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Page 47
Betsy turned quickly. A very pretty girl with yellow hair and blue eyes
(she looked as Molly might when she was grown up) was leaning over the
edge of a little canvas-covered booth, the sign of which announced that
home-made doughnuts and soft drinks were for sale there. A young man,
very flushed and gay, was pulling at the girl's blue gingham sleeve.
"Oh, come on, Annie. Just one turn! The floor's elegant. You can keep an
eye on the booth from the hall! Nobody's going to run away with the old
thing anyhow!''
"Honest, I'd love to! But I got a great lot of dishes to wash, too! You
know Momma!" She looked longingly toward the open-air dancing floor, out
from which just then floated a burst of brazen music.
"Oh, PLEASE!" said a small voice. "I'll do it for twenty cents."
Betsy stood by the girl's elbow, all quivering earnestness.
"Do what, kiddie?" asked the girl in a good-natured surprise.
"Everything!" said Betsy, compendiously. "Everything! Wash the dishes,
tend the booth; YOU can go dance! I'll do it for twenty cents."
The eyes of the girl and the man met in high amusement. "My! Aren't we
up and coming!" said the man. "You're most as big as a pint-cup, aren't
you?" he said to Betsy.
The little girl flushed--she detested being laughed at--but she looked
straight into the laughing eyes. "I'm ten years old today," she said,
"and I can wash dishes as well as anybody." She spoke with dignity.
The young man burst out into a great laugh.
"Great kid, what!" he said to the girl, and then, "Say, Annie, why not?
Your mother won't be here for an hour. The kid can keep folks from
walking off with the dope and ..."
"I'll do the dishes, too," repeated Betsy, trying hard not to mind being
laughed at, and keeping her eyes fixed steadily on the tickets to
Hillsboro.
"Well, by gosh," said the young man, laughing. "Here's our chance,
Annie, for fair! Come along!"
The girl laughed, too, out of high spirits. "Wouldn't Momma be crazy!"
she said hilariously. "But she'll never know. Here, you cute kid, here's
my apron." She took off her long apron and tied it around Betsy's neck.
"There's the soap, there's the table. You stack the dishes up on that
counter."
She was out of the little gate in the counter in a twinkling, just as
Molly, in answer to a beckoning gesture from Betsy, came in. "Hello,
there's another one!" said the gay young man, gayer and gayer. "Hello,
button! What you going to do? I suppose when they try to crack the safe
you'll run at them and bark and drive them away!"
Molly opened her sweet, blue eyes very wide, not understanding a single
word. The girl laughed, swooped back, gave Molly a kiss, and
disappeared, running side by side with the young man toward the dance
hall.
Betsy mounted on a soap box and began joyfully to wash the dishes. She
had never thought that ever in her life would she simply LOVE to wash
dishes beyond anything else! But it was so. Her relief was so great that
she could have kissed the coarse, thick plates and glasses as she washed
them.
"It's all right, Molly; it's all right!" she quavered exultantly to
Molly over her shoulder. But as Molly had not (from the moment Betsy
took command) suspected that it was not all right, she only nodded and
asked if she might sit up on a barrel where she could watch the crowd go
by.
"I guess you could. I don't know why NOT," said Betsy doubtfully. She
lifted her up and went back to her dishes. Never were dishes washed
better!
"Two doughnuts, please," said a man's voice behind her.
Oh, mercy, there was somebody come to buy! Whatever should she do? She
came forward intending to say that the owner of the booth was away and
she didn't know anything about ... but the man laid down a nickel, took
two doughnuts, and turned away. Betsy gasped and looked at the home-made
sign stuck into the big pan of doughnuts. Sure enough, it read "2 for
5." She put the nickel up on a shelf and went back to her dishwashing.
Selling things wasn't so hard, she reflected.
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