But Betty was indignant at that.
"I won't be helped!" she said. "I won't be helped by you, John Brown. Stay at home till Christmas yourself—I'm going now!"
Her career had to be decided upon, and very little time remained in which to decide. John intended beginning life as an errand boy. In his spare time, he said, he would go on with his drawing, and if an opportunity occurred, he would work his passage out somewhere in some ship. He was rather vague about all but the errand running; that he saw to be the first step towards greatness.
Betty was not long before she decided he was keeping some part of his design from her. And every afternoon when they had left school and each other, she was nervous lest he should have gone by morning—gone and left her to find her way into the world alone!
And here was she unable to decide upon her career! She even asked questions about Joan of Arc and Grace Darling, and set herself to find out if there were any other women in the history book.
"It isn't fair!" she said at last to the thoughtful John Brown. "You'd never have known about being an errand boy and an artist only for your books. You've got a lot of books to help you."
But John told her how he had been decided upon his "career" all his life, ever since his father had left him alone on the station in the country which time was, as the reader will be aware, situated somewhere about his first birthday. But he magnanimously proposed to place his grandfather's library at her feet, or rather to place her feet within his grandfather's library.
"You can come and take your pick," he said.
At this period of her life Betty was not troubled with pride—the pride of the slighted and poor relation.
She accepted his offer rapturously, only adding, "You'd better keep my grandfather out of the way when I come."