This was partly due to the something within herself, it is true, but also to the loving influence of the little old lady in Pine Cabin and to the roommate who believed in her.
CHAPTER XV
THE MANUSCRIPT MAGAZINE
The Manuscript Magazine was a great success. All of the girls who stood E in penmanship (and that meant excellent) volunteered to assist in copying the stories that were to be bound together in magazine form.
When it was completed the new editor was invited to read it in assembly from the title page to the last period, and a most enthusiastic applause followed. Many a girl, listening, was inspired to do better work in English, that before the close of the school year she might have one of her stories in the Manuscript Magazine.
Virginia, flushed and happy, because of the success of her efforts, left the gym where the forty-five pupils of the school had been assembled, and with her were her own particular friends, members of the Study Club.
They were all clattering at once. “I told you so,” Babs was saying. “A thousand times you would have given up the editorship if we would have permitted you to do so.”
“I think it was a jim-cracky fine get-up,” Betsy declared, walking backwards in front of the group that was on its way to “The Sign of the Tea Kettle,” where Dicky Taylor was to dispense a real treat—not the usual lemonade, she had whispered mysteriously, but something different, and extra, and with permission, so there would be no fear of a visitation from Miss Snoopins.
Dicky was hurried right up to her room after the reading of The Manuscript Magazine, so when the group had reached the upper corridor she threw the door open to greet them before Betsy had had time to tap.
“I am so glad that Dora and Cora have gone to the city with their father professor. I would hate to leave them out and hurt their feelings, but since you have invited me to become a member of your club I would rather just have our own group.”
The guests flocked into the sun-flooded room, which was filled with mementos of many a merry occasion. There were paddles crossed upon the walls.