“O, Betty! O me! O my!” he cried dolefully, “I can’t go! There’s no way possible. I’ve got to work all day right under dad’s eye. He’s going to clean the shed upstairs and down and the loft in the barn. I couldn’t sneak away or get away or anything.”
“But, Tommy! how can we go without you?” the girl cried. “Perhaps if your father understood——”
Tommy considered. “I don’t believe it would be safe to tell him—or even to say anything about it to anybody until afterwards,” he concluded. “Of course if Mr. Meadowcroft was here it would be different.”
“You’re sure to-morrow’s the last day?”
Tommy verified the fact by newspaper and calendar.
“Well, you’ll just have to go without me,” he declared dejectedly. “You can go on the one-thirty train and change at Paulding for the through train north. I guess you’ll have to walk back to Paulding and then get the four o’clock from there.”
“Here comes Aunt Sarah!” said Betty, and Tommy made for the door.
“Will you go over to Rose’s after supper with me, Tommy?” Betty asked in the entry. “You could explain to Mrs. Harrow better than I.”
Tommy frowned. “I don’t believe anybody’d better do any explaining to her until after you’ve got back from Millville,” he said. “It would be awful to tell Mrs. Harrow and then have her disappointed. There might be some hitch. The doctor might not be there. He might ’a been taken sick since that notice in the paper came out or he might ’a been sandbagged by a thug. He must be rich, and anyhow all those decorations must be valuable. I suppose they’re set with precious stones, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said Betty. “My mind doesn’t seem to take in anything else but just that Rose is going to be cured. And about her mother—it might be too much for her to have Rose come home with her sight restored. It might go to her heart.”