“Of course,” Will took it placidly. “No better jobs in this world without extra work. If it wasn’t a lot bigger thing than you’ve tackled before, it probably wouldn’t be worth your while.”
Betty sighed as she surveyed him admiringly. “I suppose you’re right. I wish I were a man. They’re always so calm and cool. No, I don’t wish that either. I’m glad I’m a girl and can get just as excited as I like, and act what you call ‘all up in the air’ once in a while. I don’t believe things are half so much fun when a person doesn’t get dreadfully excited about them. So now, Will Wales!”
CHAPTER III
THE CULT OF THE B. C. A.’S
When Betty first unfolded what Will flippantly called the Morton-Prexy Proposition to the family circle, the “if” loomed very large indeed on mother’s face and larger still on Dorothy’s.
It would be too much for Betty, mother said. “And I don’t want my little girl to get tired and dragged-out and old before she has to. There was some reason in her trying to earn money in her own way last year, but now there isn’t the least sense in plunging into this project, just when the tea-shop is so nicely started and she has won the right to an easy time.”
“But, mother dear,” Betty interposed, “an easy time isn’t the chief thing in life.”
“Not exactly a cause worth living for, is it, child?” laughed father. “And being cook to the Wales family in the intervals when they happen to have a kitchen never did seem to satisfy your lofty aspirations.”
“Yes, it does, father,” declared Betty soberly, “but you’re going to board again this winter, so I can’t be cook much longer. It’s just a question of where I’m needed most. That sounds dreadfully conceited, but it really isn’t.”
So father laughed, and said that he and mother would “talk it over,” whereat Will winked wickedly at Betty in a way that meant, “Everything’s settled your way, then,” and hustled her off to dress for a tennis match, in which the skill of the Wales family was to be pitted against that of the Bensons. And just as the Wales family had won two sets out of a hard-fought three, father was saying diplomatically to mother on the piazza, “Well, dear, I think you’re right as usual; we ought to let her go and try herself out. It’s not many parents whose daughters are sought for to fill positions of such trust and responsibility.”
“I hope she won’t have to learn to run a typewriter like a regular secretary,” sighed mother, who had never in the world meant to let herself be coaxed, by father’s adroit methods, into approving or even permitting another of those “dreadful modern departures” that her old-school training and conservative temper united to disapprove.