Just for a moment the newcomer's timidity vanished and her smile of pleasure, showing her big, strong mouth with its white teeth, relieved her face of its entire plainness. "I should love it more than anything in the world; would you mind asking your mother if I may? I am afraid to ask her."
"But not afraid of asking me?" Richard laughed; he had made his suggestion without any special thought, but the girl might as well be allowed to bang at their piano if she liked. Should she get it out of order why it could soon be straightened out again. And then kindness to persons less fortunate than himself was second nature with Richard Ashton.
"Here is the mater coming, I will ask her at once," he returned, and then seeing Esther's unspoken look of entreaty, as he went forward to open the door for his mother, he silently agreed to postpone his request.
Mrs. Ashton was a tall, blonde, handsomely dressed woman, who rarely showed affection for anyone save her husband and children and whose leisure time was largely devoted to playing bridge. Neither Betty nor her son looked like her. Richard resembled his father, while Betty must have inherited her appearance from some more remote ancestor. In one comer of the parlor hung an oil painting of one of Mr. Ashton's great-aunts, a young English girl in a white muslin dress and picture hat, whom Betty always insisted she resembled.
Mrs. Ashton was frowning anxiously.
"Hasn't Betty returned, Dick?" she inquired. "It is an hour since luncheon and her friends may arrive at any moment. The child was not at all well yesterday and, I do wonder if her science teacher can be keeping her in, Miss McMurtry is so inconsiderate. I really don't know what to do about Betty this summer, she is so opposed to going to Europe with us again and wants to form a club or a camp, something perfectly extraordinary, so as to spend her summer in the woods. She almost talked your father into the idea last evening, but I do hope, dear Richard, that you will oppose her. You have such influence with Betty."
Dick and his mother were standing together by the window now on the lookout, for the truant. "Don't be such a weakling, mother," the young man replied teasingly. "If you really wish Betty to go to Europe with you and father say so and let that settle the matter, but I am not so sure this new scheme of hers is a bad one. Betty sent me a night telegram at bedtime last night (telephoned it, I suppose, when you thought she was in bed) asking me to come home for the day and help her get her own way. Living out of doors all summer, mother, and learning to look after herself and to rub up against other girls may be the best thing in the world for Betty. I am afraid she has been growing up to be more ornamental than useful."
"There is no reason why Betty should be anything but ornamental," Mrs. Ashton argued, although plainly thinking over her son's words.
Dick Ashton shook his head. "No, mother, the modern world has no place in it but for useful people nowadays. And somehow it seems to me that even more is going to be asked of women than has been asked of men. They have got to do their own housekeeping and some of the world's too, pretty soon."
Before the young fellow finished speaking he and his mother were both smiling and waving their hands toward Mollie and Polly O'Neill, who were at this moment crossing the street with several other girl friends. Before they entered the house, however, Betty's automobile, driven by herself, dashed into sight, containing five other passengers: Margaret Everett and her small brother; Miss McMurtry, the science teacher at the high school; a tall girl with a clever face and a far-away expression in her near-sighted blue eyes; and a fifth girl, an entire stranger both to Mrs. Ashton and Dick and until a short while before an equal stranger to Betty.