Poor boy! Black haired, red cheeked, and big hearted, he knew his love was hopeless, for he was younger than 332 she––not so much; but there was Tom Howard who was also in love with her, and he had a span of sorrel horses which he had raised and broken himself, and they were his own, and he could come at any time––when she would let him––and take her out riding.
Ah, that was something to aspire to! Such a team as that, and “Teacher” to sit by his side and drive out with him, all in her pretty flat hat with a pink rose on it and green ribbons flying, and her green parasol over her head––sitting so easily––just leaning forward a bit and turning and laughing at what he was saying, and all the town seeing her with him, and his harness shining and new, making the team look as splendid as the best livery in town, and his buggy all painted so bright and new––well! The time would come when he too would have such an outfit. It would. And Teacher would see that Tom Howard was not the only one who could drive up after her in such style.
Little Teacher was tired to-day. The children had been restless and noisy, and her heart had been heavy with a great disappointment. She had been carefully saving her small salary that she might go when school closed and take a course at the “Art Institute” in “Technique.” For a long time she had clung to the idea that she would become an illustrator, and a great man had told her father that “with a little instruction in technique” his daughter had “a fortune at the tips of her fingers.” Only technique! Yes, if she could get it!
Father could help her, of course, only father was a painter in oils and not an illustrator––and then––he was so driven, always, and father and mother both thought it would be best for her to take the course of study recommended 333 by the great man. So it was decided, for there was Martha married and settled in her home not far away from the Institute, and Teacher could live with her and study. Ah, the long-coveted chance almost within her reach! Then––one difficulty after another intervened, beginning with a great fire in the fall which swept away Martha’s home and all they had accumulated, together with her husband’s school, rendering it necessary for the young couple to go back to Leauvite for the winter.
“Never mind, Betty, dear,” Martha had encouraged her. “We’ll return in the spring and start again, and you can take the course just the same.”
But now a general financial stringency prevailed all over the country. “It always seems, when there’s a ‘financial stringency,’ that portraits and paintings are the things people economize on first of all,” said Betty.
“Naturally,” said Mary Ballard. “When people need food and clothing––they want them, and not pictures. We’ll just have to wait, dear.”
“Yes, we’ll have to wait, Mary.” Saucy Betty had a way of calling her mother “Mary.” “Your dress is shabby, and you need a new bonnet; I noticed it in church,––you’d never speak of that, though. You’d wear your winter’s bonnet all summer.”
Yes, Betty must see to it, even if it took every bit of the fund, that mother and Janey were suitably dressed. “Never mind, Mary, I’ll catch up some day. You needn’t look sorry. I’m all right about my own clothes, for Martha gave me a rose for my hat, and the new ribbons make it so pretty,––and my green parasol is as good as new for all I’ve had it three years, and––”