Betty was so put out that when Jack asked her, as he had before, if she couldn’t ride down town with him and have something good, she recklessly told him “she’d love to,” though she knew that her mother was expecting her home at a certain time, or at least expecting to know where she was. It was nonsense. She would go home when she got ready. But she would telephone her mother from wherever they went.
“All right, Jack, I feel in the humor to do something. I can’t telephone Mother from here now, but I can down town, can’t I?”
“Of course, if you want to. But it’s foolish in my opinion. My mother doesn’t expect to keep track of me.”
“Oh, well, my father says it’s safer nowadays. If I don’t turn up, they want to know where to start looking for me, you know.”
Betty laughed and so did Jack, taking with light hearts the conditions that we are now providing for the younger generations. Jack said something about turning out the police or calling up the hospitals and conducted Betty to where, on a side street, he had parked a small but shining little roadster. “Isn’t this a dandy now?” asked Jack as he helped Betty into the car. “It’s a new one. I’m not supposed to take it to school much, but I was going to get you into it if I could!”
“Are you a safe driver?” laughed Betty, settling back. She was glad that she did not have her books along this time.
“I’m a wonder,” said Jack, in the same light tone. “I’m also old enough to drive. What would you do, Betty? I’d like to get into business pretty soon, as my education has been more or less—um—interrupted. Yet college would be fun. I didn’t like that preparatory school and the old fellow at the head of it didn’t like me much, either. I’ll put in another year in high school, then decide.”
“If you can go to the university or to some college, Jack, I think you’d be almost foolish not to do it. It isn’t as if you were a poor student. You’ve brains.”
“Thanks, Betty.” Jack went a little faster than Betty really enjoyed, but he seemed to have perfect control of his machine and was skilful in traffic. “Are you going to the university?”
“I don’t know. Mother talks about sending me away for a year or two, to give me the experience, but that is only talk so far. Perhaps they can’t do it.”