But Betty need not have felt self-reproachful. She had earned her trip to New York by her own pleasant spirit, much real effort that to some girls would have been very trying, and by overcoming some loneliness in times when company was lacking. Doris would have her turn, in a family where fairness was characteristic of its parents. But it was just as well for Betty to be thinking about her sister now, instead of herself.
Morning came, and with it the new excitement. Dick, frankly interested, kept an eye out for the Murchison car, a beautiful thing in dark wine-color. “Gee!” cried Dick in a tone discreetly low, “that’s a beauty! I’m going to have one just like it some day. There’s your colored chauffeur, Sis, in uniform. Say, I didn’t know that Dad was hobnobbing with the aristocrats!”
“Hush, Dick,” said Mrs. Lee, annoyed. “Mr. Murchison is a very wealthy gentleman and lives in accordance with his means. Are you ready, Betty? Please answer the bell, Dick. It is the chauffeur.”
“Give me an apron and cap, Mom,” remarked the irrepressible Dick, “for the maid must answer the door.”
“You’re wrong. Dick,” said Doris, who was gathering up her books. “The butler should be at the door. See how elegant you can be, though I’m afraid they will think you rather young.”
But the bell had rung, and Dick ran, rather too hurriedly for dignity in his role of butler, if that suggestion by Doris was to be taken seriously. She was listening as Dick threw open the front door.
“Is you-all ready foh goin’ to school with Miss Lucy an’ Loosha?”
“I’ll call Betty,” said Dick. “Yes, she is ready.” So the girl Betty called “Lu-chee-a,” the chauffeur called “Loosha.”
“Miss Lucy said that she wanted to take all the children to school, foh she thought there was some o’ them that went to the Junior High School.”
“Please thank the countess,” said Dick, as properly as if it had been his father. “We shall be very glad to come and we can be out as soon as we can gather up our books.”