“It might help Rose to get stronger to walk a little, Mrs. Harrow,” Betty urged very gently. “We wouldn’t go but just a teeny way, and I’d be awfully careful. And what can happen now any more than when Rose used to be out with the girls?”
Mrs. Harrow almost glared at the girl. The poor woman was nearly distraught.
“It’s very different,” she retorted. “I should be frightened to death and Rose sha’n’t go one step. And I don’t know what you mean, anyhow, Betty Pogany, coming here looking like an overgrown Tomboy and putting crazy notions into Rosy’s head. I wish I hadn’t let you in. Something seemed to warn me not to. But I thought a great girl like you, a woman grown, might be trusted.”
Rose was leaning forward on the padded arm of the chair.
“What does she mean by your looking like a Tomboy, Betty?” she asked wonderingly.
Betty glanced deprecatingly at Mrs. Harrow.
“I have got on a short skirt and low-heeled shoes and don’t wear corsets any more,” she said in a low voice. “And I’ve got my hair down my back, too.”
Rose reached out and skilfully caught the thick bright braid and gave it a playful yank.
“O, Betty, I wish I——” she began, but stopped herself. She looked towards her mother.
“There’s no use in picking on Betty, mama,” she remarked. “I am going to walk. I haven’t been out of the house for six months except to be lifted into that old buggy like a sack of meal and to ride behind that pokey old horse. And I’m sick to death of sitting in the house from morning till night hearing reading, reading, reading, with all the parts I’d care anything about skipped. And I’m tired of being pitied. And you never told me that—that I don’t look hideous nor even blind, and——”