So Beth continued this. Her shoes lasted through the school term which closed the last of May.
The high school at Farwell was only a district one of the third class. There was a three years’ course, and the average age for graduation was sixteen. Beth entered when she was twelve—or, rather when Eliza thought she was that age. She may have been eleven or thirteen for all either of them knew.
The freshman class was made up of pupils from three grammar grades from different sections of the town, so that at least two-thirds of her class-mates were strangers to Beth. She and Helen had been put in different divisions, and Beth found herself virtually alone as far as any friends were concerned.
Several days passed before the girl back of her spoke to her. Beth already knew her name, having seen it on the wall slate. It was Tilly Jones. She was a fat, fair-haired girl—the senior of Beth by several years. She was rather stupid about books, and her movements slow and ponderous. Her father was an ignorant, uneducated man, yet with a certain skill about molding, so that he was able to make the sand pattern by simply having the blue-print before him, and taking no measurements. He was a genius in this one line. He was a valuable man in the foundry and made “big money.” Tilly had ribbons and furbelows. Her fat, pudgy fingers were covered with rings; she wore a bracelet and a necklace.
Friday morning, she leaned forward and asked, “What are you going to wear this afternoon?”
“Wear? Why, this—” replied Beth.
“But it’s Friday afternoon,” was the reply. Beth could see no reason why this day of the week would make any difference. Tilly enlightened her. “Literary society, you know. Everybody fixed up for that. I’m going to wear a net gown over a blue lining. It looks just like silk. You’d never tell until you touched it. My mother paid Miss Foster six dollars to make it. My dress cost almost twenty dollars.”
Beth had nothing to say to this. She could not have said it, had she the words in her mouth, for the teacher had moved down the aisle and had her eyes upon the corner from which the sound of whispering came.
At noon Tilly came up to her in the cloak-room and explained the customs of the school. She had failed in her examinations, consequently this was her second year in the freshman class and she knew all about the “ins” and “outs.”
“Everybody who is anything dresses up for Friday afternoon,” she said.