"Dear friends:—Welcome home again! May every happiness be yours!
"I'm so sorry I could not see you before going West. I have just been released from my mission. However, I am soon coming back to New York to study dramatic art, and hope then to see you.
"With love to you all, as ever,
"Betty."
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CHAPTER XIX.
Betty Finds Her Opposite.
Betty stayed in Ephraim only three weeks, and then returned to New York, to study. She determined to give all her spare time to the missionaries, and she was welcomed back joyously.
She made her home in a quiet little boarding-house, not far from the Mission Home. There were only a few boarders. Miss Allen and Miss May were two kindly women, unmarried and middle-aged. A Mr. Mellor was as mild as his name, and though a devout Catholic, he overlooked Betty's faith, and was her enthusiastic admirer.
Then there was a Mr. Edgeway, a young man with a blond attractiveness. Sometimes Betty was inclined to laugh at his mischievous moods, and at other times she would pity his shallow conceptions of life, and manner of living it.