“Con,” he said, laying his hand on the light head bending over the dog, “now that you have talked and laughed with Betty, what have you got to say?”
“Congratulations, Ken, with all my heart.”
“And now, Betty”—there was a new tone in Kendall’s voice—“Mollie has said you may walk back with me. The taxi would stifle us. There’s a moon, dear, and a star or two—”
“As if that mattered!” Betty broke in. “I’m very, very happy. Brace, you’ve got a nice, sensible family. They agree with me in everything.”
The weeks passed rapidly. Betty’s affairs absorbed them all, though she laughingly urged them to leave her alone.
“It’s quite awful enough to feel yourself being carried along by a deluge,” she jokingly said, “without hearing the cheers from the banks.”
But Mollie Morrell flung herself heart and soul into the arranging of the wardrobe—playing big sister for the first and only time in her life. She was older than Betty, but the younger girl had always swayed the elder.
And Lynda became fascinated with the little bungalow across the river, known as The Refuge.
The original fancy touched her imagination and she put other work aside while she vied with Betty for expression.
“I’ve found an old man and woman, near by,” Betty said one day, “they were afraid they would have to go to the poor-house, although both are able to do a little. I’m going to put them in my bungalow—the two little upstair rooms shall be theirs. When I run down to find myself it will be homey to see the two shining, old faces there to greet me. They are not a bit cringing; I think they know how much they will mean to me. They consider me rather immoral, I know, but that doesn’t matter.”