Beth Baldwin

“ I have nearly a hundred dollars, and it will last me a long time. I am all right. I will write you when I get settled.”
That afternoon Beth stole down in Cynthia’s discarded cap and apron, opened the north drawing-room and began her dusting. The madam was on hand, evidently to see if Beth kept her part of the contract, and hardly had Beth begun her work when Cynthia, dressed for departure, appeared in the reception hall.
“Oh, Madam Hammersly!” she said cheerfully, [202] “I must bid you good-bye before I go. I hope you will get another girl to suit you better than I could—— What! Beth Baldwin? ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The jolly girl, however, had foreseen the comments and the amazement of her friends over Beth’s plain clothes; and wherever she could, she repeated (and the story lost nothing in her telling) the interview Beth had had with Maude Grimshaw.
“That’s the sort of girl Beth Baldwin is,” Molly said, out of her new chum’s hearing, of course. “She is true blue, she is! And it isn’t that she doesn’t need the money. She does. She’s only got enough to pay for this first year’s schooling, she tells me; and she is determined to get three years at Rivercliff in order to teach. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her mother laughed too; yet she was more serious than Beth could see any occasion for.
“There is a freshness and a boyishness about young men—and some men when they become older—that make them seem less mature than quite young girls,” Mrs. Baldwin said, finding it a little difficult to impress her daughter with the change in her whilom playmate.
“Larry Haven has stepped over the line from boyhood to manhood, whether you realize it or not, Beth. There is a vast difference now between you two. You look forward to study and the acquirement of text-book knowledge——”
“Oh! how much!” murmured Beth. ”

“ GROSSET & DUNLAP
The Girls of Rivercliff School
[v] CONTENTS
[1] THE GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL
CHAPTER I
“THE GRAPES THAT HANG HIGH”
“Beth! Beth Baldwin! Oh, B. B.! Do, for pity’s sake, stop! Do you expect me to chase you all over town such a hot day as this? It’s cruelty to animals to make me run in this awful sun,” and Mary Devine finally reached Elizabeth Baldwin’s side, and clung to her school friend’s arm, panting.
“Cruelty to how many animals, Mary?” asked Beth, laughing. “Are you a whole menagerie? You remind me of our Marcus when he was a little fellow. ”

“ We seniors may dance with the male visitors—if we are asked!”
Beth had a new dress—black and silver. Molly [260] said it was “a dream.” And certainly her brunette chum did look lovely in it. Although Beth and Mrs. Baldwin had made it themselves, it was a gown with which any professional dressmaker might have been satisfied.
There was just one thing missing. Beth had told Mrs. Baldwin there would be when the frock was tried on before she left home. Great-grandmother Lomis’ corals would have given just the touch needed to make Beth, as Ella declared, “fairly splendiferous.” ”

“ I’m pretty sure there isn’t a girl here who would have so secretly heaped coals of fire on her enemy’s head.
“Come, now! let us be honest—let us be fair. I don’t like poverty-stricken girls, or girls who come to Rivercliff as Beth Baldwin did, any better than heretofore. But she has beaten me. I don’t mean only in that skating race. She has beaten me in being decent!
“I admit that Miss Hammersly seems to favor her, and the teachers are always boosting Baldwin. But I guess there is good reason for their doing so. ”

“ Miss Hammersly smiled—yet her gravity returned instantly. “Very well,” she said, tapping on her desk with her pencil in a thoughtful way. “You may go, Beth.”
Beth continued at times to wonder about Mrs. Severn’s refusal to see her when she called. That [228] she could not understand. She believed that the foreign maid did not like her and might have influenced Mrs. Severn against Beth herself by some means, although the girl could not imagine how.
The opening of a new school year is like the picking up of scattered stitches with a knitting needle. ”

“ I had to sell the heirloom that had been so long in our family. You will never be able to wear the corals again, dear Beth.”
Beth actually swallowed something that seemed to choke her. “Oh, my dear!” she said. “I might have known you poor folks at home were having a worse time than you let selfish me know.”
“No, no, Beth!” cried Mrs. Baldwin. “They [278] were sold before your father left the Works. They were sold to pay your first year’s tuition!” ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Baldwin’s condition; and Beth knew he was at the Bemis Street cottage just as frequently as before the holidays. But Larry said nothing in his letter regarding the change the event of her father’s illness must make in Beth’s plans for an education.
Ella wrote: “Larry comes and potters around with papa in the old shop, sometimes for a whole afternoon at a time. I guess his clients aren’t keeping him so awfully busy. He isn’t so much fun as he used to be. ”

“ Baldwin about, she would raise sufficient money to pay for Beth’s first year at Rivercliff. She was quite sure Euphemia Haven would buy her Grandmother Lomis’ corals. For years she had wanted them. And Euphemia would give four hundred dollars for them.
“It is Beth’s sacrifice, not mine,” the mother thought, wiping her eyes before she mounted the walk to the Haven mansion. “And it is to benefit Beth. I am sure the child would rather have a year at school than the jewelry.” ”

“ Later, when the contestants for the two-mile race were started, she was one of the favorites.
There were twenty starters, and they were all good skaters. The little, dark, ugly girl, Laura Hedden, who had been such a friend of Maude Grimshaw, was next to Beth in the line.
Spitefulness breeds spitefulness. Laura could not have told why she “hated that Baldwin girl;” but she had been so well taught by the absent Maude that she considered Beth her particular enemy now. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Haven, and the lorgnette came into play to rescue her from absolute [26] confusion. “I told you, Larry, how really pretty she had grown. In a few years, Beth, you will set the young men’s hearts aflame. Introduce her to some of the others—do, Larry. So she will not feel lonesome,” and the lady patted Beth’s arm with her lorgnette.
“And your Great-grandmother Lomis’ corals. I always envied your mother those beauties,” said the matron. “But I had no idea Priscilla had kept them all these years.”
“Why,” gasped Beth, finally stung to self-defense, “they are heirlooms!” ”

“ The graduation of Beth and her classmates was really a very pretty occasion; Miss Hammersly declared (as usual) that no finer class of girls had ever left her rooftree.
Rivercliff was crowded on that day, and the great central room of the gymnasium was used for the dance and reception at night. Of course, everybody was present—including the perfect number [303] in aunts. Likewise, Mrs. Baldwin came as the guest of Mrs. Haven.
Really, to see and hear Mrs. Haven one might have thought that “our Beth” was her daughter instead of Priscilla Baldwin’s oldest child. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But Beth cheerfully put Larry’s present into the lace at her bosom and went to the ball. No taxicab this time, although there was snow on the ground. She carried her slippers, like most Hudsonvale people, under her arm.
The holidays slipped away and Beth soon boarded the train again, finding jolly Molly Granger, by agreement, in one of the parlor cars. Molly had a warm invitation for Beth to spend a part of the summer vacation at Hambro.
“We’ll neither of us get home at Easter, you know,” Molly declared. “It’s too far to travel, and the time’s too short. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One doesn’t get something for nothing in this world—I have found that out!” and she laughed rather scornfully.
“I do not understand you,” said Beth, sharply.
“Why, you will do something or other for money to help pay your tuition here. I don’t suppose it much matters what as long as it is not too hard. We have had girls like you at Rivercliff before, Miss Baldwin. Miss Hammersly rather prides herself upon having about so many each year, I believe,” she added, carelessly. ”

“ Miss Rice thought she had reason for disliking Beth, too. It dated back to the time when she had so hurt and insulted the girl from Hudsonvale by refusing to trust her handkerchiefs in Beth’s possession. Of course, when one has ill-treated another, unless one acknowledges his fault, the ill-feeling remains. Miss Rice had never owned up to her wrong attitude toward Beth. ”

“ Baldwin hastened to say. “Every girl should learn the domestic duties.”
Beth began to giggle at that. “Larry says not. He’s going to hire a cook when he gets married. He forgets that the cook may leave suddenly. I believe they have a way of doing that.” ”

“ She had never put on her pretty frock at Rivercliff without wishing that she had her [173] Great-grandmother Lomis’ corals to wear; and now she suggested to her mother that she be given a second chance to display her heirloom.
Mrs. Baldwin suddenly looked troubled—exceedingly troubled. Hesitatingly, she said: “My daughter, I do not think it would be wise. You are really too young to wear such things yet. It caused, I believe, some comment before.”
Beth laughed. She would not show her mother how deeply she was disappointed. “I guess it’s because Mrs. Haven or Larry will not be there, isn’t it? ”