CHAPTER XVII.
"GOOD IN EVERYTHING."
Betty's satisfaction, though, ended with the day. "I am never happy one day but what I've got to be unhappy the next," she said plaintively to her father the following evening, when telling him her woes.
"You might put it another way," he said, smiling, "and say you are never very unhappy one day but what you are very happy the next."
Betty shook her head gravely. "But I am not," she said. "I can't be sure I am going to be happy, but I can be that I am going to be unhappy, and sometimes it lasts for ever so long."
"You poor little suffering martyr," said Dr. Trenire, "what is wrong now?"
"It's my stockings," said Betty solemnly.
"Whatever is wrong with your stockings? Stand still, child, can't you, and tell me."
"No," said Betty, "I can't, my legs itch so. I am sure I shall be crazy before long. I almost wish I'd been sent away to school too, then I could give them away, as Kitty has."
"Given away what?—her legs? What made Kitty do it, and what is wrong with the stockings? Are they new, that they have only just begun to irritate you?"