Exit Betty

childhood, she found herself trembling violently. It was as if she had suddenly been placed in an airplane all by herself and started off to the moon witho

to feel a little more at her ease. Furtively she studied her neighbors. She had seldom traveled in a common car, and it was new to her to study all types as she could see them here. She smiled at a dirty baby and wished she had something to give it. She studied the careworn man and the woman in black who wept behind her veil and would not smile no matter how hard the m

ad written it, Lizzie Hope, on the back of the envelope containing the address of Mrs. Carson. It seemed somehow an identification card. She studied it curiously and wondered if Lizzie Hope was going to be any happier than Betty Stanhope had been. And then she fell to thinking over the strange experien

dollars and a half in change. It made her feel richer than she had ever felt in her life, although she had never been stinted as t

a lot of tiny houses. Would Tinsdale look this way? How safe these places seemed, yet l

her head on her hand with her face toward the window and tried to pretend she was asleep and hide the tears that would come, but presently a boy came in at the station with a big basket and she bought a ham sandwich and an apple. It tasted good. She had not expected that it would. She decided that she must have been pretty hungry and then fell to counting her money,

irty and pitiful with their faces all streaked with soot and molasses candy that somebody had given them. The mother looked tired and greasy and the father was fat and dark, with unpleasant black eyes that seemed to roll a great deal. Yet he was

ing that you hated, but it was another to jump into a new life where one neither knew nor was known. Betty began to shrink inexpressibly from it all. Not that she wanted to go back! Oh, no; far from it! But once when they passed a little white cemetery with tall dark fir trees waving guardingly above the white stones she looked out almost wistfully. If she were lying in one of those beside her father and mother how safe and rested she would be. She wouldn't h

overy the nasal voice of the conductor called out: "Tinsdale! Tinsdale!" and she hurr

her weirdly. She had a feeling that she would rather wait until the train was gone before she began to search for her new home, and then when the wheels ground and began to turn and the conductor shouted "All aboard!" and swung hi

her ear: "Is this Lizzie Hope?" and Betty turned with a thrill o

ad a trunk. You didn't bring your trunk? O, but you're going to stay, aren't you? I'm goin' up to the city to take a p'sition, and Mother'd be awful lonesome. Somet

?" laughed Betty, at her ease i

sent you if you hadn't been a good scout. Jane knows. Besides

stole into Betty's and t

u come! I think yo

It was the first time in her life that a little child had come clos

about twelve years old. He grabbed the suitcase, eyed the stranger

e and lights and warmth and heads bobbing through the windows. It stirred some memory of long ago,

ding with pointed steeple and belfry. "They're goin' to have a enterta

rs in her throat. It was just like living out a fairy story. Sh

the older girl suddenly. "Jane said she was going to telegr

were awful scared for fear you wouldn't come till morning, an' have to stay on the train all night. Ma

Betty, wondering if she was talkin

cause you had a fever?"

wondering how many questions like that it was going to be hard for her to answer without telling a lie. A li

to cut mine, an' so did Jane, but Ma wouldn't let us. She

l grow again after a while. I think it will be less trouble this way. But it's ve

know how to get rid of that hair dye befor

a big tin bath-tub out in the back shed. Ma bought it off the Joneses when they got their porcelain one put into their house. We don't have

decent look, but very tiny. There was a small yard about it with a picket fence, and a leafless lilac bush. A cheerful barberry bush flanked the gate on either side. The front door was open into a tiny hall and beyond the light strea