. I guess I aimed too high.”
“Oh, no, you didn’t,” Betty assured her. She had been thinking fast. She knew from Rachel some of the ways of economizing at Harding. Dora’s tuition was paid for half the year, and there must be some way of providing for the board.
“Would you mind earning some money?” she asked, “by tutoring or—or—waiting on table?”
“I would do anything, even to scrubbing floors, if I could stay,” said Dora solemnly. “But you see”—she hesitated—“there is Eleanor——”
“Well?” Betty waited.
“She is paying part of my board, so that I can be up nearer the campus. If I should move to a cheaper place or go to work, she would have to know.“
“Well, why shouldn’t she know? You ought to have told her straight off. I know she will keep on giving you the money, and it will help along a lot.”