At the foot of the stair, however, the girl stopped short, dismayed. How should she ever face them—Aunt Sarah and her father? As she had worked busily the evening before, she had been conscious of doing something singular—something venturesome and daring; but she had been too deeply absorbed as well as too eagerly excited to be troubled by definite doubts. And she had fallen asleep the moment she had dropped into bed and awakened with a thrill of expectancy. Only now it came to her coldly that they who dance must pay the piper.
There was no question at all with regard to Aunt Sarah. She would be utterly shocked and scandalized. She would appeal to Betty’s father, and alas! it was only rarely that she appealed in vain. And her father was quite equal to ordering Betty to go straight to her chamber, put up her hair, don a long skirt (she had altered two, but the oldest one she had she hadn’t time to touch) and wear it to church. Betty knew well that her father was secretly mortified because of her size and that he was often the more severe with her on that account.
She stole silently into the parlor and glanced fearfully into the large mirror which she was wont to avoid sedulously. The image that faced her really startled her. She hadn’t thought of anything but making her clothing more conformable to her years and so comfortable as to allow her to gain freedom of movement. She was amazed, confounded—indeed, she felt almost guilty at the singular attractiveness of the result. Even so, Betty Pogany didn’t at all see what another would have seen—she was far prettier than she realized. But what she saw was enough to cause her to turn away hurriedly.
As she paused on the threshold, trying to think of some ingratiating or deprecatory remark to make to Aunt Sarah, on a sudden something quite foreign flashed suddenly into the girl’s mind and she quite forgot herself, her anxiety, her disguise (or her change from long disguising), and even that wonderful sense of freedom. Perhaps the new dressing of her hair suggested it. As she had parted it, Betty had recollected how poor Rose’s hair had looked yesterday, and she had wondered whether she mightn’t, next Saturday, beg Mrs. Harrow to allow her to do Rose’s hair for her in the old becoming fashion. But this was something far bigger and more daring, this suggestion which flashed before her instantaneously, but with a completeness and fulness that quite took her breath away. She felt like shouting, like singing something stirring such as “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” And when she entered the kitchen, hugging the vision to her bosom, she was so engrossed thereby that at first she didn’t understand the horrified stare upon Aunt Sarah’s face.
CHAPTER VI
“GOOD HEAVENS! Betsey Pogany!” cried Aunt Sarah, and then poured forth such a torrent of reproaches as Betty had never heard. The “good heavens!” in itself was a volume. Betty had once been sent to bed supperless for saying it, being told it was the same as swearing. And the blast of scorn and wrath that followed might have been a torrent of good heavenses. But though it was the worst outburst Betty had ever heard, she minded it the least. And this wasn’t at all because of the vision in the mirror. It was because of the other vision—the vision of Rose Harrow—that Betty endured the onslaught almost unscathed. And even when her father came down to breakfast, and Aunt Sarah turned to him to make the expected plea, Betty’s heart didn’t sink as she had believed it must.
“George, will you look at that girl! Will you take just one look at your only daughter, George Pogany!” his sister adjured him dramatically.
George Pogany, a very tall, gaunt, rather hard-featured man, obediently turned his eyes upon his daughter, though he sighed inwardly; for he hated a fuss, especially on Sunday mornings. As he gazed, an expression of wonderment appeared upon his thin, lined face, to be succeeded by a sort of perplexity through which a vague gratification struggled to emerge.
“Bless my heart! Whatever have you been doing, Betty!” he exclaimed kindly. “As I live, you’ve been growing smaller. She doesn’t look near so big and fat, does she, Sarah?”
Miss Pogany could only snort, and he went on unheeding: