"What?" demanded Betty.
"Why—it helps you to get things," ventured Helen.
"May be they're not worth getting," snapped Betty.
"Well, isn't it better to try to get foolish things than just to sit around and do nothing?"
"No," answered Betty with emphasis. "People who just sit around and do nothing, as you call it, have friends and like them, and aren't all the time thinking what they can get out of them."
"I'm sorry, but I have to go to gym," said Helen. "I don't think ambitious people always depend on their friends."
Left to herself, Betty came to a more judicial state of mind. "I suppose," she said to the green lizard, "I suppose I'm the kind that just sits around and does nothing. I suppose we're irritating too. It makes Helen mad when I write my papers any old way, while she's toiling along, trying to do her best. And she makes me cross by fussing so. She has one kind of ambition and Eleanor has another. I haven't any, and I suppose they both wish I'd have some kind. Oh, dear! I don't believe Madeline Ayres is ambitious either, and Ethel Hale called her a splendid girl. I'll go and ask her to come to dinner with us."
CHAPTER VII
ON TO MIDYEARS
Exactly a week after Nan and Will left Harding, Betty herself was speeding west, with Roberta Lewis as traveling companion. Nan had discovered that Roberta's father was in California, and that she was planning to spend her Christmas vacation in solitary state at Mrs. Chapin's, without letting even her adored Mary Brooks know how matters stood. But Nan's arguments, backed by Betty's powers of persuasion, were irresistible; and Roberta finally consented to come to Cleveland instead.