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Page 10
Then Betty stood up and put on her sunbonnet. The next moment she had
scrambled over the sill, pulled the window down after her, and walked
down the slanting board to the ground. Catching Davy by the hand, and
swinging it back and forth as they ran, she went skipping across the
road regardless of the dust. Down the lane they went, between the rows
of cherry-trees; across the orchard and up the path. Somehow the world
had never before seemed half so beautiful to Betty as it did now. The
May skies had never been quite so blue, or the afternoon sunshine so
heavenly golden. She sang as she went, swinging Davy's warm little hand
in hers. It was only one of Mother Goose's old melodies, but she sang it
as a bird sings, for sheer gladness:
"Gay go up and gay go down,
To ring the bells of London town."
CHAPTER III.
"ONE FLEW EAST."
The New York letter reached the hotel while Eugenia was out in the park
with her maid, and the bell-boy brought it to her on a salver with
several others, as she was stepping into the elevator to go up to her
room.
"Here, take my gloves, Eliot!" she exclaimed, tossing them to the maid,
and beginning to tear open the envelopes as soon as her hands were free.
Eliot, a plain, middle-aged woman, with a patient face and slow gait,
picked up the gloves, and followed her young mistress down the corridor.
Eugenia dashed into her sitting-room, throwing herself into a big
armchair, regardless of the fact that she was crushing the roses in her
pretty new hat as she leaned her head against the high back. Three of
the letters which she opened so eagerly were from the girls who had been
her best friends at boarding-school. She had been away from Riverdale
Seminary only a week, but already she was homesick to go back. The
school was a very select one, and the rules were rigid, but Eugenia had
known no other home for three years.
In the great hotel where she was now, she saw her father only in the
evenings, and during breakfast, and she always rebelled when she had to
go back to it in vacation. There was so little she could do that she
really enjoyed. There was a stupid round of drives and walks, shopping
and piano practice, and after that nothing but to mope and fret and
worry poor Eliot. At school there was always the excitement of evading
some rule or breaking it without being caught; and if there was no joke
in prospect to giggle over, there was the memory of one just passed to
make them laugh. And then there were always Mollie and Fay and Kit
Keller--dear old "Kell"--ready to laugh or cry or lark with her any hour
of the day or night, as it suited her mood.
Only seven days of vacation had passed, but to Eugenia it seemed an age
since the four had walked back and forth across the school campus, with
their arms around each other, waiting for the 'bus that was to drive
them to the station.
The others were not so sorry to go, for they would be in the midst of
their families. Mollie was to go to the mountains with all the members
of her household, Fay to an island in the St. Lawrence, where her
family had their summer home, and Kell was going on a long yachting
trip, maybe to the Bermudas. It would be September before they all met
again.
For Eugenia there was nothing in prospect but lonely days at the
Waldorf, until her father could find time to take her down to the
seashore for a few weeks. The tears were in her eyes when she laid down
the three letters, after twice reading the one signed, "For ever your
devoted old chum, Kell." It had been full of the good times she was
having at home.
Eugenia looked around the elegantly furnished room with a
discontented sigh. No girl in the school had as much spending
money as herself, or as wealthy and as indulgent a father, and
yet--just at that moment--she felt herself the poorest child in
New York. There was one thing she lacked that even the poorest beggar
had, she thought bitterly,--companionship. In a listless sort of way
she picked up the remaining letter, postmarked Lloydsboro Valley,
and began to read it.
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