Betty Wales wasn’t very tall, and the shelves were high and very, very long. Her arms ached from stretching; her back was tired from spreading innumerable rugs; her brain reeled with dozens of petty but important details. But she worked on doggedly, pushing back her curls wearily when they got in her eyes, ordering, coaxing, or bullying her distinguished assistants, her mind intent on one thing: Morton Hall must be ready for the girls when they came to-morrow.
It was all because the matron had sprained her wrist—this hurry and scurry and confusion at the last minute. She had hoped every day to be able to come on and take charge of the settling, and from day to day they had waited, until finally Prexy, realizing that they had waited much too long, had asked Betty to take charge in her place. The matron was coming that afternoon at five, with her arm still in a sling. Betty had promised to meet her. Jim Watson was keeping track of the time, and Mr. Morton’s car would be ready to take her to the station. At distractingly frequent intervals the door-bell rang, and Mary Brooks Hinsdale had to stop wiping dishes to answer it. In the end Betty always had to go, but Mary saved her time and anxiety about appearances by finding out who each visitor was.
“Never mind the smut on your left cheek,” she would say. “It’s only another person come to apply for a job as waitress, and she’s much too untidy herself to notice a small smut.”
Or, “This time you must take off your apron, Betty. It’s Prexy—he says he’ll only keep you a minute, but it’s important.”
Or, “A strange looking freak of a girl, Betty. If she hadn’t acted so completely scared, I’d have said you couldn’t be bothered. She looked as if she might jump into the next county if I suggested taking you her message.”
“YOU MUST TAKE OFF YOUR APRON”
And each time Betty smilingly hopped off her chair, greeted her visitor as cordially as if she was not feeling—to quote Mary Brooks—exactly like a cross between a reckless ritherum and a distracted centipede, and got back to her shelves as soon as she could possibly manage it, stopping on the way to encourage Mr. Morton, hurry Madeline, and warn Jim to wipe the dishes dry.
“Everything must be spick and span,” she insisted, “to start us off right.”
At last Jim called “Four-forty-five, Betty,” and she jumped down again and ran to her room—the only place in the house that hadn’t been settled a bit—to dress. But she was so tired that she ended by unceremoniously borrowing Eleanor’s fur coat to put on over her mussy linen dress, and ordered Jonas to take her for a restful little spin up Elm Street. And so she managed to be all smiles and sparkles and pretty speeches of welcome for the matron, who was a nice motherly lady with the loveliest snow-white hair, and a sense of humor that twinkled out of her blue eyes and discovered everything comical about Betty—even to the mussy linen under the borrowed elegance—before Jonas had seen to the baggage and rushed his passengers up to Morton Hall.