The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World | Page 6

had come to her. How difficult it must be for any one to have to go about telling his acquaintances of his reformation before having the chance to prove it. Then an almost appealing expression crept into her face, making her cheeks flush hotly and her lashes droop. Her old friends would have recognized the look. For it was the one that she most often wore when she desired to do another person a kindness and feared she might not be allowed.
"Couldn't you, won't you come here and have a room with us?" she asked unexpectedly. "We have such heaps of rooms in this old house and now mother and I are here alone, we really would like to have you for protection. And if you don't like to accept with just my invitation, will you come in again tomorrow or next day? I am sure mother will wish to ask you too."
Anthony Graham had had rather a rough time always. He had a peculiar disposition, and all his life probably liked only a few people very deeply. His wasted youth--nearly twenty years of idling rather than study or work--and his mixed parentage--the Italian peasant mother and his New England father--would make his struggle in the world a long and an uphill one even if he should finally succeed. Among the first things he meant to learn was not to show his emotions too easily, to hide his feelings whenever he could, so that he might learn to take without apparent flinching the hard knocks that life was sure to send. He had been preparing himself for the unkindnesses. Now at Betty's words he felt a lump forming in his throat and had a terrified moment of believing that he was about to cry like a girl. For could it be possible that any human being could so forgive one's sins as almost to forget them? Yet here was Betty Ashton asking him to stay in her home to protect her mother and herself when his only other meeting had been his effort to rob her.
Anthony set his teeth. "I can't live in so grand a house as this. I couldn't afford it," he replied huskily.
It was on the tip of Betty's tongue to protest that she had never dreamed of Anthony's paying anything. For Betty Ashton, whatever the degree of her poverty, could never fail in generosity, since generosity is a matter not of the pocketbook but of the spirit. However, all of a sudden she appreciated that the young man had quite as much right to his self-respect as she had to hers.
"Even the little will be a help to mother and me," she returned more humbly than any one else had ever before heard her speak.
"But perhaps I could be useful. Maybe you haven't so many servants as you once had----"
Anthony stopped, for Betty's expression had changed so completely. Of course she had already repented of her offer.
"We have no servants and you could help a great deal," she answered. And then without any pretense of concealing them, she let two tears slide down her face. "It is only that I had forgotten for the moment that we are not going to be able to stay in our house much longer. We can't afford to keep it for ourselves and I haven't been a success with having boarders. Still it may be some time before we can rent or sell it, and if you will stay here until then----"
Betty winced, for her visitor had this time clasped her hand until the pressure of its hard surface hurt.
"You know it would be the greatest thing that ever happened for me to be allowed to stay here a week," he added.
And Betty laughed. "Then stay."
As she opened the front door another visitor stood waiting on the outside. He was almost as unexpected as Anthony Graham. For it was Herr Crippen, the German music professor and Esther's father.
"What on earth could he want?" Betty thought irritably. She was beginning to feel anxious to get upstairs to her mother again. For in spite of the fact that she now believed that she had a real affection for Esther, she had never been able to recover from her first prejudice for this shabby, hesitating man. Then his manner toward her was always so apologetic. Why on earth should it be? She was always perfectly polite to him. What a queer combination of Thanksgiving visitors she was having!
"Gn?diges Fr?ulein," he began. And Betty ushered him into the drawing room. For perhaps he was bringing her news of Esther.
CHAPTER III
HER PENSION
"Good luck never rains but it pours, as well as bad luck, mother," Betty Ashton said one morning nearly a week later. She had just put down a big tray of breakfast on a