Amy Bell Marlowe

“ Baldwin said, a little worried.
“Oh, wait till you see him. He’s just the same old sixpence of a Larry. You’ll see, Mamma. But he is handsome in his dress suit. Doesn’t look at all like an undertaker.”
Mrs. Baldwin, shaking her head, rejoined:
“For you to go to work at any domestic service is out of the question. And your father would never hear to your working in the factory.”
“What shall I do then, Mamma? Peddle? Be an agent? Go from house to house and try to make people buy what they don’t want and don’t need and really would be better off without?” and Beth laughed gaily. ”

“ The family laughed at the flyaway’s plaint, and Ella added:
“Anyway, I hope Beth will get married long before I get any beaux. I know I couldn’t keep ’em a minute if they came here and saw Beth.”
“Mercy, Ella!” gasped her mother. “What are you talking about—a child of eleven?”
Mr. Baldwin laughed heartily. He usually did at his flaxen-haired daughter’s nonsense. But Ella added:
“I don’t care, Mamma. It should be against the law for one sister to be so much prettier than the others. Poor little Prissy and me—why, we haven’t any chance at all!” ”

“ As long as there’s anything to be earned by it, Miss Baldwin is prepared to do it. Like our politicians, she is ‘out for the dough.’”
“How very vulgar, Maude!” said the “judge,” tartly. “Suppose Miss Carroll should hear that?”
“It’s the truth!” snapped the angry girl. “We, who are well-to-do, are exploited for the benefit of these—these paupers that Miss Hammersly allows to come here to Rivercliff. At least, she should have the decency to put them in a department by themselves, and have their sleeping quarters with the servants.” ”

“ She could draw quite remarkably for a girl who had had so little instruction; and made many really clever cartoons in black and white.
Over her dressing-table was a long study in feline humor; as Beth called it when she first observed the piece, “a yard of cats.”
“Isn’t it cute?” she cried. “You never did it?”
“Yes, I did. From life,” Molly said, smiling at the row of kittens tenderly.
“From life? Nonsense! How could you get cats to pose for you? And they are too, too funnily human!”
“Didn’t get the cats to pose. But my aunts did. ”

“ Do you die at night and have to be resurrected every morning?”
“Is—is that you, Molly Granger?” yawned Beth.
“It is. Get up!”
“Isn’t it dreadfully early?”
“No. It’s only cloudy. The day is broke, my child—dead broke, by the looks of it, I should say. A nasty day! and I so wanted it to be nice.”
Beth had reached down and was fumbling at the key in the lock. Now she turned it and Molly bounced in.
“Well! you lazy girl!” cried Miss Granger, who was fully dressed. “You’ll learn to get up more promptly than this at Rivercliff. Miss Hammersly believes in early hours. So does the madam.” ”

“ But if the chief end of a girl’s existence is to get married, what good do books do her?”
“Why, that isn’t the chief end of girls of to-day, Mrs. Severn,” laughed Beth. “At least, not of the girls I know.”
“You do not know many of your fellow-students very well, do you?” asked Mrs. Severn, shrewdly. “I know that class of young ladies pretty well. They haven’t, as a rule, a practical idea once in a year. But you are evidently different.”
“I am different in that my people are not well-to-do,” confessed Beth. “I had money enough to get through one year at Rivercliff. ”

“ Aunt Cyril was very kind to Beth, but rather aloof. She could not wholly approve of a girl who did housework for her school tuition. Yet she was too sweet and lovable to snub her niece’s chum.
“They are just the sweetest, lovingest dears that ever lived—all of them!” Beth Baldwin declared to her mother, when she returned from this visit. “And the house is full of cats—both living ones and those Jolly Molly has drawn. The aunts are too tender-hearted to have a single kitten drowned, or to destroy even one of Molly’s attempts at feline portraiture.” ”

“ Beth declared briskly. “I shall start right out to call upon the folks in town and show them the work I can do mending lace and silk hose and the like. I can make more at such work, if I can get enough of it to do, than I possibly could in a store or at the factory.”
“But, my dear child——”
“It is my duty to do it, Mamma—and I love it,” Beth said firmly. “The money you borrowed was spent for me. I’ll make up the whole in time.”
“It was not a loan to be paid back—at once,” said Mrs. Baldwin, desperately.
“Why, Mamma! what do you mean? All loans must be paid.” ”

“ The difference between knowledge wished for, and knowledge attained, is vast. It isn’t measured by mere time, as I said before. It is a difference in the attitude of one’s mind toward most things in the world. However much Larry may seem just the same as he used to be, he is not the same. He is a man grown, and you are only a girl.”
“Oh, Mamma! That is a sharp one,” said Beth, laughing placidly. “I really can’t see that being fifteen instead of twenty-two makes much difference between Larry and me. ”

“ It may have been well for Beth Baldwin’s advancement in her studies and for her financial prosperity, that the foregoing incidents had taken place. It shut the young girl more within herself and left her mind freer for study and work.
Those girls who were sorry and ashamed because of countenancing a mean act, even to a slight degree, tried at first to shower favors upon the occupant of Number Eighty, South Wing; at least, they all brought her work for her needle. But Beth knew her friends now—there was no question of that. ”

“ My aunts are regular tabbies, anyway; they don’t mind. They begin to look upon my talent for drawing cats as a ‘gift.’ You see, Bethesda,” said Molly, laughing again now, “I can draw cats, and I can’t draw folks. If I ever attempt your portrait, you’ll have to appear as a cat. Whatever artistic talent I have, I’ll never be a portrait painter. So I told the aunts I wanted to draw them in black and white, and they all sat for me.”
Beth was as much amazed as she was amused. ”

“ In fact, Beth, before coming to Rivercliff School, had thought of girls as “sorts,” rather than as individuals. She was now to learn that one of the things that a well conducted boarding school does to a girl, is to bring out her individuality, and if she has any color to her character at [92] all to deepen that color and develop her distinctive traits.
Molly Granger was just a little different from any girl Beth had ever before known. Despite her jolly, careless, cheerful disposition she was certainly different, for instance, from Beth’s friend, Mary Devine. ”

“ Madam Hammersly, with her cambric handkerchief, which all her maids learned to fear, was always up early, and many a little talk did the madam and Beth have together. Sometimes, too, would Beth hear her complain to Cynthia of her lack of attention to her duties.
“I can never teach you the importance of trifles, Cynthia,” the madam said in Beth’s hearing on one occasion. “How many months have you been with me?”
“Almost nine now, Madam,” said Cynthia, briskly. “We ought to know each other pretty well, don’t you think so?”
“Girl! it is only necessary that you should know your work. ”

“ Miss Maude Grimshaw, Beth. You live right opposite to each [108] other,” whispered Molly, in conclusion, “and, believe me! you have opposite natures.”
Miss Grimshaw had given Beth a cold little nod and had gone back into her room.
“What a beautiful kimono that is she wears,” Beth said calmly.
“Maude is the one of whom I told you,” Molly sniffed. “Our ‘glass of fashion and mold of form.’”
“Oh! the dreadfully fashionable girl?”
“Fashion is no name for it!” groaned Molly. “She sports the finest frocks at Rivercliff. She turns all our heads. Oh! she’s a charmer.” ”

“ Baldwin,” Mr. Lomax said to Beth’s mother, “you must push Elizabeth on. She must continue her course at Rivercliff. Why! it will be a distinct loss to the educational community if she does not become a teacher.”
“I do not know how that may be,” said Mrs. Baldwin, quietly; “but I do know that I want Beth to continue at the school. At first, when Mr. Baldwin was taken ill, I did not see how we could accomplish it. But now, by her own exertions, she has proved that it is possible. Why! she has already in hand enough to pay the first half of next year’s expenses.” ”

“ This bend proved to be the best stretch of ice on the river, and Jackson City people came down, strung colored electric lamps along the shore, erected booths and shelters, and on moonlight evenings the scene at the foot of the bluff on which Rivercliff School stood was a gay one, indeed. ”

“ He had drawn Beth to school on his sled, as Mary Devine said. Larry was as much at home in the Baldwin house when a child as he was in his own. Perhaps more at home, for there was more gaiety in the little cottage on Bemis Street, which soon began to be crowded with young life after Beth was born.
There was Marcus, two years Beth’s junior; Ella, now a flyaway child of eleven; Prissy—named after her mother—as sweet and loving as a child could be; and Fred and Ferd, the twins, six years old. They had all looked on Larry Haven as almost an elder brother. ”

“ A strange combination was Cynthia Fogg, that was sure.
Beth finished dressing first and went in search of Molly Granger. The jolly girl demanded first of all:
“Isn’t that the strangest girl you ever met, Beth Baldwin?”
Beth sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “Either she does not know when she offends good taste or she does not care. She is an odd-acting girl for one in her position.”
“Yet,” said Molly, reflectively, “there is something taking about her.”
“That’s what I say,” said Beth, brightening up. “Anyway, we’ll see if we can get her taken on by Madam Hammersly. My! she is so abrupt. ”

“ He was the white-headed little boy who used to pull you to school on his sled,” said Mary, airily.
“But that was a long time ago,” said Beth, with laughter. “I haven’t seen Larry since last winter’s holidays—and then scarcely more than to wave my hand to him. He’s grown quite away from us Hudsonvale girls and boys since his sophomore year at college.”
“My! how he did puff himself and walk turkey his first two years at college,” said the slangy Mary. “The only boy from Hudsonvale who ever went to a real, big school, I guess.”
“But Larry wasn’t spoiled,” Beth hastened to say. ”

“ She was a plain, rather unattractive girl who seldom asserted herself; but now she was quite indignant.
“Stop, Maude Grimshaw. You are the meanest girl in Rivercliff School—I don’t care if you are the richest. This is my room and I declare I’ll never invite you into it again.”
She turned swiftly to Beth and put a protecting arm about her. “You are a girl I am proud to have for a friend, Miss Baldwin—I don’t care what others may say. I know I wouldn’t have the pluck to try to work my way through school, providing I could get an education in no other way. ”

“ You can talk while you work, can’t you?”
“Oh yes!” laughed Beth, her face brightening. “Conversation will not be charged for extra.”
Mrs. Severn laughed. Immediately Mr. Dennis Montague began to cackle, and went into a veritable spasm of laughter which drowned all other sounds for the nonce. The parrot was a jealous bird. He cared only to hear his own voice. Again he was quenched (for the moment) by a cushion and the undignified command to “shut up!”
Beth saw that Mrs. Severn’s hands and fingers were swollen with the gout, too—called by more plebian patients, “rheumatism.” ”