True, the account at Mr. Closewick’s had been paid. Jess, too, had seen to it that the month’s rent for their new home was met and a little something paid each week on the running store accounts.
But when Mrs. Morse drew her salary for the last week from the Courier—and it amounted to nearly ten dollars that week—she had been obliged to pay the money over to her dressmaker. She had found it necessary to order a new costume, if she was to follow the fashionable receptions, and the like, on the Hill. This matter of her mother being a society reporter, Jess feared, would cost them more in the end than it was worth to them.
And now they began the New Year with positively nothing in the family purse. And there was so much needed. There would be another reception at the M. O. R. house this very week and Jess told herself that she could not go because of her lack of a gown. Ah! these things were all veritable tragedies to her.
Lily Pendleton was very sure that she was going to take the prize. And she was not afraid to talk about it.
“Mother saw Mr. Monterey, and I am sure he was impressed by what she told him,” she announced. “Why, when the New Century Club met at our house last week, I read two acts of my play, and all the ladies said it was fine.”
“Aren’t you modest!” grumbled Bobby. “I should think it would pain you.”
“Now, don’t you get saucy, Bobby,” warned Lily. “You are not interested in this contest, that’s sure.”
“Huh!” cried Bobby. “I knew better than to try to write any such thing. If I won the prize nobody would believe that I wrote it.”
“Oh, Bob,” said Dora Lockwood. “You are too modest.”
“Yes, sir—ree!” returned Bobby. “I know it. I am of the same modest and withdrawing nature as the turtle.”