"Probably the same business that you had," replied Emily. "She goes over to the Home two or three times a week to read to Mrs. Grimes, the blind woman, and I suppose she has a right to take the shortest road, if she pleases."
"That going over to the Home is just another specimen of her," said Martha. "She likes to have the old ladies make a fuss over her, and to have all the managers say what a charitable, amiable girl Betty Allis is. You would not catch her doing any such thing unless she were sure that people would hear of it."
"Martha, how can you say so?" interrupted Emily. "You know how she helped poor Julia Curtis with her lessons, all the time her eyes were weak, so that she might not lose her place in school. The girls all wondered how Julia could keep up so well; but nobody would have known it if little Fanny had not let out the secret: for Betty made Julia promise not to tell."
"She knew it would come out somehow, or she would not have taken all that trouble," said Martha. "Then her name sounds so silly for a girl fifteen years old Belly Allis! Why does she not call herself Elizabeth?"
"Perhaps for the reason, amongst others, that it is not her name," replied Aunt Margaret, drily. "She was christened Betty at her grandmother's special request."
"She likes the name, though, for she says so," persisted Martha. "Then she makes such a parade of goodness. Miss Lyman said one day, last Lent, that she wished the girls to use their prayer-books in church; and the very next morning, Betty, instead of putting her head down, as she had done before, kneeled down and kept her head up and her book open before her all through the prayers and the Litany. Then she got up with such an air, as if to say, 'Just see how good I am!'"
"I fancy the air was in your imagination," said Emily. "I sat by Betty all through Lent and saw none of those airs that you speak of. Betty is a great deal more serious than she used to be, and I think she is trying hard to be a good Christian girl; but I am sure she makes no parade of it."
"Pray, Martha, what were you doing all through the prayers that you had so much time to observe Betty?" asked Aunt Margaret.
Martha blushed, but made no answer.
"I think you are cherishing a very wrong spirit," continued Aunt Margaret, seriously; "a spirit which makes you see wrong in everything which Betty does or leaves undone."