Betty Trevor | Page 2

grew crimson at the sight of those five eager faces watching her every movement.
Jack and Jill burst into loud laughter, Betty's upper lip curled derisively, but Miles' thin face showed an answering flush of colour, and he backed into the room, exclaiming angrily--
"I say, this is too much of a good thing! I don't know what you all mean by swarming round me wherever I go! Why can't you leave a fellow alone? Can't I even look out of the window without having you all on my back? A nice effect it must have to see the whole place blocked up, as if we were staring at a Lord Mayor's show!"
Betty sat down by the table and took up the blouse on which she had been working for the last three months. The sleeves had been taken out and replaced twice over, and the collar-band obstinately refused to come right. By the time it was finished it would be hopelessly out of date, which Betty considered as one of the many contrary circumstances of life which continually thwarted her good endeavours.
"Don't worry yourself. She will enjoy being stared at!" she said coldly. "She knows we watch her coming in and out, and shows off all her little tricks for our benefit. She's the most conceited, stuck-up, affected little wretch I ever saw, without a thought in her head but her clothes, and her own importance. I wouldn't have anything to do with her for the world!"
"Jolly good thing then that you are never likely to get a chance! Her people will never trouble to call upon us; they are much too high and mighty. That's no reason, though, why you should be so down on the poor little soul. I should have thought that you would have felt sorry for her, cooped up with that old governess all her time, with not a soul to keep her company! But girls are such cads--they never play fair."
Miles strode out of the room in a fume, and Betty's lips compressed themselves into a thin straight line, the meaning of which the others knew full well. To incur Miles' displeasure was Betty's bitterest punishment, and the "Pampered Pet" was not likely to fare any better at her hands in consequence of his denouncement. Jill beckoned furtively to Jack. There was no chance of any more fun in the schoolroom now that Miles had departed, and Betty was in the sulks; it would be wise to go and disport themselves elsewhere. They left the room arm-in-arm, heads almost touching, as they whispered and giggled together, the most devoted pair of twins that ever existed, and eight-year-old Pam leant her elbows on the table and stared fixedly at her big sister.
Betty was seventeen, nearly grown-up, inasmuch as she had left school, and now took classes to complete her education. Her blue serge dress came down to her ankles, and she made a gallant attempt to "do up" her hair in the style of the period. Mrs Trevor considered the style too elaborate for such a young girl, but after all it did not much matter what was aimed at, since every morning someone exclaimed innocently, "You've done your hair a new way, Betty!" and was fully justified in the remark. One day Betty's ambition ran to curls and waves, and she appeared at the breakfast-table with a fuzz worthy of a negress. The next day better judgment prevailed, when she brushed hard for ten minutes, and then pinned on a hair-net, with the result that she looked a veritable little Puritan; and between these extremes ranged a variety of effects, only possible of achievement to an amateur with no experience, but boundless ambition.
If you could have honestly pronounced Betty pretty, you would have satisfied the deepest longing of her heart. She gazed in the glass every morning, twisting her head from side to side, and deciding irrevocably that she was hideous, a fright, a perfect freak, while all the time an obstinate little hope lingered that perhaps after all, in becoming clothes, and when she was in a good temper, she might look rather ... nice! Chestnut hair, such a pretty colour, but so little of it that it would not "go" like other girls'; dark grey eyes with curly black lashes; an impertinent little nose, and a mouth just about twice as big as those possessed by the ladies in mother's Book of Beauty downstairs. At the best she could only be "pretty" or a "sweet-looking girl," and she pined to be beautiful and stately, and to reign as a queen over the hearts of men.
Poor Betty! Many a girl of seventeen lives through the same tragedy in secret, but they are not all fortunate enough to possess an adoring younger sister who thinks