Exit Betty

rain came in, and bread and butter with apple sauce and cookies. They made her sit right down and eat, before she even took her hat

e could not help wondering what her stepmother would have said to the red and white tablecloth, and the green shades at the windows. There was an old sofa covered with carpet in the room, with a flannel patchwork pillow, and a cat cuddled up cosily beside it purring away like a tea-kettle boiling. Somehow, poor as it was

eerful mouth like Jane's. She took Betty rig

you right at the start. Give her a little peace while she eats her supper. How long h

troubled. She was very much afraid that

ry long," she s

f the girls in

would come next. "We-just met-that is-why-

ly to the movies. And to church. My children always make it a point to go to

e to," said

living?" was t

oth dead and I've been having rather a hard ti

. "Jane always was a good girl, if I do say so. I knew Jan

ce already!" burst

Ma tell that!" reproached Bob. "Y

Mrs. Hathaway wanted somebody to look after her little girl. She's only three years old and she is possessed to run away every chance she gets. Course I s'pose she's spoiled. Most rich children are. Now, my children wouldn't have run away. They always thought too much of what I said

imed Betty. "I shal

blue eyes just like you, and she has ever an' ever so many little

esting!" s

e said she'd give you six dollars a week, an'

my board to yo

, and I guess we shall like each other real well. Now, children, it's awful late. Get to bed

laundry. She wanted to laugh when she saw the primitive makeshifts, but instead the tears came into her eyes to think how many luxuries she had taken all her life as a ma

ad thoughtfully put in the suitcase-otherwise filled with old garments she wished to send home-Betty pattered upstairs to the little room with the sloping roof and the dormer window and crept into bed with Nellie. That young woman had purposely stayed awake, and kept Betty as long as she could talk, telling all the wonderfu

nd in her first waking hours a great shadow of horror had settled upon her when she realized that her people would leave no stone unturned to find her. It was most important that she should do or be nothing whereby she might be recognized. She even thought of getting a cap and apron to wear when attending her small charge, but Nellie told her they didn't do that in the country and she would be thought stuck up, so she desisted. But she drew the blue serge skirt up as high above her waistband

l, but lately things had been growing very unpleasant and she found she had to leave. She had left under such conditi

low her up and make all sorts of trouble for her in her new home if she wrote for her things; and so the

family, and ended: "Ma, she's got a story, but don't make her tell any more of it than she wants. She's awful sensitive about

took the opportunity to inform the village gossips that a friend of Jane's had come to rest up and get a year's

proved by the way she entered into her new life. It was almost as if she had been born again, and entered into a new universe, so widely was her path diverging from everything whic

She never got into the way of speaking that way herself, but it seemed a part of these people she had come to know and admire so thoroughly, as much as for a rose to have thorns, and so she did not mind it. Her other world had been so all-wrong for years that the h

arrived. She learned the charms of the common little bean, and was proud indeed the day she set upon the table a luscious pan of her own baking, rich and sweet and brown

ving how to get out a dress, with the help of trimmings or sleeves of another material. Betty would watch and gradually try to help, but she found there were so many strange things to be considered. There, for instance, was the up and down of a thing and the right and wrong of it. It was exactly like life. And one had to plan not to have both sleeves for one arm, and to have the nap of the goods running down always. It was as complicated as learning a new language. But at the end of the week there came fo

orld. The very next evening after she arrived she had been taken to that wonderful church entertainment that the girls had tol

ly from going out into the little village world. But it was plain that this was expected of her, and if she re

wn class? It was impossible. Her mother had just the one elderly cousin whom she had always secretly looked to to help her in any time of need, but his failing her and sending that telegram without even a good wish in it, just at the last minute, too, made her feel it was of no use to appeal to him. Besides, that was the first place her stepmother would seek for her. She had many good society friends, but none who would stand by her in trouble. No one wit

was a high hedge about the place so that one could not see the road, and there were flower-beds, a great fountain, and a rustic summerhouse. Betty did not see why days passed in such a pleasant place would not be delightful in summertime. She was not altogether sure whether she would like to have to be a sort of servant in the house-and of course these cold fall days she would have

stinct in her own soul had held her always from many of the ways of those about her, perhaps the spirit of her sweet mother allowed to be one of those who "bear them up, lest at any time they dash their feet against a stone." Or it might have been some memory of the teachings of her father, whom she adored, and who in his last days often talked with her alone about how he and her own mother would want her to live. But now

that it was interesting. She spoke of God in much the same familiar way that "Ma" had done, only with a gentler refinement, and made the girls very sure that whatever anybody else believed, Mrs. Thornley was a very intimate friend of Jesus Christ. Betty loved her at once, but so shy was

r lifts her eyes or the quiet assurance with which she answers. And she smiles, Charles, never grins like the rest. She is delicious,

, and our Father has sent her here for you to help her back again," said he

need me. She has Mrs. Carson, remember, and she is a host in her

o help, too, dear, or she wou

Oh, I know. I'm not going to shirk any but I wish I knew more a

what to do, if one had the listening heart and the ready spirit. Would Christ tell her what to do, she wondered, now right here, if she were to ask him? Would He show her

the sheltering bedclothes, "O Christ, if you are her