“Indeed no, nothing of the sort,” he asseverated. “It would look first-rate. It would not only be pretty and appropriate, but I don’t see how it could help being a lot more comfortable than your present costume. With a sailor-suit and easy shoes, I’ll wager that you can keep up with any of your friends.”
Her eyes shone. She drew a deep breath. Then her eyes fell, and when she raised them, they were clouded.
“O, but you don’t understand. I’m so—sort of stiff and settled,” she almost wailed.
“But just wait until you see how much of the stiffness will disappear with the tight, elderly clothing,” he bade her. “Leave off everything that isn’t perfectly comfortable. Get into a sailor-suit as soon as ever you can and then—just throw yourself into things. Go in for whatever’s going on.”
The girl pondered silently, but her eyes were full of wistful excitement.
“Here’s something in your favor. Tommy says you have only a fortnight more of school,” he reminded her. “Begin right away, anyhow, but the summer holidays will give you a capital chance to get wholly limbered up before you enter the high school. And there you can make a perfectly fresh start. Paulding’s a large town. The school will therefore be large, and your class may be three-quarters strangers. It will be easy to start in with them as a girl among girls and boys. Don’t think of your size. Just go in for everything as if you’d always been in the habit of doing so. You’re not stiff in your mind, you know, Miss Betty. You’re supple enough mentally to carry it all off if you can begin as a more flexible being physically. You can, as I said, limber up during the summer, and then—by the way, how do the South Paulding pupils go back and forth?”
Betty explained that they used the railway, leaving on the eight-thirty train in the morning and returning at three.
“And what’s the distance by the highway?” he inquired.
“Two miles and a half each way.”
“It would be unusual, not to say uncanny, if either way were longer? Well, that is just what they would call in London a tidy walk. Now if I were you. Miss Betty Pogany, I should get into practise during the holidays and then walk back and forth every trip all the autumn and winter and spring.”