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Page 51
Betty waved a letter which she had just received. "Yes, the editor took
them both, and wants more--a series of boarding-school stories. One of
these girls heard me telling Miss Chilton about it," she added,
laughing, "and to hear them you would think it is an event of national
importance."
"It is to us," insisted A.O. "We are so proud to think it is _our_
teacher, our special favourite one, who's turned out to be a sure-enough
author, and we aren't going to let you go until you promise to sit for a
picture for us."
"Then I suppose I shall be forced to promise," said Betty, smiling down
into the eager faces which surrounded her, and breaking away from the
encircling arms which held her determinedly. It was good to feel that
she had the ardent admiration of her pupils, though it was burdensome
sometimes to contemplate that so many of them took her as a model.
"I'm going to write too, some day," she overheard one of them say as she
made her laughing escape. "I'd rather be an author than anything else in
the world. It's so nice to dash off a new book every year or so and have
a fortune come rolling in, and everybody praising you and trying to
make your acquaintance and begging for your autograph."
"It is not so easy as it sounds, Judith," Betty paused to say. "There's
a long hard road to travel before one reaches such a mountain top as
that. I've been at it for years, and I can only count that I've made a
very small beginning of the journey."
Still, it seemed quite a good-sized achievement, when later in the
morning she beckoned Mary into her room, and watched her eyes grow wide
over the check which she showed her.
"One hundred dollars for just two short stories!" Mary exclaimed. "And
you wrote most of them during Christmas vacation. Oh, Betty! How
splendid!" Then she looked at her curiously. "How does it feel to be so
successful at last, after being so bitterly disappointed?"
Betty, leaning forward against the desk, her chin in her hand, looked
thoughtfully out of the window. Then after a pause she answered, "Glad
and thankful--a deep quiet sort of gladness like a bottomless well, and
a queer, uplifted buoyant feeling as if I had been given wings, and
could attempt anything. There's nothing in the world," she added slowly,
as if talking to herself, "quite so sweet as the realization of one's
ambitions. I was almost envious of Joyce when I saw her established in a
studio, at last accomplishing the things she has always hoped to do. And
it was the same way when I saw Eugenia so radiantly happy in the
realizing of _her_ ambition, to make an ideal home for Stuart and her
father and to be an ideal mother to little Patricia. In their eyes she
is not only a perfect house-keeper, but an adorable home-maker.
"Lloyd, too, is having what she wanted this winter, the social triumph
that godmother and Papa Jack coveted for her. Her ambition is to measure
up to all their fond expectations, and to leave a Road of the Loving
Heart in every one's memory. And she is certainly doing that. Her
popularity is the kind that cannot be bought with lavish dinners and
extravagant balls. She's just so winsome and dear and considerate of
everybody that she's earned the right to be called the Queen of Hearts."
"And now all four of you are happy," remarked Mary, "for your dreams
have come true. And seeing that makes me all the more determined to make
mine come true."
"Oh, the valedictory that you are to win for Jack's sake," said Betty,
coming out of the revery into which she had fallen for a moment.
"That's only one of the things," began Mary. "The others--" Then she
stopped, hesitating to put in words the future she foresaw for herself.
Sometimes in the daylight it seemed presumptuous for her to aspire to
such heights. It was only when she lay awake at night with the moonlight
stealing into the room, that such a future seemed reasonable and sure.
Unknowing that the hesitation held a half-escaped confidence, Betty did
not wait for her to go on, but held up the check, saying, "You know this
is a partnership story, and you are to get another trip to New York out
of it. Putting your shilling in the Christmas offering was a good
investment for both of us. If you hadn't I never would have thought of
the plot which your adventure suggested."
"But you've made your story so different from what actually happened,
that I don't see how I can have any claim on it at all," said Mary.
"It's just your sweet way of giving me Easter Vacation with Joyce."
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