CHAPTER TWO
THE OGRE
Dancing into the sunny living-room, Carol called, “Mother mine, we have a problem to solve. Can you guess what it is?”
Mrs. Lorens glanced up from the blue patch that she was sewing on a small pair of overalls as she replied, “Yes, dear, I can guess. The principal of the Sunnyside school thinks that you are too advanced to take the work of the eighth grade again.”
“Why, Mother dear, are you a mind-reader?” Carol asked as she sat on a stool near by. “That is just what happened, and in one way I am ever so sorry. Of course I am eager to get through high as soon as possible, so that I may help Daddy ‘recuperate his fallen fortunes,’ as he calls it, but I am really disappointed not to be able to attend this school, for I met seven of the loveliest girls, and they asked me to join their Sunnyside Club. Mother dear, what am I to do? It will cost quite a little to send me to the city of Dorchester every day, and that is the nearest high school.”
Mrs. Lorens smiled lovingly at her daughter. “The right way always opens for us, dear,” she said. “Just now I am not sure what it is, but this evening your father and I will talk it over,” then she added with a little sigh, “I had so hoped, Carol, that you might go to boarding-school this year to study music and drawing, for which I am sure that you have natural talent, but, because of our changed circumstances, I fear that it cannot be. That is why your brother Peter gave up going to college this term. He will continue his law studies with your father and assist him in the office, but, if we all economize, and go without something this winter, you may be able to go away to school by another fall.”
Carol sprang up and kissed her mother impulsively. “You go without, Mummie?” she exclaimed indignantly. “Well, I just guess not! If Peter and I need more ‘iddication,’ as Pat used to call it, then we’ll earn the money ourselves.”
The mother smiled into the earnest brown eyes. She had so wanted Carol and Peter to have the advantages of higher education, but how proud she was of them for bearing their disappointment so bravely.
“Mummie,” Carol was saying, “the twins are waiting for me without. Have you an errand that we can do for you?”
“Yes, dear,” the mother replied. “Your father left a bundle of legal papers on the desk in his study and you are to take them to Mr. Dartmoor’s, and your father told me to tell you to give them to the old gentleman himself, as they are very important.”
“Then it shall be done!” Carol replied brightly, kissing her mother and skipping away.