Plain Jane and pretty Betty

CHAPTER I ON THE MOVING VAN

“Here’s the moving van now!”

Jane Cross ran into the front room where Mrs. Powell was sitting patiently on one of the many roped boxes that was to go with the load.

“It isn’t more than half an hour late, at that,” Jane added, as Mrs. Powell looked up at her questioningly.

“Pretty good for a moving van,” said the latter, with a faint smile. “Especially in Coal Run. Is it here?”

For answer, Jane pointed to the big van that had backed its yawning doors close to the broken boardwalk that led from the road to the Powell front porch.

Mrs. Powell got up with a gesture of weariness and went out to two burly men who dropped from the van. Jane followed and remained on the porch, watching.

Queer thoughts were running through Jane’s head, jubilant thoughts, almost.

She was leaving Coal Run! That dirty, dreary little town the population of which consisted to a great extent of miners with their more or less dirty and stupid families.

Jane was not at home with these people, with the boys and girls who attended the dingy schoolhouse on Cattle Creek. For some reason that she could not fathom, the crude ways, the uncouth manners of the inhabitants of the mining town offended and puzzled her.

Jane had fought against this inherent difference, this instinctive shrinking. She had been brought up to believe that pride was sinful. She believed this, and honestly tried to change herself since she alone was odd among the children of Coal Run.

It was hard, though; and Jane Cross had succeeded but indifferently. If one had asked her schoolmates, they would have said that she succeeded not at all, would have given her no credit for a hard fight.

Meanwhile, they felt her difference and resented it.

No matter how poor her clothes, Jane was always neat, her hands and face were scrubbed to a shining cleanliness, her bobbed brown hair was brushed sleekly close to her small round head until it shone.

Though she was not homely, was even nice looking in a simple unobtrusive way, the school children of Coal Run had retaliated by calling her “Plain Jane,” jeering at her and taunting her in a way that made the sensitive girl’s life miserable.

There was nothing that she could regret leaving behind in Coal Run except, perhaps, the little house where she had lived contentedly with Mrs. Cross for as long back as she could remember.

The latter had been a widow—this, too, for as long as Jane could remember. Mr. Cross, a miner, had been killed in a mine explosion. The company he had worked for had provided for his widow during her lifetime and would have continued to provide for her if she had lived twenty years longer.

But Mrs. Cross had died quietly one night in her sleep, and Jane awoke to find herself alone in the world and—penniless.

Things might have gone very hard for the girl—then only ten—had it not been for the prompt friendliness of Mr. and Mrs. Powell. This plump and kindly couple took the heartbroken girl into their home, and into their hearts as well, and from that time on treated her as though she were their own.

Now Jane was sixteen, though looking and seeming younger by a year or two, and misfortune had come to Mr. Powell. There was a merger and a change of officers in the coal company for which Mr. Powell had worked in their local office for years, with the result that Jane’s benefactor presently found himself without a position and with only a little money in the bank.

It was hard on him, a change like this coming late in life, and for a time it seemed as though the blow had paralyzed him. He rallied soon, emerging from his dazed state to find himself a position in the thriving town of Greenville, forty miles from Coal Run.

It was a bookkeeper’s job that did not pay much that had been offered him, but it was a raft to cling to until he could look about and find something better. Mr. Powell accepted the post gratefully and immediately made preparations for the removal of Mrs. Powell and Jane to their future home.

Jane was not sorry to leave Coal Run. Greenville might prove little better, but at least it would be a change from the mining town, and youth is hopeful. Jane would try to be very pleasant and patient and helpful in Greenville. She would truly try to make people like her.

The wounds inflicted by the thoughtlessly cruel children of Coal Run went deeper than even Jane thought, and, unless quickly healed, promised to leave scars that might gravely affect her future.

Even now she was shy, shrinking, super-sensitive, quick to see a slight even where none was intended. It was good for her that she was leaving Coal Run before the habit of thinking herself inferior became a fixed obsession.

Now as she watched the moving-men and Mrs. Powell from the vantage point of the porch she was surprised to see Mr. Powell descend from the truck, his short legs dangling so far from the ground that he had to jump to reach it.

Mr. Powell was so short and round and comfortable-looking generally that few suspected him of possessing the temper of a lean six-footer. This temper would blaze out at times, blasting all before it, only to retire as suddenly as it had come, leaving Mr. Powell as bland and round and smiling as ever. It was a righteous temper however, and only flashed forth in a righteous cause. Therefore, people feared it and were wont to treat its owner with a respect they might not otherwise have accorded him.

Jane loved him, as indeed she loved both these kindly people, and would have gone on hands and knees to serve either one of them.

Mr. Powell was not in a temper now, Jane was glad to see. In fact, he appeared very much pleased with himself and was on exceedingly friendly terms with both the burly moving-men.

“You see I came with them, to make sure they got here before night, Lou,” the girl heard him call to Mrs. Powell. “And what’s more, I’m going all the way to Greenville with them, to make sure of the same thing.”

“What’s to become of Jane and me?” Mrs. Powell retorted.

“You will go on the train, of course,” returned her husband. “Unless,” jokingly, “you’d like to ride on top of the van.”

It was then that Jane had her bold thought. How she dared put it into words she never afterward could tell. But in a moment she found herself running over the broken boards of the walk toward Mr. Powell.

“Oh!” she cried, “I don’t suppose you really would let me go with you on the van?”

“Bless us!” cried Mr. Powell, appealing to the cheerfully grinning moving-men to share the joke with him. “Jane has taken me seriously. She really does want to ride on the top of the van.”

“Not on the top of the van,” Jane wheedled—and she knew just how to do it, too, with those she loved. “In the front seat, or in the van, or on the furniture itself—anywhere, so long as I can go with you.”

“Bless us!” said Mr. Powell again. “The child’s in earnest. After all,” shaking his head and looking attentively at the moving-men, “what’s to prevent?”

“Nothing, sir,” said one of the latter, grinning broadly. “I can sit up behind with the load and there’s room for three on the front seat, if the young lady wants to go along.”

Jane’s eyes began to dance. There was color in her usually pale face. She looked appealingly at Mrs. Powell.

“Do you mind?” she asked. “Will it be very lonesome for you, going up without me on the train?”

Mrs. Powell smiled reassuringly.

“I am so tired that I shall probably sleep all the way to Greenville, anyway,” she said. “If it will be any pleasure to you, go along on the truck, my dear child, by all means!”

So it was settled, and Jane waited impatiently while the furniture was piled on the truck and securely fastened in at the back with ropes.

This took only a short time, for the possessions of the Powells were limited, and Jane was soon standing beside the truck, her hat and coat on, waiting for one of the men to hand her to the high seat.

While she stood there, her eyes happened to turn up the road.

She became suddenly white and grasped at the arm of the man nearest her.

“Oh, please!” she gasped. “Can’t we get away from here? Oh, I must get away from here, in a hurry!”

Alarmed by her look and manner, the good-hearted fellow half lifted Jane to the high seat and swung himself up after her.

“All set, Bill!” he called to his mate. “Mr. Powell, ready?”

At the words Mr. Powell himself appeared at the side of the truck and swung himself up into the seat beside Jane. The girl huddled down between the two men, her eyes fixed steadily on the road ahead of her.

As the engine of the truck turned over with a grumbling roar the sound of children’s shrill voices raised tauntingly came from the road behind them.

“Plain Jane! Plain Jane! Had to ride in the van! Couldn’t ride in the train! Plain Jane! Plain Jane!”

Long after the voices had been drowned by distance and by the roaring of the motor they rang in Jane’s ears, filled her eyes with tears and her heart with an aching pain.

Oh, she was glad to leave Coal Run! Glad! Glad!

After a while the cool air on her face and Mr. Powell’s gently tactful and very funny conversation soothed her and brought a faint smile to her lips.

After all, she was a very lucky girl to have such dear, kind friends as the Powells. And she was leaving Coal Run! Greenville could not be worse. It might be much, much better.

A half-hour passed. Coal Run was left far behind when a sudden lurch of the truck caused her to grip the seat with both hands. The driver was taking a sharp curve on a rough, hilly road at a perilous rate of speed, Jane thought. She wished he would not be quite so daring.

Then came a noise like the exploding of a cannon in her ears.

Jane cried out in terror as the truck lurched, then skidded sickeningly across the road.

CHAPTER II A BAD SPILL

If the tree had not been directly in the way a serious accident might have been avoided.

But the tree was in the way. The driver wrenched at his wheel in an effort to right the van and regain the road.

No use!

With a terrific impact van and tree came together, and Jane was hurled from her seat. For an instant that seemed an eternity she felt herself flying through the air, then came with a crash and a crackle of broken twigs into a mass of bushes fifteen feet from the road.

She lay there dazed for a moment, the breath knocked out of her body. She was almost afraid to try to move, for fear she would find she could not do so.

It had been an accident, a pretty bad accident. She ought, by all rights, she thought, to have been killed!

It was consideration for Mr. Powell and what might have happened to him that made her decide to get up. This, she found, was by no means an easy matter!

She seemed to be lying on a bed of thistles, and her slightest gesture dug a sharp point deeper into her shrinking flesh. She was becoming increasingly conscious that her body was all one dull ache. Her nerves were jumping, and she had an absurd desire to cry.

Some one was breaking through the bushes behind her.

They were not all dead then! Some one had survived!

That some one was lifting her up from her uncomfortable couch, some one who chuckled softly.

“Well, we’re all alive, anyway,” said the author of the chuckle as he set Jane gently on her feet. “And, judgin’ from the sounds back there, some of us are kickin’, too!”

Jane saw nothing to laugh about, or even chuckle over. She was sore all over and her legs wabbled painfully. The thought came to her that perhaps moving-men were used to knocking trees over with their moving vans, and so did not take such incidents as seriously as more ordinary people.

“Is—is—Mr. Powell—all right?” Jane asked tremulously. Her lips would quiver.

“Yes, Miss. Hale and hearty as ever and in full possession of his lungs, as you’ll hear if you listen quiet for a minute.”

Jane listened, and was inclined to believe that the moving-man was right. Mr. Powell was evidently in one of his towering rages and was giving the unfortunate driver of the truck full benefit of it.

Shakily, with the arm of the moving-man through hers, Jane made her way back to the road.

She was not badly hurt. In fact, it seemed a miracle to her that none of them was badly hurt. Except for a good many bruises, a severe shaking up, and the shock, they seemed as good as ever!

The furniture appeared to have got the worst of it. Not new to start with and showing an irritating tendency to fall apart even before they had been loaded into the van, several of the chairs and other articles of furniture belonging to the Powells had been rather severely damaged.

It was this fact that Mr. Powell was pointing out to a bruised and sheepish moving-man when Jane and her rescuer reappeared on the road.

“But I couldn’t help it if a tire burst,” the man pointed out, not unreasonably. “That’s likely to happen to any one. We was on a hill and I couldn’t keep the blamed thing from skiddin’.”

“Yes, that may be all very well! But why were going so fast on the hill?” cried Mr. Powell, his point not unreasonable either. “I thought you were going too fast and, if you will remember, I said so several times.”

“It wouldn’t have made no difference,” the man persisted doggedly. “When a tire busts a truck skids, and the heavier the truck the worse the skid.”

“Then do you mean to tell me,” Mr. Powell rose on tiptoes and fairly towered in his wrath over the taller man, “that you and your company don’t hold yourself responsible for my broken furniture? Do you mean to tell me that because a tire is likely to burst and cause an accident, I will have to pay for the damages that result from that accident? Do you mean to tell me——”

“I ain’t meanin’ to tell you anything!” the moving-man interrupted belligerently. He was evidently a good-tempered, easy-going fellow, but almost any one will lose his natural good temper if a wrathful finger is shaken long enough beneath his nose. “It ain’t my business to tell you anything! If you’ve got to fight any one, go fight the company. I ain’t got nothing to say about it! Anyway——”

“No, but if I have anything to say about it, you’ll lose your job!” cried Mr. Powell, his anger whetted by opposition. “When I do put in a complaint to your company, I’ll tell them——”

“What will you tell ’em?” growled the moving-man, and moved a little closer.

Here Jane thought it was time for her to take a hand in the discussion. This she did literally, taking Mr. Powell’s hand that was doubled into a belligerent fist and clinging to it resolutely.

“Please don’t, Uncle Dink,” she begged. Mr. Powell’s first name was Dickinson, but every one called him “Dink” and it seemed, somehow, to fit him.

Mr. Powell tried to take his hand away, but Jane still clung to it.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it, Uncle Dink——”

“Who said he meant it?” Mr. Powell pretended to growl at the girl, but he was weakening. Jane followed up her advantage.

“It was an accident, Uncle Dink. I’m sure the company will make good on any damage——”

“Sure, it will,” broke in the moving-man, for he was a peaceable fellow when given half a chance. “It don’t want no dissatisfied customers, and it’ll make good on all the damage. Although lot of the makin’ good will come out of my pocket,” he added ruefully.

“And serve you right!” snapped Mr. Powell, still irate, though softened. “Now if you’ll get busy and try to make up for lost time I’ll be obliged to you. We’ve a long way to go and I’d like to reach there before dark.”

“So would I,” growled the driver, with a doubtful glance at the van. “The question right now is—will the old bus run?”

In the next few minutes that proved to be a very pertinent question indeed! Something had been done to the engine of the “old bus” that made it very doubtful if it would ever run again.

As the two men several times declared in the exasperating hour that followed, they had been employed to move furniture, not to repair engines.

“You’ve been employed to get me to Greenville this afternoon,” said Mr. Powell irascibly. “How are you going to do it?”

The driver glared at the smaller man.

“If you could tell us that, you might save us a lot of trouble,” he grumbled. “And now if you want to get to Greenville at all, you’d better stop talking.”

Again Jane acted the part of peacemaker.

“If we could get some horses to tow us,” she suggested, “maybe we could find some place where we could get help.”

“There ain’t no sech animal, Miss,” the second man assured her gloomily. “As for horses, it would take about six to tow this load. And where are we going to get ’em?”

Another question, and still unanswerable.

It seemed to Jane as time passed and the driver still tinkered vainly with his engine that they might spend the night in that lonely place.

Once one of the men suggested that the two passengers might walk on to the railway station. It was only about a mile-and-a-half away, he said, and Mr. Powell and the young girl could go on to Greenville, leaving them to follow with the disabled van, as soon as they could.

This suggestion Mr. Powell would not listen to for a moment.

“I’ll stick with the furniture,” he said. “Though you can go, Jane, if you like. I’ll take you to the station.”

But Jane was game and decided to stick, too.

It was about an hour after that that the engine gave a few puffs and then turned over once or twice. This was at least more encouraging than dead silence, and Jane began to view the efforts of the moving-men with more hopefulness.

They finally managed to get the motor to running haltingly. Then the damaged tire was replaced by a spare, and everybody climbed hastily aboard, determined to make the best of their luck while it lasted.

It was a never-to-be-forgotten trip. The van stopped every quarter of a mile or so, and every time it stopped Jane held her breath for fear it would never start on again.

Mr. Powell did not hold his breath—nor his tongue. If Jane had not been there to act as peacemaker, it is quite certain that “Uncle Dink” and the driver of the truck would have come to blows at some point along the road to Greenville.

When they finally reached the fringe of the town it was well after dark. Jane was tired and ravenously hungry. Also she was disappointed that her first acquaintance with their adopted town could not have been made by daylight.

“If Lou has reached here before us I hope she had sense enough to go to an inn or a hotel, or at least to a neighbor’s house,” said Mr. Powell, voicing a thought that had been worrying Jane for some time. “Kind of dreary going to an empty house and waiting and having no one come. I suppose,” with a worried frown, “she’s had us killed some dozen times already!”

They—or rather the van—limped through the streets of Greenville and finally stopped in a street devoid of lights.

“Here we are, boss,” said the driver, flashing his electric torch on an empty, dreary-looking little house set well back from the street. “This is the address you gave me. Guess you might say we’re here!”

“And small thanks to you,” Mr. Powell would have added had not a gentle squeeze of Jane’s hand reminded him that it was foolish to irritate the fellow needlessly.

“Well, we’re lucky to get here at all—with whole necks, anyway,” he said, descending with difficulty.

Jane tried to stand, and gave an involuntary cry of pain.

“I can’t find my feet,” she explained when Mr. Powell came around to help her to the ground. “They’re asleep, I guess.”

“As the rest of you should have been long ago,” grumbled Mr. Powell.

In spite of his own sore stiff muscles, he half-lifted Jane down from the high seat and set her gently on her feet.

“If you’ll make a light in the house, we’ll unload your stuff,” suggested one of the men.

“I’m going to see where my wife is first,” said Mr. Powell in a worried tone. “She couldn’t have got here or she would have had a light going herself.”

He started up the walk toward the dark house when suddenly Jane caught at his sleeve. A broad band of yellow light streamed from the open door of the house next door.

“Look, Uncle Dink,” cried Jane. “Some one is calling to us!”

CHAPTER III MAD MARION

Some one was certainly calling to the new arrivals. And that some one proved, to their delighted surprise, to be none other than Mrs. Powell herself!

The latter came halfway to meet them as they hurried across the lawn toward the band of yellow light.

“Oh, I’m so relieved!” cried Mrs. Powell, as she hugged Jane and threw her arms about her husband’s neck. “I have the key to the house right here, Dink, if you want to let the moving-men in. The people next door have been just lovely to me! You’d never guess how nice they’ve been! But why, why have you been so long on the road?”

“I’ll tell you everything, my dear,” Mr. Powell promised, “as soon as I get these men started to unloading the stuff. I suppose they are hungry and tired as well as we,” he added in a kinder voice than he had used during that whole wearisome, exasperating journey.

“Well, they must come in and get something to eat, too. No—no refusals. I won’t take any. I positively insist!”

No one had noticed the approach of a light bobbing and blinking in the hand of some one from the house next door.

Now every one turned, startled, to see an odd little person winking and smiling in the fitful light of the lantern.

“This is our very kind neighbor,” said Mrs. Powell, referring to the little old lady. “You’ve no idea how kind she is.”

“Not kind—only thoughtful once in a while,” said the queer person, with an odd simpering laugh. “Here’s a light!” thrusting it abruptly at Mr. Powell. “Hard to find one in a dark house at this time of night. Might help to have a light!”

Mr. Powell was frankly staring at this odd apparition. His wife brought him to his senses with a sharp dig of her elbow in his ribs.

“Take the light,” she ordered in a whisper for his ear alone. “Poor thing’s a little touched in the head. Can’t you do anything but stand there staring like a wooden soldier?”

Mr. Powell took the light with a stammered thanks and went into the empty house with the moving-men, who had told the queer woman that they would be expected in their own homes and, as much as they would like to, could not eat with her.

This new abode in Greenville had been rented by the Powells, “sight unseen.” Martin and Hull, wholesale grain dealers with whom Mr. Powell had secured his position as bookkeeper through the kindly intercession of a mutual friend, had suggested that they be allowed to procure quarters for their new employee; some house within walking distance of the company’s storehouses and one that could be procured at a modest rental.

Mr. Powell had been glad to accept this suggestion, and the result was this little house on a side street of the town of Greenville.

It would not look so dismal by daylight. They all knew that, and as the moving-men began to growl about the difficulty of unloading furniture at night, Mrs. Powell had a suggestion to make.

“Why not wait until morning to unload?” she said. “It will be so much easier then.”

It was not hard to come to terms on this, since all were tired and disgruntled and badly in need of food.

“If you will tell us of some hotel or boarding house in town where we can put up for the night we will be very much obliged,” said Mr. Powell to the odd little person from next door (the moving-men had already departed gladly toward the center of town and a hot dinner). “We can’t very well sleep without beds and we are badly in need of refreshment.”

“And you can have both by coming next door,” said the queer person, bobbing and smiling. “Dinner is hot on the stove. I believe you can smell it from here. As for beds,” with another bob and another smile, “we have plenty of beds, a great many beds. Yes, indeed, plenty.”

Still mumbling a little to herself and bobbing and smiling, she preceded them over the small patch of lawn toward the light that streamed from the still-open door.

Mr. Powell hesitated and glanced sharply at his wife. Even Jane hung back a little.

“It’s all right,” Mrs. Powell explained in a quick, hurried whisper. “She has a nice sister. The sister told me all about this poor thing. She is really as harmless as a kitten and never happy unless she is doing something for somebody. Come along, do! Don’t hold back or you’ll hurt her feelings!”

Mr. Powell no longer held back, though it was evident he was unconvinced. With a great deal of curiosity Jane accompanied her two kind friends to the open door of the house next door.

“Mad Marion,” for so the poor, afflicted little woman was known to the people of Greenville, waved them gleefully into a warm brightly lighted room.

It was a large room, and seemed to combine sitting room, dining room, and kitchen. It ran along the front of a house that was as queer as the sisters who lived in it.

Afterward Jane was to learn that, back of this kitchen-dining-room-living-room were a series of some five or six rooms strung out in a row and connected by doors and tiny, odd flights of stairs that seemed to have no use or purpose other than to provide stumbling blocks for the unwary visitor.

At the moment, sight of that one large room was enough for the bruised and weary travelers.

A large table in the center of the room was neatly set for two. A woman bent over a stove, stirring a savory mixture in a large pot.

At the sound of movement in the doorway the latter turned.

“Bring them in, Marion,” she said in a harsh, strident voice that made Jane jump. “What are you waiting for?”

CHAPTER IV THE NEW HOME

The sisters were certainly the oddest pair that Jane had ever seen—these two who were to be their near neighbors while Jane and the Powells lived in Greenville.

Lydia, the elder of the two, was as different from her poor half-demented sister as it was possible for any one to be.

Lydia was tall, built on heroic lines with a breadth of shoulder amazing in a woman. She had a face that matched the rest of her, large featured, rugged, with a mouth that seldom smiled. When Lydia Terrin did smile, Jane was reminded of a sunbeam shining for a transient moment on a slab of jagged granite. The smile never lighted up her features, but lingered for a moment and then vanished, leaving one to wonder if she had really smiled at all.

Such was the woman who faced the weary travelers now over a pot of savory beef stew.

She did not smile. Her manner was almost forbidding. But the gesture of her long wooden spoon toward the table was unmistakable.

“Sit down,” she said. “We have been waiting for you as one pig waits for another. I hope you will like the stew, though it is not as good as the pot we made last week. Do you think so, Marion?”

“Mad Marion,” who had been pulling out the chairs of her guests, bowing and smiling all the time in a truly remarkable manner, started at the abrupt question. She looked bewildered, Jane thought, and a little frightened.

“Certainly, my dear! I mean certainly not!” cried the poor creature. “Oh dear, I’m not sure what I mean!”

“Don’t act so silly,” retorted sister Lydia sternly. “The trouble with you, Marion, is that you talk too much!”

Jane had an hysterical desire to giggle. She checked the desire since to have laughed at that moment would have been neither polite nor kind.

As she sank into a chair and allowed the “granite sister,” as she ever afterward called Lydia Terrin in her thoughts, fill a great plate with the steaming savory stew, Jane felt like Alice in her famous adventures in Wonderland.

“The poor little crazy sister could be the Mad Hatter,” she thought, as she accepted and buttered a slice of delicious bread. “And the other—well I don’t know who she’d be unless it was the Duchess who had a baby that turned into a pig. Oh, dear, maybe I’m crazy too!”

However, no eccentricities of the Terrin sisters could make that meal any other than a delicious, wonderfully satisfactory one.

“Guess I had better go to bed, if you’ll show me where I am to sleep,” Jane said, almost as soon as the meal was over and struggling to keep her heavy eyes open, and in a few minutes more was ushered to a room.

It did not take her long to undress, and then she slipped in between the caressing sheets of a bed as soft as the fleeciest cloud and breathed a deep sigh of utter weariness.

Then came morning, with a hot sun streaming in at her windows.

Jane’s first impulse was to jump up quickly and dress. She would be late for school!

Then came the swift realization that there would be no school this morning. They had left Coal Run, its dirt and confusion and misery behind them. This was Greenville, and though it might not be better than the mining town, it might be kinder.

She winced at the memory of her departure from Coal Run—of the children running down the road and calling after her tauntingly.

There was a stir in the room. Jane turned over quickly and saw poor Marion bobbing and smiling in the doorway.

“Breakfast’s ready. Oh, dear, yes! Been ready for some time.”

Jane jumped up, confused and sorry. She winced at the sudden action and felt tentatively her stiff muscles. She had forgotten the accident of yesterday and that she must expect to be lame and sore for some time to come.

“Oh, I’m sorry to have been so lazy,” she apologized, as the little woman continued to bob and smile in the doorway. “What must you think of me, coming here and sleeping so late?”

“Perfectly all right, my dear—perfectly. Tired out after yesterday. Yes, yes! Natural! Youth must be served!”

“Marion!” cried Lydia sternly from the kitchen. “Come out here! You talk too much!”

Poor Marion disappearing on the instant, Jane looked with wonder about the bare little room with its comfortable bed.

Who were these queer, eccentric women who kept house all alone, who seemed, by the furnishings of their house and the clothes they wore, to be very poor, and yet who were so hospitable to strangers?

She pondered the question as she dressed slowly and painfully.

There were purple bruises all over her and every joint and muscle protested as she moved.

“I’d better rub something on me or I won’t be of any use at all,” she thought ruefully.

In a few moments she had done all she could toward making herself presentable. Her clothes were torn from the accident of the previous day, and though she wore a comb in her sleek bobbed hair, there was no brush to smooth it to its usual plain neatness.

She felt uncomfortable and unlike her usual clean, neat self when she entered the large cozy front room of the Terrin sisters.

A delicious, plentiful breakfast served from the stove by Lydia helped to raise her spirits, and her heart warmed more than ever toward these two hospitable people.

Mr. and Mrs. Powell had breakfasted long before, Lydia told Jane, while Marion nodded and beamed at her from a chair across the table.

Jane could see from the window that the moving-men had returned and were unloading the furniture. Instantly she was impatient to be off and help Mrs. Powell with the hundred and one tasks she knew confronted her.

She finished a cup of hot chocolate and her second egg in hurried, grateful gulps, then pushed back her chair.

“You’ve both been awfully good,” she said, looking from Marion to her sister. “When we get settled you must come over and have dinner with us. I must run and help Mrs. Powell now.”

When she was gone both eccentric sisters stared after her for a moment.

“Old-fashioned little thing,” said Lydia, as she jerked a plate from the table and set it in the sink. “Plain but capable. I’ll bet my life she’s capable.”

“Oh, yes, by all means, very. Surely,” murmured Marion. She was muttering on vaguely when a stern glance from her sister sent her into deep confusion.

“You talk too much, Marion,” said Lydia. “Come, help me with the dishes.”

Next door at the house that had seemed so dreary the night before Jane found everything bustle and confusion and—sunshine. As she went from room to room Jane’s heart warmed to this sunniness, for there was scarcely a spot in the little house that did not receive a share of it. She wondered how she could ever have thought it dreary!

When she asked harassed, dust-grimed Mrs. Powell to set her to work, that lady confronted her with a list of things she needed from the general store.

“You will help me more by doing the shopping than in any other way, Jane. Why,” with a dramatic gesture of the hand, “I haven’t a thing to clean with, even.”

Jane smiled, for this indeed was tragedy to Mrs. Powell. She took the list and pledged herself to secure the articles on it. One of the moving men, a resident of Greenville, took it upon himself to direct her to “the best store in town.”

“You go down two short blocks,” he said, indicating the direction with the wave of a dirty, stubby forefinger. “Then you turn to your left and go up two long blocks until you come to the foot of Rose Hill, where all the swells live. There you’ll find Mason’s general store and you can get everything at Mason’s from canned soup to fish hooks.”

Jane thanked him and set out, glad to be free of the noise and confusion for a little while and have a look at the town from which she hoped so much.

Nor did Greenville disappoint her. It was as different from Coal Run as night is from day. Where in Coal Run were squalor, dirt, disorder; here was neatness, cleanliness, beauty. Greenville was a thriving town, and showed it. Its inhabitants shared in the general prosperity, and showed that too. The plainest little house was freshly painted and displayed its patch of carefully tended garden.

There was a poorer section in Greenville over beyond the railroad tracks, but Jane did not know this until some time later.

As she proceeded toward the center of town the girl’s delight grew. Here the houses became more pretentious until, at the foot of Rose Hill Jane could look up at handsome houses that seemed palatial to the dazzled eyes of the girl from Coal Run.

There was a store at hand, and a sign proclaimed it as Mason’s. This was the store, thought Jane, where one could get everything from “canned soup to fish hooks.”

Jane suddenly remembered her torn dress, her dusty shoes, her unbrushed hair. Mason’s was so immaculate that she hated to enter it as she was. Still, Mrs. Powell needed those things——

She marched resolutely to the door of the store and pulled it open. There was a gasp and a protest in a high, petulant, very pretty feminine voice.

“Oh, how stupid! You have made me drop my package!”

CHAPTER V JANE MEETS PRETTY BETTY

The owner of the petulant voice was the most beautiful being Jane had ever seen; she was quite sure of that.

This was a girl of about her own age, perhaps a little older. It was hard for Jane to judge, dazzled as she was by the magnificence of the girl.

The latter was dressed in sheer, rose-colored organdy that set off the heavenly blue of her eyes and made them appear a deep violet. She wore white shoes and stockings and no hat whatever on her head. Her hair was thick and curling and the color of imprisoned sunshine.

Jane had never seen anything so lovely as this girl, and for a moment she could only stand in helpless admiration.

But the eyes of the pretty girl did not return this admiration. Oh, dear, no! They stared angrily at Jane and the pretty lips were caught for a moment in a very unlovely droop.

“Stupid!” the girl muttered again angrily.

Jane saw what she had done. In opening the store door so abruptly she had evidently jerked the door knob from the hand of the girl in the pretty frock, causing her to drop her bundle.

With a murmured apology, Jane stooped now, picked up the package, and handed it to the other girl.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she said. “I did not know you were just coming out.”

The pretty fair-haired girl accepted the package without comment. She seemed to think the service unworthy even of a “thank you,” and without another word stepped daintily from the store and out into the sunshine, leaving Jane to stare after her with a hurt, questioning look on her face.

“I would at least have said ‘thank you,’” she thought. “If people are going to be as unkind to me here in Greenville as they were in Coal Run, then I—I—don’t know what I shall do!”

The hurt, miserable tears of angry humiliation were in her eyes as she turned back into the store.

It happened that Billy Dobson was behind the counter at that moment and it happened also that Billy Dobson had witnessed the encounter between the two girls. He was sorry for the plain, poor girl, and his humorous eyes proclaimed his sympathy.

“Polite, wasn’t she?” he commented as Jane slowly approached the counter. “But then, if you live in Greenville long you’ll find that the Rose Hillites don’t think they need politeness like common folks.”

“Rose Hillites?” repeated Jane, as she spread Mrs. Powell’s long list out on the counter.

“Folks that live on Rose Hill—swell folks,” Billy elucidated as he cast an experienced eye over the list. “They have plenty of money and put on a lot of dog and don’t notice folks that haven’t a French car and a tiled bathroom—or six or eight of ’em! Let’s see, you want five bars of laundry soap——”

There was no one else in the store, and Jane’s mind was still filled with the vision of the beautiful girl with sulky eyes who had not thought it worth her while to be polite to one less fortunate than herself. She could not resist the temptation to question this good-looking, amiable young man who offered her sympathy and seemed to share her resentment.

“Does she,” with a little jerk of her head toward the door, “live on Rose Hill?”

“Betty Browning? I’ll say she does! The Brownings are the swellest of the swell. They have the biggest house, the biggest car, and the worst manners. That goes for Miss Betty and her mother. The old man’s all right, though. A pretty good sport.”

“The old man?” Jane prompted.

Billy had made a neat pile of the articles on Mrs. Powell’s order. Now he wrapped them in a piece of stout paper and bound them about with twine, skilfully inserting a handle in the top of the bundle.

“By the old man I mean Mr. Browning.” Billy grinned good-naturedly at her. “He’s all right, nice to everybody in town. I bet if he’d seen Betty hand you that haughty stare this morning he’d have wanted to spank her. He wouldn’t have done it, though,” he added, with a chuckle. “Miss Betty and her mother have pretty much everything to say in their house, I shouldn’t wonder! Say, now, this bundle’s pretty heavy,” he added, as Jane lifted the package from the counter and her young shoulder sagged under the weight of it. “If there was any one else in the store I’d walk home with you and carry it.”

Jane smiled and shook her head.

“That’s nice of you,” she said. “But I don’t live far and—and I’m used to heavy bundles.”

Despite the attempted lightness of her tone there was a quaver in her voice as she said this that made good-natured Billy Dobson spring to the door and hold it open for her.

“You’re new in town, aren’t you?” he asked, as she smiled her thanks.

“Yes,” returned Jane. “We just came last night.”

“Hope to see you again, then,” said Billy, with his cheerful grin. “Deal at Mason’s. Best store in town. We carry a full line of merchandise and will cheerfully refund money on all articles not meeting with your entire, complete, and unqualified approval!”

“Sounds good,” admitted Jane, smiling at his nonsense. “I’ll be back—probably this afternoon.”

But once away from Mason’s and Billy Dobson’s cheerful smile, Jane’s spirits drooped. The first person she had met in Greenville—excepting her eccentric next door neighbors, of course—had treated her with disdain, as some one not even important enough to merit ordinary politeness.

What was it about her that made people treat her so? she wondered. Was it her plain clothes or her plain face or something, perhaps, inherently lacking in her make-up?

Jane longed for a chance to make something of herself, to prove to disdainful, pretty Betty Browning that even Plain Jane Cross was worth a little notice!

“I have a fine chance of that,” Jane thought, laughing bitterly at herself. “I suppose if I live in Greenville all the rest of my life Betty Browning will not even know that I am here!”

Having arrived at the little house where everything was still in an appalling state of confusion, Jane tried to forget the unpleasant incident of the morning by throwing herself with feverish energy into the work of getting settled.

They really did accomplish wonders, and as the shadows of the long afternoon began to lengthen into dusk, Mrs. Powell was able to announce that “by this time to-morrow afternoon we’ll be able to live in the place, anyway.”

They had found in unloading the furniture that fewer objects had been damaged by the smash the day before than they had feared. A rocker was off one chair, the whole side of another was staved in, and some of the smaller pieces of furniture were rather severely scratched. But aside from that the damage was negligible.

Mr. Powell, recovering his good temper, had told the moving-men before he started for his new place of business that morning that he would say nothing concerning the accident. Such a complaint might lose the men their jobs, whereas he himself would be able to repair the damage done to the furniture.

This was a relief to all concerned and to Jane in particular. She had liked the good-natured driver of the moving van and the man who had picked her out of the bushes after the accident, and was reluctant to see them punished for what really might have happened to any one.

At noontime Marion came bobbing and smiling in, carrying a tray heaped with sandwiches. She set this down on a table and vanished to return almost immediately with a teapot and three cups.

Jane hugged the poor little woman, for she was becoming very fond of these kindly, eccentric next-door neighbors, and she and Mrs. Powell sat down gratefully to the appetizing lunch, not waiting for Mr. Powell, who came in later.

“There are kind people in Greenville,” Jane thought, as she tried valiantly to banish the unpleasant memory of the morning. “There are these neighbors; there is the pleasant clerk behind the counter at Mason’s!”

And yet—there was Betty Browning, pretty Betty Browning who had not noticed plain Jane Cross except to call her stupid!

“I’m not stupid!” thought Jane, in a sudden rush of hot anger. “And some day I’ll show Betty Browning that I’m not, that I’m worth knowing and speaking to politely, even if I am ‘plain Jane.’”

CHAPTER VI INVENTIONS

The settling down in Greenville of the Powell family, lately of Coal Run, was very easy and pleasant.

The little house on the side street was as cozy and comfortable as Mrs. Powell’s energy and Jane’s helpful hands could make it.

There were only five rooms, but these were sufficient for the needs of the small family.

The front room was small, but once dressed with Mrs. Powell’s mission furniture, red tablecover, cushions and rugs, with immaculate muslin curtains covering no less immaculate windows, the room was very homelike and pleasant.

Back of the sitting room was the dining room. Though the furniture in it was more or less rickety—containing the staved-in chair and the one-rockered rocker which Mr. Powell had not yet had time to fix—this room, like the other, had a cozy, pleasant air.

Rents in the brown rug had been patiently mended by Mrs. Powell before the moving, and now pieces of furniture were placed in such a way as to cover the most conspicuous patches. It was a nice room, and there was hardly any time in the day when it was not flooded with sunshine.

Back of the dining room was the kitchen—a small kitchen for a country house but all the better for that.

Mrs. Powell had scrubbed the dingy paint until it shone. Even then, though the walls were a cheerful cream-color, the woodwork was a dull brown that gave a gloomy tone to the room.

One day, after a short excursion into the town, Jane appeared with a can of paint and a new paint brush.

She smiled when Mrs. Powell stared at her.

“I thought I’d give the wood in the kitchen a coat of cream-colored paint,” she said. “Do you mind?”

“Mind!” cried the older woman delightedly. “Why, it’ll be just the thing! But take care you don’t tire yourself out, Jane Cross,” she added warningly. “There’s more work in that kitchen than you think for, most likely.”

But Jane to whom a can of paint, a paint brush, and something to paint were an unmitigated joy, set to work with a will on the kitchen woodwork.

The result was more delightful than even she had dared to hope. Not only the woodwork of the little kitchen but the kitchen table and the chairs as well, blossomed out in two coats of ivory paint that was a joy to behold.

“They look just as good as new!” Mrs. Powell exclaimed, as she and Jane hung yellow curtains at the window. These last had been an inspiration of Jane’s as well, and with the sunlight streaming through them, they made the kitchen indescribably pretty and cheerful.

“I declare, Jane Cross, you’re a wonder!”

The transformation of the kitchen was complete and Mrs. Powell surveyed the pleasant result, one arm about Jane. She turned and regarded the girl’s face steadily and affectionately for a moment, marked the clear steady purpose of the eyes, the streak of ivory-colored paint at the corner of her mouth—a mouth too wide for beauty—and suddenly Mrs. Powell smiled.

“You’re the kind of girl, Jane Cross,” she said, “that does everything well that she wants to. You’re a sweet child and a great comfort to me. Now run along and get that streak of paint off your face!”

Upstairs were two bedrooms. One thought, looking at the two rooms, that the builder when planning the house might well have spared a slice of the larger room to add to the smaller and so arranged his space in a more impartial manner.

As it was, the big room was very, very big—like the little girl with the curl—and the small room, if not exactly horrid, was certainly very small.

The small room, of course, was turned over to Jane, and she did the best she could with it. Her single iron bed took up an alarming amount of space. She had just room to squeeze a tiny table and a chair in beside it and leave space enough at the foot of the bed for the dresser.

The builder had been unfair in the matter of windows, too.

While the front room had four of these—rather a superfluous number one would think—Jane’s room had only one, and that not in the best position to catch the sun. For the greater part of the day the room was gloomy, and Jane seldom visited it except to go to bed.

She thought of Betty Browning in the richest, most palatial house on Rose Hill and wondered what her room was like. She would have liked just once to have been allowed to look inside it.

Meanwhile, Mr. Powell became enthusiastic about his new position with Martin and Hull.

“They’re old men, but square shooters, both of them!” he exclaimed. “I like ’em and if I have luck I may be able to rise before long to a much better position than I have now. It may be the luckiest thing that ever happened to us that we had to leave Coal Run.”

Jane thought so too. She could have been quite happy in her new environment had it not been for her meeting with Betty Browning and that pretty girl’s insolent, disdainful attitude toward her.

Meanwhile, Jane became friendly with Billy Dobson, the grocer’s clerk. She found out that he was not an ordinary grocer’s clerk at all, and this is how it happened:

About a week after her arrival with the Powells at Greenville Jane was on her usual round of marketing—Mrs. Powell declared that she could trust Jane to pick out a chicken or any other kind of fowl, fish, or meat, far more readily than she could trust herself!—and, with a large bundle already in her arms, entered Mason’s store to complete her purchases.

A loud guffaw of laughter greeted her entrance, and Jane thought sensitively that some one was laughing at her. But she saw her mistake almost instantly.

It was Billy Dobson who was being laughed at, and by the jovial owner of the store himself, large, fat, jolly Mr. Mason.

Billy, Jane thought, looked as though he disliked being laughed at. The young fellow’s usual cheerful grin was absent and he scowled at his employer.

“You can laugh all right,” Billy retorted, anger in his voice. “All the inventors that ever lived have had to be laughed at by people that couldn’t understand their inventions.”

“Go on, my boy, I don’t mean to make you mad.” Mr. Mason laid a kindly hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Maybe you have got a good idea, I don’t know. But you take your inventions so seriously that sometimes it strikes me funny.”

“It’s only one invention,” said Billy, irritably rubbing the back of his head. “And I must say it never struck me as funny.”

Here Billy espied Jane and his face smoothed to its usual expression as he took her order.

Jane had an opportunity to speak to him while Mr. Mason was taking care of another customer.

“I didn’t know you invented things,” she said. “I think it’s wonderful!”

Billy’s face brightened and he looked at Jane with increased interest. Here was a girl who was evidently as sensible as she looked! He pretended modesty.

“I wish I could find some one else who would think it’s wonderful—some one with stacks of money.”

“You probably will,” said Jane, and added innocently: “Inventors have to, don’t they?”

“They do,” said Billy, looking suddenly grim and quite old, Jane thought, much older than he really was. “And that, let me tell you, is the hard part of inventing—not the invention itself.”

Jane thought about Billy a great deal after that. Billy was an inventor, one of those wonderful beings to whom ordinary people could only look up with awe and wonder. Suppose Billy should be lucky and make a fortune from his invention? Wonderful! After that Billy Dobson, the grocer’s clerk, carried about with him an aura of romance which, in Jane’s mind at least, set him apart from the crowd as a wonderful and superior being.

“Maybe some day I can say ‘I knew him when he was only a grocer’s clerk,’” she thought, and thrilled to the thought.

It was not so very long after this remarkable discovery that Jane was awakened one night by a strange light in her room. The red glow came through her one window and danced eerily on the walls.

Jane sprang from the bed, her heart in her mouth.

“Fire!” she cried, unaware that she had spoken the word aloud.

CHAPTER VII THE GREAT FIRE

A startled exclamation came from the front room. A moment later Mr. Powell, wrapped in a bathrobe, stumbled sleepily into Jane’s room.

Jane could see Mrs. Powell’s face peering at her, white and startled, over her husband’s shoulder.

Jane pointed with unsteady hand at the dancing red light on the wall.

“Fire!” she cried again, in a breathless voice. “It must be a terrible one!”

Mr. Powell flung himself across the room to peer from the window. At the same moment the hideous shriek of a siren rent the air.

“The fire department is on the job,” muttered Mr. Powell. “It’s a regular blaze, all right! Look at that sky!”

“Is it near by, Dink?” Mrs. Powell’s teeth chattered with excitement. “Can you see where it is?”

Jane had ducked beneath Mr. Powell’s arm and was staring out with dilated eyes at the sky that was stained bright red.

“Maybe it’s the grocery store!” she cried. “Oh, I do hope Billy Dobson doesn’t keep his invention there!”

With an exclamation of anxiety and dread Mr. Powell jerked himself from the window and started to leave the room. His wife caught him by the arm.

“Where do you think it is?” she cried.

“Seems to be right in the center of town,” returned her husband. “I’m worried about Martin and Hull!”

“Oh!” cried Jane, following out into the hall. “Do you think it’s the feed and grain place?”

“I think it is!” replied Mr. Powell, as he flung into his room. “But you can bet I’m going to find out! I’ve got some papers in my desk that I’m going after, if it is!”

In a short time he came out of the room again fully dressed and Jane heard him clatter down the stairs.

“Don’t bother to dress,” he called up to his wife. “The fire will probably be out soon and not much damage done. I’ll be home as soon as I can.” The door slammed behind him.

All this time Jane had been standing at her window looking out, fascinated by the illuminated sky. Now she heard a noise in the doorway and turned sharply.

Mrs. Powell was there.

“I’m going out, Jane,” said the older woman in a strained voice. “I’m dreadfully worried. If it really is Martin and Hull’s, nobody—police nor fireman—can keep Dink from rushing in for those papers.”

“Wait a minute and I’ll be with you,” Jane cried.

It never took long for Jane to dress. This time it did not take as long as usual. She flung on her clothes and ran down the stairs two at a time just after Mrs. Powell had opened the front door and stepped into the street.

Other people had been alarmed by the red glow in the sky and by the wailing siren of Greenville’s fire department.

Mad Marion and her sister Lydia joined Mrs. Powell and Jane almost immediately. The former was in a pitiful state of excitement and alarm while the “granite sister” appeared entirely unmoved. Lydia scarcely spoke except to tell Marion not “to talk so much.”

People began to straggle from the houses, looking sleepy and frightened.

A large fire in Greenville might easily prove a serious thing.

The small fire department was probably inadequate to cope with anything but small unimportant fires. And to make things worse, a brisk breeze had sprung up—a breeze that might whip the flames from house to house, perhaps destroying the entire town.

Such was the anxious prophecy that fell in fragmentary sentences from the lips of passersby—people who were running toward the fire.

Mrs. Powell and Jane started to run, too, caught in the general hysteria.

Jane clutched at the arm of a man who seemed to have come from the scene of the fire and whose face was grave and anxious.

“What is it?” cried the girl. “Is it the grocery store?”

The man shook his head.

“Feed and grain place—Martin and Hull’s,” he replied briefly. “Better keep away from there, girl. The walls are apt to cave in any minute, and then some one may get hurt!”

Mrs. Powell gave a cry that was very terrible to Jane’s ears.

“He’s in there! He’s in there, fighting that fire! I knew it!” Mrs. Powell muttered, as she took Jane’s arm and hurried her along. “Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”

“He won’t get hurt. Uncle Dink won’t get hurt!” Jane’s teeth were chattering so that she could scarcely force the words between them. “P—probably the man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Oh, please don’t look that way, Aunt Lou! Please d—don’t!”

“Hurry, Jane! Hurry!” Mrs. Powell’s grip upon the girl’s arm was almost painful. She broke into a swift run. “We may be too late!”

Other people were running, other faces were lined and anxious, but Mrs. Powell did not seem to notice them.

At the next corner she stopped short and her voice rose almost to a shriek as she pointed ahead of them.

“Look! It is the feed and grain place! Oh, Dink, Dink, where are you?”

It was a magnificent spectacle for any one who could enjoy it.

The granaries of Martin and Hull were one mass of flame, shooting skyward. Showers of sparks and burning brands fell on the roofs of buildings near by only to hiss and go out on timbers watered by the fire-fighters.

Against the flaming background black figures crawled or ran, pigmy-like, against the unleashed giant they were fighting. It seemed an unfair battle with only one result possible.

Before Jane could stop her Mrs. Powell broke away and ran toward the burning buildings. The heat almost blistered her face, but she did not stop until a fireman caught her and pushed her backward.

“Can’t go any nearer, lady,” said the man, looking pityingly at her haggard face. “You’ve got to get back. Do you walk or will I have to carry you? Say which, quick I ain’t got no time to waste!”

“My husband!” gasped Mrs. Powell. “He’s in there! I’ve got to get to him——”

There was a wild shout. People began running backward.

The burning wall of the building nearest the street swayed for an awful second; then, like the wall of a card house, toppled to the street.

A wild wailing sound that was horrible to hear rose from the spectators.

CHAPTER VIII BENEATH THE WRECKAGE

“There are men under those burning walls!” some one yelled, hoarse with horror. “I saw them! They couldn’t get quite clear!”

Mrs. Powell reeled, a hand across her eyes.

She found Jane’s arm about her, Jane’s reassuring voice in her ear.

“It isn’t Uncle Dink! I know it isn’t! Oh, help me some one! She’s—she’s fainted!”

Many willing, kindly hands came to Jane’s aid and helped carry Mrs. Powell into a shoe store near by. Her temporary faintness was perhaps a good thing for both Mrs. Powell and Jane, since they were saved the harrowing sight of the frenzied rescue work that followed.

Men rushed to the scene of the calamity, carrying axes, saws, any implement with which they could hope to cut away the timbers that held the imprisoned men.

The thick stream from the hose of the fire department was turned upon this spot, and here the flames were quickly conquered. The men who had been caught beneath this outer edge of the falling wall would not be burned to death. It remained to be seen how badly they had been crushed by the weight of the débris.

“Here they are, Bill,” one of the firemen cried. “Just give me a hand, will you, with this board? Ataboy! Heave away, now!”

Several others came to the aid of these two, and, with the push of broad backs beneath it, the board heaved and gave back, carrying with it other timbers that had been either partly or wholly leaning against it.

At the moment a figure came flying toward them, the figure of a woman.

She was a wild apparition, her staring eyes and wild disordered hair redly illumined by the darting flames of the burning building.

At her elbow, holding her arm, vainly trying to comfort her, was a young girl.

“My husband!” cried the woman. “Where is he? Have you found him yet?”

One of the men held her off kindly but firmly, while the others went feverishly on with the work of rescue.

“Don’t come any closer, ma’am,” said the man who was holding poor frenzied Mrs. Powell. “You can’t do anything and you’ll only get in the way. If I was you,” he added after a moment when the shouts of the rescuers and their increased activity proclaimed that they had found one of the victims, “I’d look the other way.”

“My husband!” muttered Mrs. Powell, and to save her life she could not have taken her eyes from that awful scene. “Have they found him? Is he dead? Oh, let me go!”

“Please, please look away,” cried Jane, scarcely knowing what she said. “Oh, if we could only have kept you in that shop a little while longer! If you had only stayed there! If you would only come away now!”

Mrs. Powell took no more notice of her than if she had not spoken.

She started forward suddenly with a wild cry.

They had taken somebody from the wreck—were carrying him away.

The man who was holding her drew her back.

“If your name’s Powell, that ain’t your man,” he said. “Don’t look.”

Mrs. Powell was moaning now like an animal in pain.

Jane, agonized, took the cold hand in one of hers and pressed it to her face.

The expression of the older woman did not change. She continued to stare at the mass of wreckage where men worked, hacking, lifting, smashing, striving desperately to save the lives of the two men they thought were still imprisoned there.

Again they lifted something from the wreckage, and again Mrs. Powell started forward.

“Not yet, ma’am,” said the man at her side. “That ain’t your husband. Probably ain’t here at all,” he said in a voice he tried to make reassuringly matter-of-fact. “Probably out there in the crowd lookin’ for you, or maybe he’s home now, wondering where you’re at.”

Mrs. Powell took no more notice of him than she had of Jane.

“There’s another one under here, boys,” she heard one of the rescue workers say. “But I don’t think he’s hurt bad. Seems like a lot of those timbers have jammed and made a sort of shed over him. We’ve got to watch out we don’t loosen one of them and let the whole thing down on him.”

After that the men worked swiftly and silently while Jane held tight to Mrs. Powell’s hand, trembling, and the woman herself stared straight before her, uttering that queer heartbroken sound that Jane was to hear in imagination many times afterward.

“Here he is!” cried a voice suddenly. “And it’s like I said. He ain’t scarcely hurt!”

“Only my hands, boys,” came a voice that was faint and weak but striving to be jocular. “Be easy on ’em. They feel as if they were broken in sixteen places at once.”

Seeing that the third victim when helped by the men could stand shakily on his feet, Mrs. Powell’s captor released his hold on her arm.

“There’s your husband, ma’am,” he said in a relieved voice. “And lucky for you he wasn’t one of the other two fellows. Seems like they got a bit more than their share.”

Mrs. Powell was not listening. She had reached her husband’s side and was patting him all over incredulously.

“They say you’re not hurt badly,” she said, her lips quivering. “Is—is that true?”

“Let go my hand, old girl,” he said, as his wife grasped it in her eagerness. “My hands got caught under a couple of weights that felt like a ton apiece. Guess they got bunged up good and plenty.”

Mrs. Powell gasped as she held up one of the poor crushed bleeding hands. Her own hand was sticky with blood.

“Oh get a doctor, some one, quick!” she cried.

“Well, old lady,” Jane heard Mr. Powell say, as she ran to find some one who could attend to him, “I guess your husband’s out of a job now, for good and all!”

CHAPTER IX DISASTER

Meanwhile in the finest house on Rose Hill the shrill sound of the siren had roused pretty Betty Browning from scented rose-colored slumber.

With a petulant exclamation the girl sat up in bed, prettier than ever with her curling, golden hair disordered and her lovely eyes dewy with sleep.

“What is all the noise about?” she cried, and would have stamped her foot had she been on the floor instead of in bed. “Something ought to be done about that siren, waking people up in the middle of the night!”

Something in the red of the sky and shouts from without that came to her faintly penetrated through her self-centered irritation.

With a slight shiver of dread—or perhaps the breeze from the window was unexpectedly cool—she slipped on a filmy negligee, inserted her pretty feet into satin mules, and padded across the room to the window.

“It seems to be a rather serious fire at that,” thought Betty, as she leaned from the window. Every one in town appeared to be abroad.

Still there was nothing, it seemed to her, to make such a fuss about. The fire department would put out the fire. That’s what fire departments were for!

She yawned, and her petulance returned.

She pattered back to the bed, kicked off the mules and prepared once more to woo sweet slumber. But she was disturbed again, this time by the sound of voices.

She heard her father speak in a quick agitated tone. He seemed to be in the hall just outside her door, while her mother’s languid, bored voice came from the direction of her bedroom.

Then suddenly the telephone rang and Betty heard her father go quickly to answer it.

There was a moment of excited conversation, unintelligible to Betty. Then she heard her father slam up the receiver and fairly run through the hall.

“They say it’s Martin and Hull’s!” he cried. “If it is, I’m about ruined!”

This brought Betty to her feet in earnest.

She slipped on the mules again, ran to the door, and flung it open. She was still petulant, a little bewildered, yet vaguely alarmed.

She heard her mother’s voice say sharply:

“What do you mean by that preposterous statement? You, ruined! You? Why, I never heard anything so absurd!”

“Maybe, my dear. But true, nevertheless.” Her father’s voice was grim, so changed from its ordinary tone that Betty could scarcely recognize it.

The girl could hear her mother stirring languidly, could guess at the look of annoyance on her handsome face.

“If you must speak in riddles, Clyde Browning,” said Mrs. Browning, still more sharply, “perhaps you will not object to giving me an answer to this one.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Mr. Browning spoke in a slow measured tone that struck a queer dread to the heart of the girl who listened.

“I would give you an answer quickly enough, Lily, if I thought you could understand or would even care to try. As it is, I can only tell you that I have met with some rather heavy losses lately. Before I knew of these losses——”

“You are always having losses, Clyde,” Mrs. Browning’s voice broke in, bored and angry. “You have had losses ever since I married you, yet we continue to live in the handsomest house on Rose Hill. We have two cars and servants still. You must know that I am rather well seasoned to your false alarms by this time.”

“This is no false alarm,” returned Mr. Browning in that same grim voice. “I wish to heaven it were. If I could get back that thirty thousand——”

“What thirty thousand?” asked his wife sharply.

“Thirty thousand dollars that I lent Martin and Hull only two weeks ago,” Mr. Browning returned. “If Martin and Hull’s has burned down, then my thirty thousand has probably burned with it, for their building was not fireproof, and if they had any insurance it was little. That—try to understand this, Lily—wipes out just about everything I had left in the world!”

Betty gave a strangled cry and pressed her hands to her lips. She listened, expecting to hear her mother cry out in alarm. It was with an odd shock then that she heard a laugh, a mocking, tinkling laugh.

“Surely, you don’t intend me to think that you haven’t something more than that to fall back upon, Clyde?” she said. “You, who, from a small beginning, amassed a fortune. You are joking, of course.”

Mr. Browning gave a harsh, exasperated exclamation and came down the hall. Betty could see that he was fully dressed and ready for the street. She ran to him.

“Dad, I didn’t mean to listen—I hardly knew what I was doing,” she gasped. “It—what you said—isn’t true?”

“I’m afraid it is, Betty.” Mr. Browning stood for a moment, looking at her oddly. “But don’t bother your pretty head about it. Young girls can’t understand such things. Go to bed now and see if you can’t finish your sleep. I’ll be back soon.”

“Are you going to the fire?” Betty asked as he turned away.

“I’m going to see if that burning building is really Martin and Hull’s,” her father returned grimly.

Betty was left standing in the hall, shivering.

“Betty!”

It was her mother’s voice, high, querulous.

“Yes, mother?”

“Is that you in the hall?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Then come in here. Shut the door, too. I do hope,” she continued when Betty had obeyed, “that none of the servants heard what your father was saying.”

“Why?”

Betty’s tone was distant. She was trying vaguely to understand something that was new and bewildering to her, something that frightened her.

That new thing in her father’s tone and manner! What if he were not joking, as her mother seemed to think? What if he were really in danger of losing all his money? What if they were really to be poor?

“Why!” Her mother’s sharp voice broke into her unpleasant meditations. “It isn’t like you to ask such a silly question, Elizabeth.” Mrs. Browning only called her daughter by her full name when she was in a state of extreme annoyance with her. This seemed to be one of those occasions. “Why, indeed! Because it is vulgar to let the servants know one’s private affairs—especially when they are unpleasant.”

“Mother,” Betty spoke in an odd tone, a tone odd enough, indeed, to catch even Mrs. Browning’s languid attention, “suppose what dad said is true? Suppose we have lost all our money?”

“Nonsense, child!” A dark frown marred Mrs. Browning’s otherwise perfect forehead. “You ought to know your father well enough by this time to know that he is always worrying about something. I don’t think he would be happy,” she said, with an impatient movement of her handsome shoulders, “if he hadn’t something to worry about.”

“He didn’t seem happy to-night,” said Betty in a monotonous voice.

Mrs. Browning switched on her bed-light, and in its rose-shaded, flattering light surveyed her daughter.

Betty was amazingly pretty in her lacy blue negligee with her yellow hair rumpled charmingly and her lovely eyes wide and thoughtful. She was a vision to soothe even Mrs. Browning’s irate heart. For with all her failings, and they were many, this lady was inordinately fond and proud of her pretty daughter.

“What can be the matter with you, child?” she said, but not as sharply as she had intended. “You are far too pretty and much too young to bother your head with money matters. Run along now and get your beauty sleep.”

“But I don’t want to go to sleep,” Betty persisted. “I’d like to talk about dad, mother. I never saw him like that before. I’m sure he really is worried.”

“Worried!” Mrs. Browning spoke lightly and even laughed a little. “Of course he’s worried. I think I remember saying before that that is how he takes his pleasure. Now run along, like a good girl. You may speak lightly of beauty sleep, but I, never! To-morrow we’ll write to Chevot’s, darling, and order several of those sports frocks you fancied. That’s right—leave the door open just a crack as you go.”

Doubtless her mother was asleep soon after that. Betty did not go back to see; though, oddly enough, she would have liked to.

What she did not know was that her mother had attached more importance to Mr. Browning’s announcement of money losses than she had pretended to. Although she refused entirely to credit his statement that if Martin and Hull’s burned, her husband would lose the great bulk of his fortune, Mrs. Browning did believe that he had suffered more or less severe reverses in some of his investments.

“I do wish he would be careful,” she thought, as she switched off the rosy bed-light and settled herself impatiently in a luxurious, downy bed. “I may have to do without that jet evening gown I admired. Of course this had to come at a time when Chevot’s offerings are almost irresistible!”

Mrs. Browning fell asleep shortly after that with nothing weighing more heavily upon her mind, apparently, than the loss of the jet evening gown.

Betty, on the contrary, was suffering a rare experience. She could not sleep.

The reflection of the flames still danced on the walls of her pretty room. For a time they seemed to burn more brightly, and objects of furniture stood out almost as clearly as though it were day.

“Suppose the whole town should go up in flames,” thought Betty.

Such things had happened before, she knew.

But after what seemed to her—and, in reality, were—hours of waiting, the menacing glare of the flames wavered, lessened, changed from red to salmon, from salmon to a faint yellow, and then merged, sullen and beaten, into the dreary gray of early dawn.

Betty heard her father come in soon after that. His step dragged. In that halting sound was weariness—defeat.

Betty wanted to go to him, but did not dare.

CHAPTER X SUSPECTED

It seemed a miracle to Jane when she thought of it afterward that Mr. Powell had not been more seriously injured. The other two men who had been taken from under the ruins of the wall were much more badly hurt. It was rumored that one might die and that the other would be forced to keep to his bed for many weeks to come.

Doctor Pendleton, a busy physician and surgeon, dressed Mr. Powell’s injured hands. He looked grave when the work was done.

“The bruises on your body will get well quickly,” he told him. “But the hands are a different matter. Some of the small bones are broken, the tendons are stretched. You will have to give your hands a good long rest before they will be of any use to you again.”

They went home then, although the fire was still blazing and sparks from it, despite all the precautions of the firemen, had set fire to the roof of the building nearest it.

“Looks as if the whole town might go,” muttered Mr. Powell unhappily, as he allowed his wife and Jane to lead him homeward.

“I don’t care if it does,” said Mrs. Powell, “as long as you are safe——”

“And out of a job,” said the man, with a short bitter laugh. “Don’t forget that, Lou!”

“I’m not forgetting it,” returned Mrs. Powell stoutly. “But even if you had a job you couldn’t work at it with those poor hands. As soon as you’re well there will be plenty more jobs for you.”

She spoke bravely, far more bravely, Jane imagined, than she felt.

Jane was very thoughtful during the rest of the walk home and afterward when she sat by the one window in her room, watching the flames paint strange pictures in the sky.

“If Uncle Dink has no position and couldn’t possibly work at one if he had it until his hands are well, I wonder what we’ll do?” she asked herself. “I don’t suppose Aunt Lou has much money laid by, and even if she had, it wouldn’t last long with nothing coming in. And I’ll just be an extra expense to them. Oh, dear, Jane, I wish you could think of something!”

So it came to pass that two girls in Greenville, one the girl they called “Plain Jane,” the other, “Pretty Betty,” spent that night in anxious wakefulness, pondering in their different ways the same puzzling question, “What does one do when one has no money?” To neither of them then came the only answer, the very simple answer, really, to the query.

As the first gray light of dawn dimmed the fire-reddened sky, the firemen conquered the blaze. An early sun rose upon an ugly, blackened scene of desolation.

The two buildings adjoining Martin and Hull’s were almost as badly damaged as their neighbor’s. The actual loss in dollars had not been figured as yet, but one could guess that it would be enormous, for the insurance companies had only lately refused to carry the risk on these buildings.

Those most interested in the calamity, having retired for a few hours of much-needed rest, returned, one after another, to the scene of desolation.

A crowd gathered, gesticulating, speculating.

Poor Mr. Martin, of Martin and Hull, was wandering about the ruins in a dazed way. He seemed only to half realize the extent of the calamity, yet could not drag himself away from the scene of it. He answered questions put to him vaguely—if he answered them at all.

After vainly trying to exact some plausible explanation of the fire from him, Mr. Browning went in search of Hull.

“Maybe I can get some sense out of him,” he muttered. “Though I doubt it.”

Mr. Browning did not know that Betty was following him. If he had, he would, in all probability, have ordered her back home again for fear that she would realize too soon the extent of the misfortune that had come to the house of Browning.

But Betty was following somewhat after the manner of a Persian kitten at the heels of a mastiff, and those who saw her wondered that she should be there at all.

Though her face was unnaturally pale and her eyes unnaturally large, Betty Browning made a very pleasing picture in a woolly white sport coat and a white felt hat pulled down close over her golden bobbed hair.

Many of the curious who were among the crowds at the scene of the fire nudged each other as the pretty girl passed, and speculated as to what would happen if the rumor, already mysteriously spreading about town, that Mr. Browning had lost his money should prove true.

Meanwhile Betty was unconscious of the curious scrutiny of these people. Her eyes were only for her father, for the unremembered lines in his handsome face, for the unaccustomed stoop of his broad shoulders.

If it had not been for these things, Betty might have thought she had dreamed that conversation last night between her father and mother. She was bewildered, frightened, but, more than anything else, incredulous. She had been so long accustomed to think of money as something that was her right, as something as certain as the rolls and coffee that were served to her in her bedroom each morning, that she could not imagine herself without it.

Only the change in her father fed the bewilderment and fright in her heart and fought the incredulity.

So Betty Browning followed where her father went, stopped when he stopped, watching him always with puzzled eyes, while her anxiety grew.

Mr. Browning found the junior partner of Martin and Hull in the remains of what had once been an office and was now only a dreary ruin of sodden débris.

Hull had been searching for something. He straightened up as he saw Mr. Browning and his face became a dull red. He turned away, fiddling futilely with the remains of an old leather case.

“I’m sorry, Browning,” he muttered. “There was a bare chance that I might recover some at least of those securities of yours——”

“But you haven’t?”

From a distance where she could see but not hear, Betty could see her father’s broad shoulders sag, noticed his hand go out gropingly like a blind man feeling for support.

“The small safe is gone completely,” Hull said dully. “Melted, I suppose by the intense heat of the fire. I was going to take your thirty thousand up to the city to-day, Browning. Couldn’t possibly get away before.”

“To-day is too late!” said Clyde Browning in a hard voice.

Mr. Hull looked up. There was something pathetic in the helpless appeal of his voice.

“I’m sorry! I can’t say more. After all I had no reason to anticipate the ruin of my business before to-day——”

Mr. Browning cut him short with an impatient gesture.

“How about yourself?” he said. “Are you insured?”

“Partly,” replied the grain dealer. “You know the insurance company pulled in on us. Although my loss will be a heavy one. I doubt,” he added, with a quiver in his voice, “whether either Martin or I will have the courage to start all over again.”

There was a momentary silence between the two men.

“Have you any idea as to how the fire started?”

Hull looked at his questioner’s shaggy white eyebrows lowering over wrathful eyes.

“I think it was that young fool, Billy Dobson!” he said.

Mr. Browning started and looked more closely at the other man.

“Billy Dobson! Why, I have always said that boy was honest as the day——”

“I never said he wasn’t honest, did I?” the older man protested testily. “But he’s a fool just the same—a visionary young fool. And a temper with a dangerous flash and bang to it, let me tell you.”

“He came in here asking me to finance some invention or other,” continued the grain dealer, while Mr. Browning listened with absorbed interest. “Offered to make a million for me in a year or two. I reckon he expected there’d be several millions in it for himself, young fool——”

“And you laughed at him, I suppose,” broke in Mr. Browning’s cool, curt voice.

“Of course I did! Who wouldn’t? I told him to take his child’s toy elsewhere and be quick about it. The lad went but his parting words were a promise that I’d be ‘sorry some day.’”

“H’m—I see! Well, come along, Hull. Something tells me this hunch of yours will bear looking into!”

CHAPTER XI BILLY ANSWERS

Outside, the two men found several others formerly employed by Martin and Hull ruefully inspecting the ruins.

These Mr. Browning questioned circumspectly but could gather no information that might substantiate the theory that Billy Dobson had started the fire.

Finally when they had just about given up hope of finding anything there, one man came up and of his own accord volunteered the information they had been looking for.

“Beg pardon, Mr. Hull,” the fellow said, touching his cap, “but it’s been on my mind to tell you something ever since the fire happened.”

“All right, Higgins. Speak out,” said Mr. Hull, trying not to show too great an interest.

“It’s only this. I was coming home pretty late—I’d been to the doctor’s to get him for my little girl who is very sick, as you can find out to be the truth by inquiring—and on my way I had to pass the place. I saw some one sort of hangin’ around the buildings and I got curious.”

“Yes, go on!” cried his two listeners together.

“Well, gentlemen, I came a little closer and I could easy see who the feller was. It was Dobson, Mr. Hull, the feller who clerks over at Mason’s store.”

A glance passed between Mr. Browning and Mr. Hull.

Then the latter said calmly:

“You’re sure you couldn’t have been mistaken, Higgins?”

“I’m so sure,” the man returned, “that I’d be willin’ to stake my chances of a long and happy life on it. No, sir, there ain’t no mistake about it, Mr. Hull. I made sure of my man!”

A crowd had gathered about the three men and listened curiously to the conversation. Rapidly, as news always spreads in a crowd, the word passed from mouth to mouth that Billy Dobson was suspected of starting the fire.

There was a great amount of excitement, for in Greenville Billy Dobson was a favorite. Everybody liked him and a great many people believed in him. Still, there was, of course, always the possibility of his being guilty.

Mr. Hull thanked the man Higgins and dismissed him. By a common impulse Mr. Browning and his companion turned their steps in the direction of Mason’s grocery store.

Some of the crowd followed, eager, curious, some convinced already of the guilt of Billy Dobson, some stubbornly incredulous.

On the outskirts of this crowd came Betty, not of it, but with it in spirit. She had caught enough of the rumor to know that it was Billy Dobson who was suspected, and Betty was in a mood just then to condemn almost any one.

It happened that as this crowd reached the corner upon which Mason’s grocery store was situated Jane also reached it, coming from a different direction.

Jane had been sent to the store for butter and eggs. Her mind was still preoccupied with what they should do now that Mr. Powell was incapacitated, and in this anxiety she had temporarily forgotten the fire that had wiped out Martin and Hull’s.

Now she was shocked rudely from her unhappy reverie by sight of the crowd. She saw Betty Browning on the edge of it, and her color flamed high.

What did it all mean? That excited crowd! Betty Browning with the white face and strained expression, so unlike the girl that Jane remembered!

She guessed instantly that this strange sight had some bearing on the calamity of the night before, but she had no way of knowing the actual cause.

The crowd turned in at Mason’s store. So did Jane—a little in the rear of it.

Billy Dobson was behind the counter waiting upon Mad Marion with all the kindness and deference he would have given to one of the richest patrons from Rose Hill.

Mr. Mason himself was in the rear of the store, stacking up fresh groceries on the immaculate shelves.

Both men looked surprised as the crowd entered the store and Marion turned, bobbing and smiling delightedly at something that promised excitement.

Mr. Browning wasted no time. With Mr. Hull at his elbow he went direct to the counter and himself addressed Billy Dobson. His eyes were keen and cold as they rested on the frank blue eyes of the lad.

“Were you in the vicinity of Martin and Hull’s before the fire last night?” he asked.

Jane had pushed her way through the crowd until she was close enough to hear the question distinctly. She was so close to Betty that she could hear the girl’s quick, indrawn breath as she waited for the answer.

Jane’s eyes were fixed with a frightened look on Billy. What did it all mean?

Billy looked surprised for a moment at the question.

“Why, yes, sir,” he said then, his eyes unwavering. “I believe I was. In fact, I know I passed there last night.”

A sigh arose from the crowd, a queer sound that was almost like an accusation.

Jane felt her heart beat fast. She did not yet fully understand, but she did realize instinctively that Billy was in danger of some sort—Billy who had been kind to her, who had stood as her friend from the very first day in Greenville.

Mr. Hull spoke now. Something of the dull hopelessness of his manner had gone and been replaced by anger.

“Will you kindly explain then,” he said, “what you were doing there after twelve o’clock last night—it was that late, was it not?” he interrupted himself to ask.

“Fully that,” said Billy, his gaze unflinching. “I should say nearer half-past twelve.”

“Better be a little careful what you say, Billy,” cautioned Mr. Mason, with an impulse of true friendliness toward the young man. “Don’t talk too fast, lad. Better keep a guard on your tongue.”

“I have no reason to keep a guard on my tongue,” Billy retorted quietly. “Now, Mr. Hull, if you have any more questions to ask me——”

“I have several,” said Mr. Hull dryly.

Mr. Browning’s keen, searching gaze never once left the lad’s face.

“The most important among them is,” Mr. Hull proceeded, “What were you doing skulking about my place at a time that was nearer half-past twelve than twelve o’clock last night?”

“I object to the word ‘skulking’,” Billy returned furiously. Jane clenched her hands. She was proud of him. “If you will take that back, I’ll answer your question—not otherwise!”

Mr. Hull was plainly annoyed. The crowd was growing restive. Betty, close to Jane, gave an impatient shrug of her shoulders. Her pretty mouth was set in a straight line.

Only Mr. Browning betrayed a slight change in his distrustful attitude toward Billy Dobson. Jane thought she detected a faint gleam of admiration in his eyes.

“All right, cut it out, then,” said Hull, snapping angrily at the words. “Only answer my question. What were you doing near my place late last night—just before the fire started?”

Again there was a murmur from the crowd. Billy’s glance swept it wonderingly before he answered.

“I often walk for miles at night,” he said quietly. “It’s been a habit with me for a long time, because that is when I get my good ideas.”

There was a titter in the crowd. Some one laughed outright. Another cried jeeringly:

“That’s a fine line, that is!”

“My lad, you’ll get nowhere with an explanation like that,” Mr. Hull stated. But Mr. Browning cut him short, with a gesture. He turned to Billy, his gaze never leaving the clerk’s face.

“What ideas do you mean?” he asked, not unkindly.

For the first time Billy’s glance wavered. When he spoke his tone was almost sullen.

“You’ll laugh,” he said. “Everybody laughs. But since I see it’s important for me to tell the truth right now——”

“Very important!” broke in the grain dealer dryly.

“I’ll give you a chance to laugh,” finished Billy, looking not at Mr. Hull but at Mr. Browning. “I’ve invented a couple of things that I think are pretty good, and I’ve got the ideas for them when I’ve been walking about at night. Now,” bitterly as the titter spread through the crowd, “go ahead and laugh. Have a good one on me!”

Mr. Browning said nothing. He was looking very thoughtful. Hull was irate.

“A pretty explanation that is!” he said. “I don’t mind telling you, my boy, that it would stand about two half-seconds in a court of law. Now suppose you tell me the real reason. And be quick about it. I’m getting impatient!”

Billy gripped the edge of the counter and leaned forward.

“I’ve told you the truth of how I happened to pass your place last night,” he said. “Though why I should have to answer your questions, I don’t know—and I don’t care. If you don’t believe what I’ve told you, then you know what you can do, don’t you?”

“I know what I will do,” said the irate grain dealer, shaking his finger under Billy’s nose. “I’ll put you in jail!”

“But before you do it,” Billy’s voice was still calm but there was a glint in his eye, “I’d be obliged if you’d tell me just what I’m accused of!”

“I’ll tell you what you’re accused of!” Mr. Hull was shaking with wrath, and he went on, though Mr. Browning tried vainly to stop him. “You’re accused of deliberately setting fire to my property last night in revenge for my having refused you a loan! That is what you are accused of! Now, deny it, if you dare!”

CHAPTER XII A GENEROUS THOUGHT

“Deny it, if you dare!”

The cry rang through the suddenly still, tense store like the crack of a whip.

Billy Dobson straightened up and looked steadily at his accuser.

“I do deny it! It’s a lie!”

There was something in the fearless honesty of the young man’s eyes that convinced most of those in the crowd. There were some who doubted, however; one who doubted openly, and that one was Hull.

“Well, my lad, we’ll see,” said the latter, with a dubious shake of his head. “But I warn you, if you try to get away, it may go hard with you.”

“I won’t try to get away,” said Billy proudly. “You can find me any time you want me, either here or at my own house.”

Jane was indignant. She turned to poor Marion who had been looking rather frightened during the inquisition.

“It’s an outrage!” said Jane, loud enough for those about her to hear. “Why, Billy Dobson couldn’t do a thing like that!”

“You seem very sure!”

The words were uttered in a low tone, but there was an icy quality in them that caused Jane to wheel about suddenly. She found herself looking into the disdainful eyes of pretty Betty Browning.

“If I were you,” said Betty in the same icy tone, “I would be a little careful what I said. Billy Dobson is guilty, and you may get yourself in trouble by defending him!”

Before Jane could recover from her astonishment and retort, Betty turned her back upon the plain girl and walked from the store.

Mr. Browning had been deep in a conversation with Hull and had not appeared to notice his daughter. The latter’s going seemed a signal for the breaking up of the crowd. They straggled off reluctantly, going in groups of two and three and talking excitedly about the new turn events had taken.

Jane stood rooted to the spot, her eyes following the figure of pretty Betty as the girl proceeded slowly up the slope of Rose Hill.

Jane became aware suddenly that Marion was tugging at her sleeve.

“Lovely girl, Betty Browning,” said the latter, bobbing and smiling wistfully. “Lovely girl, but cold—cold and proud like her mother. No heart, they say. All ice. Yes, yes, all ice.”

Jane smiled at the poor little woman and patted her hand.

“Well, we needn’t worry, Miss Marion,” she said, biting her lips to keep them from trembling. “It isn’t our fault if some people are unkind, is it?”

“No, no! Of course, not at all!” simpered Marion. She squeezed Jane’s hand and with many backward glances and smiles and nods managed to get herself out of the store.

Mr. Browning had gone out too, in earnest conversation with Hull.

Jane found herself alone with Billy when his employer followed Mr. Browning and Mr. Hull to the street.

Jane’s impulse was to go away, for Billy looked as if he wanted to be alone. But there were the things that Mrs. Powell needed right away, and then Jane thought that she must speak to Billy and assure him of her friendship, at least.

“Billy!”

The young man, who had turned away and pretended to be absorbed in contemplation of the goods on the shelves, turned toward her.

Jane was startled at the sight of his face. It seemed to have aged incredibly in the past ten minutes. He was white, there were lines about his mouth and suffering had left a cloud in his usually merry eyes.

“Billy, I’m so sorry!” she cried, impulsively, reaching a hand across the counter to him. “It was all a trumped-up charge, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves! I’ll tell them so, too, any old time I happen to meet them!”

“You did,” said Billy, his face softening into a smile of comradeship. “I heard you stand up for me, and I heard what Betty Browning said, too. You’re a good little sport, Jane, and, believe me, I’m not going to forget it!”

He took her outstretched hand of friendship and pressed it so hard it hurt. Dear Billy! He was badly in need of comfort just then. Jane’s heart ached for him.

“They can’t do anything to you, Billy.” The words were more a fearful question than a statement, though Jane tried her best to seem confident. “They certainly couldn’t convict a person on no more evidence than they have!”

“I don’t suppose so,” said Billy, and sighed, rubbing a hand across his forehead. “But it really doesn’t matter so much whether they get out a formal charge against me or not. I’m just about done for in this town.”

“What do you mean?” gasped Jane, alarmed at his tone.

Billy looked at her queerly.

“You’re only a kid, after all, Jane, in spite of the sixteen years you claim, and I don’t suppose you know what a thing like this can do to a fellow in a small town. Suspicion is almost as bad as proved guilt.”

“Oh, no!” cried Jane. “How could it be?”

“It puts a fellow under a cloud,” explained Billy. Jane could see that it did him good to talk to some one, and so she encouraged him with all her might. “It puts a fellow under a cloud,” Billy repeated, “and turn as he will he finds the cloud following him, wrapping him in a mist of doubt and suspicion. In the city a fellow can get away from it, but in a place like Greenville—never!”

“But I’m quite sure that most of the people in Greenville don’t believe a word that that old Mr. Hull said!” Jane protested. “And if they are like me, Billy, it will only make them feel more friendly to you because you have been treated so unjustly.”

“But there aren’t many like you, Jane,” said Billy, fervently grateful for the girl’s loyal friendship. “If there were, I shouldn’t wonder if the world would be a much better place to live in. But Greenville is Greenville, and as far as any future for me here is concerned, I might as well stop trying.”

“But your inventions!” exclaimed Jane.

“It’s my inventions I’m thinking of,” Billy retorted grimly. “Do you suppose any one is going to lend me money to back my ideas now, when I’ve been accused of setting one place on fire already because the proprietors wouldn’t finance me? No sir, I never had much of a chance, but that’s gone now.”

Jane was silent for a moment, thinking hard, while Billy beat a restless tattoo with his fingers on the edge of the counter.

“Billy, if you could get away from Greenville, you’d have a chance of getting some one to back you, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” agreed the lad. “But with the wages I’m getting here and no prospect of ever getting any more as far as I can see,” he added bitterly, “I might as well try to get to Mars. But never mind, Jane,” he added in a different tone, seeing how worried and really distressed the girl looked, “it’ll all come out in the wash. And anyway,” with another grateful pressure of the small friendly hand, “I’ll always remember you stood up for me when I was down and needed friends. It’s the people who stand by you at a time like this that you know you can count on. And now,” with a faint return of his old cheerful grin, “what can I do for you this morning?”

So the girl gave her order and left the store with her purchases.

But Jane had other things to think of that morning beside Billy’s troubles. Things had begun to look black at home with Mr. Powell laid up for an indefinite period. She had noticed how careful Mrs. Powell had been in ordering things from the store. She knew it was a question of money.

So she was very thoughtful on her way back to the Powell cottage. An idea was forming in her mind.

She had not started to school in Greenville. It was too near the end of the term. The whole summer stretched before her.

Why not?

Bustling in with her bundles from the store, eager to win Aunt Lou’s consent to her new idea, Jane found that good woman in the sunshiny kitchen dissolved in tears.

“Why, Aunt Lou!” she cried, alarmed. “What is the matter?”

Mrs. Powell dried her eyes hastily and tried to smile.

“N-nothing, Jane,” she said. “I—did you get everything from the store?”

Jane knew only too well the meaning of those tears. Mrs. Powell could easily stand up against the added task of caring for her husband during his illness. But where was the money coming from with which to pay the rent, the doctor, the store bills? She rightly suspected that the moving alone had cut deeply into the Powells’ savings.

A sudden flood of gratitude for this good woman who had been so kind to her overwhelmed Jane. She went over to Mrs. Powell and laid a hand lightly on her shoulder.

“Aunt Lou,” she challenged, with a little thrill in her voice, “I bet you don’t know who I am!”

CHAPTER XIII JANE LOOKS FOR WORK

To say that Aunt Lou was surprised at this change in her sober little mouse would not adequately express her state of mind as she stared at Jane.

“Of course I know who you are!” she cried. “You’re Jane Cross and one of the best and dearest girls alive.”

Jane shook her head gaily.

“That’s only half of it,” she cried. “Try again!”

Mrs. Powell was so completely puzzled that Jane decided to keep her in suspense no longer.

She pushed the bundles aside so as to make room for herself on the kitchen table; then sat on the edge of the table, one foot swinging.

“It’s so simple I must have been sound asleep not to think of it long ago,” she said. “Aunt Lou, I’ve decided to be a business woman!”

“A—what?” gasped Mrs. Powell.

“Well, anyway, a business girl,” Jane compromised. “Yes, ma’am, I’m going to get a job, and I think I’ll start out looking for it no later than to-morrow morning. Now, Mrs. Powell, what have you got to say to that?”

This was such a different Jane that the poor lady was utterly bewildered.

“Why, Jane dear, what can you do? A girl like you? Why,” protesting, “you’re scarcely more than a child!”

“I’m sixteen, if I don’t look it,” Jane said stoutly. “And I’m sure there ought to be something I can do in this town, if I only find out what it is. Anyway,” the swinging foot stopped swinging and Jane looked suddenly very sober, “I can’t be a drag on you and Uncle Dink when you have been so kind to me. Don’t you suppose,” she added quickly when Mrs. Powell would have interrupted, “that I know what you were crying about when I came in? You were worried because expenses are going on just the same and there is no money coming in to meet them. Well, I’m going out and make some money!”

It was a valiant resolve, but when Jane thought of actually putting it into practice she quailed.

She was so shy and sensitive that it was actual pain for her to meet strangers. The thought of asking any one of these for work filled her with dread.

Still, it seemed the only thing for her to do.

“I’ll be killing three birds with one stone if I can only get work somewhere,” she thought. “First of all, I can help Aunt Lou. Then I can show that Betty Browning that I am somebody, even though she thinks she can talk to me as if I were some sort of bug. And then,” color tinged her face and her eyes began to shine with the thought, “maybe I can put a little bit aside to help Billy get out his invention. I don’t think he’d mind taking help from plain Jane, especially if he knew how happy it made her to be able to help him. Anyway,” with a resolution that made her heart thump wildly, “I’m going to try!”

When Mr. Powell heard of Jane’s determination, his round, good-natured face shone with something more than gratitude and he proposed three cheers and a tiger in a husky voice.

“It won’t be for long, Jane,” he told the girl, regarding his bandaged hands ruefully. “I’ll get a job again pretty soon, and then you can give yours up. You’re a plucky youngster and a good one. You’ll make good in anything you try, Jane Cross.”

It was a great occasion, that Monday on which Jane started to look for work.

Mrs. Powell, good soul, had spent two whole days making a dress which she said would “look modest and businesslike and, at the same time, not too plain,” and the seeking for a position had been postponed until this should be finished.

The effect was not bad, considering the fact that the dress had originally been one of Mrs. Powell’s, new three seasons back. It was of gray, light-weight jersey and was made on long boyish lines that suited Jane.

Mrs. Powell had found an old hat, too, which she and Jane remodeled rather cleverly. It was small and fitted Jane’s sleek head closely, giving her a well-groomed look.

Then the Monday morning came that they had set for the great attempt.

Jane’s new things were hung as carefully in her neat bare closet as though they had just come from a Fifth Avenue fashion shop, and it is safe to say that Jane prized them almost as much as though they had been of such aristocratic origin.

It was a long time since she had had anything she thought so pretty as that simple gray jersey frock and the close-fitting hat.

“I’ll feel quite grown up,” she said, as she did up buttons with fingers that trembled on that eventful Monday morning. “Oh, I do hope nobody guesses that I’m barely sixteen! I’m sure I look much older than that!”

She did not look even that, however, and for all her hopeful speech, she knew it. But her very youth was appealing and could be counted on to plead for her far more effectively than any number of added years could have done.

When the gray dress had been put on and adjusted to a nicety, Jane regarded herself in the glass.

Her hair was mussed a little and she smoothed it to a glossier neatness. Her face was flushed with excitement and her eyes sparkled.

She put on the little hat, pulled it far down over her hair, then went to the head of the stairs and called Mrs. Powell.

The latter came, hands sudsy with dish water, to “pass on Jane.”

Her first glance was one of pleasure and astonishment.

“I declare to goodness, Jane, you’re certainly good to look at!” she said. “And smart, too, in that dress, if I do say it of my own dressmaking!”

Mr. Powell was brought in to marvel and to praise, which he did with such heartiness that Jane glowed with happiness and felt a new confidence in herself.

“I’ll bring home a job to-night,” she told them, laughing. “The new dress is bound to bring good luck!”

Poor Jane! She was soon to find that getting work was a much more difficult matter than she supposed it would be.

First, there was Haley’s tea room to visit.

This place, just opened and trying to be as smart as its city cousins, was actually more restaurant than tea room. One could have eaten three good meals a day there and have been satisfied—which is proof that the name “tea room” did not adequately describe it. Jane thought she could be a waitress. Not so much to being a waitress—just a matter of wearing a black dress and a smart white apron and cap and passing around good things on a tray to hungry people. Jane thought she could learn the trick quickly and be a very good waitress. She supposed that sort of work brought very little money to begin with, but then, if she looked sharp and proved herself reliable, she might find herself in the position of head-waitress and from that on up to—well, who knew what?

Jane did not, nor did she know many other things that she was to learn within the next few hours.

The shop was on Main street, about two blocks west of Rose Hill.

Jane had to pass Mason’s grocery store on the way. She saw Billy through the plate-glass door and nodded gaily. She might soon have good news for Billy!

There was the tea shop.

She opened the door with her first feeling of timidity.

Whom did one approach, she wondered, on an errand of this sort? It was all very bewildering.

Jane hesitated within the door of the shop.

There were several people at the daintily appointed tables and some looked curiously at Jane. Among those who did not look at Jane at all, was Betty Browning.

Betty appeared to be having either a late breakfast or an early lunch of cinnamon rolls and coffee. There were deep circles under her eyes and she buttered a roll absently as though her mind were miles away.

If Jane had needed anything to stiffen her courage, the sight of Betty was enough. She lifted her chin and marched straight to the rear of the store where a self-sufficient young person was sitting behind a counter and a wire cage.

“I’d like to get work here,” Jane said in a steady voice to this young person. “Do you know where I can ask about it?”

The girl behind the counter treated Jane to a cool, appraising gaze; then rose and opened a door marked “Office. Private.”

She disappeared, leaving Jane to stand there, feeling hot and cold by turns.

CHAPTER XIV A FIRST REFUSAL

Minutes, that seemed ages to Jane, passed.

Then the self-sufficient young person, who chewed gum so nonchalantly, returned and pointed with her thumb toward the open door.

“She’ll see you,” said the latter with a sigh of exquisite boredom. “Walk in!”

Jane was not sure she could walk. Her knees were feeling very wabbly.

She managed the distance to the door very creditably, however, pushed the door open, and stepped within the room beyond.

A gray-haired, bespectacled, sharp-nosed person sat very still in a chair near a desk. She looked up as Jane entered, frowned, and pointed toward the door.

“Shut it!” she commanded.

Hardly a very promising beginning, thought Jane.

Nevertheless, she obeyed the command and approached the desk with a firmer step.

She was about to speak when the grim-faced individual gave her a quick glance and said sharply:

“What is your business, young woman? Be quick, for I have a great deal to do.”

Jane had supposed the girl in the iron cage had explained her errand. It was a shock to find that she was to be forced to break the ice twice over.

“I’d like a position,” she said bravely. “I—I hope you have an opening. I’d try to be very careful and give good service.”

“Good gracious!” The spectacles glared at Jane as though she had committed some heinous offense. “Do I hear aright? Do you want to become a waitress—here?”

The emphasis on the “here” was so marked that Jane at once felt how presumptuous she had been even to think of such a thing! She faltered:

“I did hope that—that you might have an opening.”

“Well, I haven’t!” The words were snapped out smartly. “Next time please explain your business at the desk before you force your way in here and waste my time. It is valuable, young woman, though you may not know it.”

Jane did not stop to explain to this sharp-tongued woman that she had told her business to the girl at the desk and that the last thought in her mind was to force herself in anywhere.

She only wanted to get away from there.

She found her way blindly to the door, opened it, closed it, and stumbled through the store toward the entrance.

In passing the table where Betty Browning sat she stumbled over an uneven spot in the rug and lurched against the elbow of the pretty girl.

The latter cried out in annoyance as the coffee slopped over in her saucer. Instantly a waitress was at her side.

“I’ll get you a fresh cup, Miss,” said the girl, all solicitude for Betty and all hard looks for Jane. “It’s a pity some people can’t watch where they’re going!”

“Yes,” Jane heard Betty’s bored voice say as she opened the door, “isn’t it!”

Jane ran for two whole blocks and drew up at the corner of the second one rather out of breath but far more normal in mind.

“Well, I’ve got that out of my system,” she thought, trying to laugh and making a bad business of it. “Now I’ll try again. Better luck next time.”

But her confidence was severely shaken.

The attitude of the sharp woman with the spectacles was discouraging. She had not even given Jane a real answer to her request for a position. Of course what she had said was a plain enough refusal, but Jane’s sense of justice was outraged. The woman might at least have told her that she had no vacancy at the present but that she would keep her in mind and perhaps have a place for her at some future date.

As it was, she had been positively insulting. Hot color rushed to Jane’s face as she thought of the interview. And as though that were not enough, she had been awkward and gawkish before pretty Betty Browning again.

How quick the waitress had been to serve Betty—how quick to blame Jane!

Jane put a hand to her burning face and walked on swiftly.

There was all the difference in the world between Plain Jane and Pretty Betty. But she would show them—she would show them all yet!

She went to Greenville’s largest drygoods store then. She might be able to get a position there.

Mr. Grey, the proprietor, received her pleasantly enough but was discouraging when she mentioned her need of work.

“I’m sorry, my dear young lady,” he said. “But we have all the clerks we need. One of ’em might die and leave a vacancy, but that’s about the only chance there would be for you. And right now, they’re a pretty healthy lot.”

Jane understood that he meant this pleasantry in a kindly way, but it grated just the same. Jane was in no mood for pleasantries.

From this store she went to the Palace, Greenville’s one moving picture house.

“I thought you might need some one to give out tickets or to act as usher,” she said timidly to Max Rosenberg, the florid-faced, thick-lipped proprietor of the Palace.

Max Rosenberg was one of those men who think themselves charmingly humorous but are, in reality, only offensive. Jane left the place wearily, and without her position, feeling for the first time faintly apprehensive.

“Suppose I can’t get a job, after all?” she thought. “I always supposed any one could find work to do if they really wanted to do it badly enough. Now—where do I go?”

She went to many places during the remainder of that long afternoon and met with no success anywhere.

She was hot, tired, and hungry. Several times she had been on the point of returning home for a little rest and refreshment, but each time stopped herself with the thought that she would try one more place before giving up for the day.

“I won’t go home without something to do!” she told herself, and the more weary she became, the brighter burned her resolution.

At the corner of Cherry and Blossom Streets she paused for a moment to rest her feet. The afternoon was hot and she had walked a long way.

While she rested, a sign across the street caught her attention. She started and looked more closely.

This was Garwick’s Real Estate Agency. Jane had heard Mr. Powell speak of John Garwick as the most successful realtor in town.

She had not thought of applying to him for a position, principally because she had not thought of herself as being useful in a real estate office.

What made her think of it now was a feeling of desperation and a sign that had been inserted in one end of the street window. It was a large sign, blackly lettered. Jane had no difficulty in reading it from across the street. The sign said merely, “Clerk Wanted.” But that was enough for Jane.

Marshaling what was left of her courage and leaving herself no time for thought, Jane crossed the street and pushed open the door of Garwick’s Real Estate Agency.

Two men were in earnest conversation, heads close together, voices low.

Jane felt that she was interrupting and gasped an embarrassed apology.

The gray-haired man in the swivel chair near the desk glanced up at her and smiled pleasantly.

The black-haired man leaned back in the wicker chair and looked curious.

Jane’s face was red, but she could not back out now.

“What can I do for you?” asked the gray-haired man pleasantly.

“I—I saw your sign in the window,” Jane said. “I thought, perhaps——”

“It meant what it said and that I really wanted a clerk?” finished the gray-haired man, taking pity on her confusion. “Well, so I do. If you will be kind enough to take a seat while I finish my business with this gentleman, I will be very glad to talk to you.”

Jane sank down in one of the wicker chairs with a quick intake of breath that was almost a sob.

Here was something that seemed to hold out a little hope. She was grateful to John Garwick and loved him from that moment with the love of a child for the first person who has been truly kind.

If only she could suit him! If only she might be allowed to work for him!

Mr. Garwick’s business with the black-haired man was soon finished. The two seemed on the best of terms and parted in a very friendly manner.

When the door had closed upon his client, Mr. Garwick turned to Jane.

“Well, young lady,” he said, “so you saw my sign in the window. I presume you came in answer to it. Am I right?”

“Yes, sir!” Jane felt breathless. It was all she could do to speak at all. “I want a position so much, and when I saw your sign I thought—well, I thought maybe I might do your work. I’m willing to try very hard. Indeed I am!”

The half-bantering smile on Mr. Garwick’s face faded at the vehemence of her tone and his expression took on an answering earnestness.

“I believe you,” he said, and added slowly, as he continued to study Jane’s face: “I shouldn’t wonder if you are exactly the type of young person I want.”

CHAPTER XV A TASTE OF SUCCESS

Jane Cross could not believe that she had heard the real estate dealer correctly. She tried to smile, but her lips trembled. She pressed them tight together and continued to look at Mr. Garwick, her eyes very large and dark.

“You see,” the pleasant-faced gentleman continued, “the young fellow I had with me here for a long time deserted me for a New York firm that offered him broader opportunities. You can’t blame the boy, but at the same time you can see that his desertion left me in rather a hole.”

“A man!” gasped Jane. “Do—why do you think—I could possibly take the place of a—man?”

By this speech it may be seen how very unaccustomed indeed Jane was to the ways of a modern business world. But Mr. Garwick liked her none the less for it, though he was amused.

“Of course, that remains to be seen,” he pointed out. “You are the first person to answer my sign, which was placed in the window only this noon, and I’m inclined to give you a chance.

“The work isn’t difficult,” he went on, seeing that Jane looked a bit frightened. “It will be mostly a matter of taking telephone messages at first and of attending to clients while I am forced to be away from the office.”

“I’m quite sure that I could do that!” Jane said earnestly.

“So am I,” smiled Mr. Garwick. “You look like a young person who would put her mind to whatever she attempted. Well, suppose we do this.” He swung about in his chair and placed the fingers of his two hands together in a meditative gesture. “Suppose we try you out for a month and see how you like us? At the end of that time—well, we may even raise the salary.”

Jane knew what the other alternative would be—what would happen—in case Mr. Garwick did not like her!

But she was grateful for a chance. That was all, she told herself breathlessly, that she asked.

“Well, what do you say?” asked Mr. Garwick, smiling.

“Oh, thank you! I’ll try so hard to do what you want me to. When—” Jane hesitated, then plunged boldly: “When will you want me to start?”

“The sooner the better.” Mr. Garwick fumbled restlessly with some papers on his desk. “I’ve fallen behind in my collections, and now it’s necessary for me to make up for lost time. Can you start to-morrow morning? I will start you at twelve dollars a week.”

Could she! And twelve dollars a week!

Jane almost clapped her hands, but remembered just in time that that would be childish. She was practically grown up now and about to embark upon a career! She must be careful.

So instead of clapping her hands she merely looked her gladness and said “Yes, indeed!” in such an eager voice that Mr. Garwick seemed satisfied.

“All right,” he said. “Nine o’clock sharp, for we’ll have a busy day before us.”

He opened the door for her with his pleasant smile and Jane found herself once more in the hot street. But with what a difference!

Main Street, baking in the mid-afternoon heat of the sun, was no longer merely the main business street of a small town. It was, to Jane’s happy fancy, a thoroughfare of romance, and if she had suddenly awakened to find the streets paved with gold she would not have been surprised. So had life changed for her in one scant half-hour!

“I’ve got a job! I’ve got a job!” The triumphant refrain sang itself over and over again in her mind, banishing all feeling of fatigue, filling her with a desire to dance, to sing, to tell her happiness to every one she met.

If she had encountered Betty Browning now, her eyes would not have fallen beneath the glance of the rich girl. She had grown immeasurably in her own estimation during the past half-hour. She was no longer just Plain Jane, but Plain Jane with a job at twelve dollars a week, and again, what a difference!

On the way home she had to pass Mason’s store again.

She remembered that Mrs. Powell had said something in the morning about needing sugar and flour and a dozen eggs. Jane would just stop in and see whether Mrs. Powell had been to market yet, and, if not, she would take the provisions home herself.

She felt very gay and independent as she opened the familiar door. A customer came out as she entered, and for a moment the store was empty of all but herself and Billy.

The latter had his back turned toward her as he straightened some packages on the shelves and Jane’s heart was touched by the pathetic droop of his shoulders.

Billy was having a hard time of it. Nothing had been proved against him in connection with the Martin and Hull disaster, but he was under a cloud, a heavy dark cloud that could not be dispelled until some solution of the mystery had been reached.

Rumors were that Martin and Hull had collected enough insurance to permit of their building again on a small scale. But they were both old men, and it was hard for them to start again at their time of life, forced as they were to pocket a loss that made it extremely doubtful whether the feed and grain business would ever function again on its old-time scale of prosperity.

Small wonder that they were bitter against the one they thought responsible for their misfortune. And, to do the old men justice, they were both firmly convinced in their hearts that Billy Dobson was the one responsible.

They considered all would-be inventors slightly mad to begin with, and they knew Billy’s excitable temper as well as his passionate desire to find some one who would finance his latest invention. They fully believed that in a fit of vengeful rage against them he had set fire to their place. What was worse, they intended that all of Greenville should believe it. Not all of Greenville did, of course, but Billy was destined to remain under a cloud, nevertheless, until his innocence was proved.

“Billy!”

There was something so breathless and triumphant in Jane’s voice that the lad whirled about, half startled.

“Hello, Jane! What’s up?”

“Billy, I’ve got a job—a life-sized job—with Mr. Garwick!”

“With John Garwick?” asked Billy, and as Jane nodded, whistled his amazement.

“Say, that’s great! But say, Jane, I didn’t know you wanted a job!”

“Neither did I until a little time ago,” laughed Jane, pleased by Billy’s unfeigned delight and astonishment. “But now I’ve got it, wild horses couldn’t drag me away from it. I’m so happy I just had to tell somebody or go crazy.”

“I always said you were a game kid,” said Billy, looking at her approvingly. “Now I know it. Go in, Jane, and win!”

There were more customers then and no chance for further conversation.

After he had done up her bundle for her, however, Billy’s hand squeezed hers in comradely fashion and he said under his breath:

“How about going to the movies some night, Jane? I want to hear more about the big job.”

“All right.”

“How about to-morrow night?”

Jane nodded, and, feeling rather breathless, hurried from the store.

Her first job and her first invitation to the movies, all in one day! It was too much! Jane thought she must burst with joy!

She entered the house calling for Mrs. Powell, and at the sound of her voice the latter came running.

One glance at Jane’s face was enough.

“Jane, you don’t mean to tell me you’ve got it!”

“Oh, Aunt Lou—here, let me get this package out of my arms—there, now I’m going to hug you, look out! I’ve got it; yes, I have! You needn’t look at me as if I’d gone crazy. It’s my first job, you know, and I’ve got to get used to the feel of having it. Aunt Lou, aren’t you glad? Quick! Say you’re as glad as I am!”

“You crazy child! If you’ll stop squeezing my neck and let me catch my breath! There, that’s better! Now tell me again, Jane. You’re sure you’re not joking?”

So Jane told her to the minutest detail what had happened from the moment she stepped inside the real estate office up to that happy moment when she stepped out of it again.

Mr. Powell came in from a visit to the doctor and a redressing of his bandaged hands in time to hear the end of the recital, and of course the story had to be told all over again for his benefit.

Mr. and Mrs. Powell were very proud of Jane and, looking upon her with fond eyes, thought she could not have been dearer to them if she had been their own.

On her part, Jane was thinking how generous and kind they had always been to her and that nothing she could do in return could more than partly pay her debt to them.

The next day, the first of Jane’s altered life, dawned gloriously. She took this as a good omen and sallied forth to work filled with enthusiasm and hope.

“I’ve got to please him!” she told herself, remembering Mr. Garwick’s words of yesterday. “I’m only on trial, really, and to lose a position I should think would be even worse than not finding one at all!”

She was even a little ahead of time, and Mr. Garwick greeted her in friendly fashion and set her to work at once.

“We won’t let any grass grow under our feet,” he told her, with a pleasant smile. “Now let me show you what you are to do.”

Half an hour later Jane was left alone with her responsibility and the telephone—and she was not sure which frightened her the more!

“If you ring,” she told the telephone, “I’ll run a mile—Oh, my good gracious,” as the bell rang shrilly, insistently, “there you go now!”

CHAPTER XVI A BUSINESS DAY

That ’phone was a nightmare to Jane that first day. It seemed to ring incessantly—though of course it did not—and the girl’s fingers became tired holding the pencil.

Some of those disembodied voices over the wire were so soft that Jane could scarcely hear them, and she disliked to ask them to repeat too many times, for fear of appearing stupid.

She took the messages, and, what is even more remarkable, she took them correctly.

There were personal callers, too, of course, and these interested Jane.

She was shy and self-conscious at first, but soon lost this shyness and self-consciousness in the fascination of the work she was doing.

It was wonderful to feel herself part of the hum and swing of business. Seeing how much business Mr. Garwick handled, she soon began to take pride in her employer and in the fact that she was his representative.

People who entered the real estate office of John Garwick found a young woman plainly but neatly dressed who rose to greet them pleasantly and asked their business in a professional voice.

Those clients liked her and talked freely to her—more freely, perhaps, than they would have talked to John Garwick himself.

As for Jane, she took a personal interest in each one of them and listened to the recital of their individual problems with a flattering interest.

From fright at the responsibility that had been placed on her young shoulders, Jane came to delight in her new importance.

By the time Mr. Garwick returned from his round of rent collecting, Jane’s face was flushed, her over-neat hair rather tousled here and there. Altogether she looked like a different girl.

“Well, how did you get along?” asked her employer, with a smile. “Many people been here? How about ’phone messages?”

Jane showed him her neat memorandum list of telephone calls and the notes she had made of personal calls.

“Here they all are,” she said, and added anxiously: “I do hope they are all right!”

Contrary to Mr. Garwick’s expectations, founded on rather long experience of new clerks, they were.

He called up his various clients and verified Jane’s report on them. Then he smiled at her.

“I see we are going to get along, young lady,” he said. “You have done a good day’s work!”

Jane was happier than she had ever been in her life as she sat beside Billy that evening in the moving picture house and watched the impossibly handsome hero of the picture go through impossibly heroic “stunts” on the screen.

“I’m going to love the work, Billy,” she said, in response to the latter’s sympathetic questions. “Mr. Garwick said some mighty nice things to me to-day, and if I don’t make him like me and my work lots better in the next few weeks, it won’t be because I haven’t tried!”

Later she attempted to get Billy to talk about his inventions. But the youth was unexpectedly gruff and taciturn when the subject was broached and Jane soon dropped it.

“He’s discouraged—poor Billy!” she thought, and became even more set in her determination to help him if such a thing were possible.

So matters went on for about a week.

Jane became so different from the quiet mouse-like girl she had been that those who knew her best marveled.

She got up in the morning with a song on her lips. She fairly danced through her dressing, the tidying of her own room, and breakfast. She was all smiles and sunny good humor to Mr. and Mrs. Powell, insisted on helping the latter with the dishes before she ran off to work, prophesying the most optimistic things about Mr. Powell’s injured hands and the probability of his soon finding work again, and generally acting like a streak of sunshine in the house.

Also, responsibility was changing her quickly from the child she had always been, younger in seeming than her years, to a young woman.

“We thought we were doing Jane a kindness to take her in and give her a home when Sarah Cross died,” Mrs. Powell said to her husband one morning after Jane had run off, throwing a kiss to them as she turned the corner on her way to work. “If we did, we’ve surely been paid for it. What would we do now without that girl I’d like to know, since we’ve had such bad luck?”

“She’s one in a thousand,” Mr. Powell agreed. “And if we weather this hard period, it’ll be because of her.”

By this time Jane and Mr. Garwick were firm friends. The girl was so careful, so painstaking, so eager to learn, and, withal, so clever that the genial realtor began to feel that he had found a treasure. Her pay was raised to fifteen dollars a week.

For one so young, Jane picked up the rudiments of the business in a surprisingly short time, and she handled clients or prospective clients with a tact and ease that surprised her employer.

She was eager to learn details concerning the property handled by the Garwick Agency, and several times went out to inspect various tracts or blocks of buildings after working hours simply because she was interested in the business and wanted to find out all she could about it. First, second, and purchase mortgages became of fascinating interest to her, and she pored over papers and contracts until her employer laughingly declared she would ruin her eyes and would perhaps have to wear a pair of those great horn-rimmed spectacles that made a young person look like an owl.

Then one morning Mr. Garwick had news for her.

“We’ve got a new house to list,” he says, glancing at her oddly. “The kind of house this agency hasn’t handled for a long while.”

The very word “house” was enough to rouse Jane’s interest. She looked her question.

“It’s the very finest of all the places on Rose Hill,” said Mr. Garwick. “Clyde Browning’s house.”

“Oh!” The exclamation came from between Jane’s lips. “Then—oh, why does he wish to sell his house?”

“I guess it isn’t a case of wish,” said Mr. Garwick, and Jane could see that he was genuinely sorry. “It’s a case, I take it, of stark necessity. He has to sell.”

“Then it’s true,” Jane said slowly. “It’s true what I’ve heard people say—that Mr. Browning has lost all his money?”

“I don’t know much about all of it,” said Mr. Garwick, tapping thoughtfully with his pencil on the edge of his desk. “I imagine he must have some left. But not nearly enough to keep up that big house on the hill with its servants and motor cars. It will be quite a come down for Browning, and I’m sorry. He’s always been a good fellow and a mighty popular one in town. Every one likes him—and pities him.”

“Because he’s lost his money?” Jane asked.

“That, of course.” Mr. Garwick nodded, but his face darkened as he added: “What Browning is to be most pitied for are those two selfish extravagant women of his. They’ll do nothing to help him through this crisis, you can bank on that.”

Jane was silent for a moment. She was thinking of Betty Browning—of the pretty, petulant face, the disdainful, almost rude manner of the girl who had lived in the finest house on Rose Hill.

Jane had no reason to love Betty Browning. Yet, being Jane, she took no pleasure in the contemplation of the downfall of the pretty, spoiled girl. She felt only how hard it would be for a person like that to meet poverty and accustom herself to it.

She said something of this to Mr. Garwick, and he looked at her curiously.

“I wouldn’t waste any pity on conceited doll-faced Betty Browning,” he said, with a grimace of distaste. “From the airs that girl puts on, any one might think she owned Greenville. No, I’m not in the least sorry for her or for that extravagant selfish mother of hers. I’m thinking of Browning, and I tell you I wouldn’t be in that fellow’s shoes just now for a million dollars!”

Outside of business hours Jane thought of little else that day and for many days to follow.

The beautiful house on Rose Hill to be sold! Betty Browning no longer able to lord it over the small town like a royal princess! What would she do?

Meanwhile, that was the very thing that Betty Browning was wondering, pretty Betty in the big house on Rose Hill.

Since that nightmare night of the fire at Martin and Hull’s when her world had threatened to topple about her feet, Betty had lived in a daze of unreality.

At first she hoped that her father would tell her it had all been a big mistake—that his investments had turned out well in spite of his fears, and that the horror of financial ruin was farther off than it had ever been.

But this Mr. Browning failed to do. He kept silence, going about his business with a grim face and set lips that told nothing. Betty watched him covertly and wondered how her mother could be so blind to the tragedy in his every look and gesture.

Mrs. Browning conducted herself to all intents and purposes as though the revealing conversation of that awful night had not been. The only sacrifice she made was to relinquish thought of the black gown that had caught her fancy.

Then one day, the final blow fell.

A maid knocked on Betty’s door while the girl was dressing to go out to a tea at one of the neighboring houses on Rose Hill.

Betty looked very lovely in a dress the color of a summer sky.

She turned to the maid and said curtly:

“Well, Nanette?”

“Mr. Browning is in the library,” said Nanette, with a curious stare at her pretty mistress. “He says, will you please come down at once.”

CHAPTER XVII BETTY MAKES HER CHOICE

Nothing unusual nor very alarming in this summons, thought Betty, as she turned for a final look at her pretty reflection in the glass.

Her father often called her into the library when he had anything special to speak to her about. The summons usually meant a row about her allowance, she thought, with a suggestion of a pout on her pretty mouth.

What if she did sometimes spend a month’s allowance in a week? Were they not the owners of the best house, the best cars, the most expensive clothes in Greenville? Did they not employ the highest-waged servants? Surely they had a position to keep up!

How like your mother, Betty! Mr. Browning would have said, and smiled could he have read his daughter’s thoughts just then, but it would not have been a happy smile!

One more fluffing up of the fair hair and with an added droop of discontent on her pretty mouth Betty turned toward the door.

Halfway there a thoughtful look came into her eyes.

This summons might mean more than the ordinary bi-monthly “row,” which Betty almost invariably won, having her mother on her side.

Perhaps her father meant to break his silence concerning his involved affairs. Perhaps the time had come——

She did not complete the thought, but hurried toward the stairway, vague panic in her heart.

There was the sound of voices in the library, her mother’s petulant but controlled, her father’s, a gruff undertone.

As Betty descended the stairs silence fell, and the girl read something dreadful into that silence.

She knocked at the closed door of the library and her father called a brief, “Come in.”

Betty stood just within the doorway and looked upon the scene with widening eyes.

It was a luxurious room, this library in the finest house on Rose Hill.

There was a big open fireplace where, in the winter, burning logs blazed cheerily. The floor was brightly polished and animal skins were scattered in an effect of careless beauty over its polished surface.

A davenport was drawn up before the fireplace, and this, heaped with cushions, backed up against a long slender table that bore a lamp of exquisite design and workmanship.

Books there were lining three sides of the room, well-thumbed books that looked as if they had been well read by at least one member of the family.

Easy chairs were scattered about, and the whole room bore an air of homeliness not characteristic of the rest of the house.

This was Mr. Browning’s room. He had insisted that one place in the house that had been built with his money should be furnished according to his taste. He loved books, and so had chosen the library as his room.

In one of the big easy chairs reposed Mrs. Browning—though Betty thought at the moment that the expression on her mother’s face was anything but reposeful. But since it was Mrs. Browning’s private boast that nothing could disturb her self-control or poise, she reclined gracefully now, even in face of the truly devastating shock just dealt her by her husband.

Mrs. Browning’s face was sullen and angry and as her daughter entered the room she turned away so that only her profile was visible.

Mr. Browning had evidently been striding up and down the room.

He paused as Betty came in and motioned her to a seat.

“I’ll keep you but a few moments,” he said in a curiously hard, dry voice. “I thought you ought to know this, Betty, and, since your mother desired me to tell you, now is as good a time as any.”

Betty sat down on the edge of a chair while her father resumed his restless pacing up and down, up and down, the room.

What was he about to say? What could that look on his face mean?

For several moments her father did not speak, and the room was tense with suspense. Betty glanced at her mother and saw that the latter was stubbornly looking the other way. A small, exquisitely shod foot was tapping, tapping on the polished floor.

Mr. Browning came and stood before his daughter, his eyes steadily meeting hers.

“The long and short of it is, Betty, I’ve lost practically all my money. That’s the simple truth, and the sooner we all get used to it, the better.”

“Your father can speak of it like that!” Mrs. Browning whirled about and faced her daughter, hand upraised. “To drag us down into poverty—and then to speak of it like that!”

“I—I don’t think I quite understand, dad,” Betty was groping, bewildered. Her eyes had never once left her father’s face. “Shall we be really poor?”

“I’m afraid so, Betty.” The father’s tone had softened; there were deep unhappy lines about his mouth. “We have very little left.”

“We shall have to—leave this house?” Betty passed a hand before her eyes as though to brush aside a curtain that obscured her sight.

“Assuredly.”

Mr. Browning was watching her intently. Even Mrs. Browning’s foot stopped its restless tapping as she watched, with angry attention, the scene between father and daughter.

“And the servants will have to go, I suppose,” said Betty, still groping her way. “And we can’t have either of the cars?”

“Good gracious, Betty! Can’t you understand that your father has ruined us, that he has dragged us down to poverty!”

“Wait!” commanded Mr. Browning, his hand uplifted, his eyes on Betty. “Give the girl a chance. It’s all pretty new—and pretty rotten, eh, Betty?”

“I—I don’t know.”

Betty got up and walked over to the window, the eyes of both her parents following her. She stood for a long time looking out at the beautifully kept grounds that had, for almost as long as she could remember, formed the boundaries of her life and wondered what life would seem like without all the luxurious things to which she had been accustomed.

She had always had money, and so her imagination failed her when she tried to consider life without it.

Still, other people had no money and they seemed to get along. When you lost your money you didn’t just die. You must get along some way.

Behind her she heard her mother recommence her high-pitched, nagging accusations. She listened to them absently, still turning the problem over and over in her own mind, trying to understand.

“You have always been reckless,” she heard her mother say. “You have always taken chances with your money——”

“And those chances made us a fortune,” her father interrupted, in hopeless, dogged tones.

“Yes, and where is it now? I always told you you would lose everything you had if you didn’t stop gambling.”

“Who was it drove me on and on to wilder chances by extravagance, by demands out of all proportion to my income? But this must stop,” he caught himself up harshly. “Recriminations never did help, and they can’t help now. The fact is that we shall have to give up this house at once.”

“Now?” cried his wife, startled from her languid pose. “Why, that’s impossible!”

“At once!” repeated Mr. Browning, as though he had not heard her. “Everything else must go. Our two cars, servants, everything.”

“I never heard such nonsense! Give up both cars? Never!”

“Then what are you going to do, dad?” Betty spoke quietly from the window, startling her parents to attention.

“I am going into business,” said Mr. Browning with a promptness that showed he had thought the thing out long before. “And I am going to start right in this town where I first made my money.”

Mrs. Browning gave a shriek and sank back among the cushions.

“Oh, the disgrace! The disgrace of it!” she moaned. “I shall never be able to hold up my head again!”

“Oh, mother, don’t! Can’t you see how you are worrying dad?”

“Worrying him?” Mrs. Browning looked at her daughter in honest bewilderment. “You can speak of worrying him after what he has done to me—to us! Have you no thought for yourself, if you cannot consider your poor mother?”

“Why,” said Betty, her eyes wandering to the grim, haunted-eyed face of her father, “just then I was thinking of dad!”

Mr. Browning tried to speak, but sank down heavily in a chair near the table, holding his head in his hands.

The drooping of his shoulders, the struggling of emotion she had seen in his lined face before he hid it from her, did something queer to Betty.

She could see with a sudden startling plainness all that her father had passed through during that last week or two, could see that he had faced his trouble all alone, but bravely. There had been no one to care, no one to help him, no one to do anything but blame and reproach him.

Slowly she crossed the room and laid a hand on his broad shoulder.

“It must have been awfully hard, dad. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry—for me, Betty?” Mr. Browning looked up incredulously into the lovely face of his daughter. His fingers reached up until they grasped the slender hand on his shoulder.

“So sorry, dad! Is there anything I can do to help?”

CHAPTER XVIII A DREADFUL DISCOVERY

The look that dawned in her father’s face, Betty Browning was to remember for many a long day. The face that had been so stern and set softened magically.

“So you want to help, do you, Betty? You want to help your old dad?”

Betty nodded, and Mr. Browning got up suddenly and walked to the window.

He stood for a moment, looking, but seeing nothing, then turned and held out his arms.

“Come here, Betty,” he said in a voice that, for all his failure, had a ring of triumph in it. “Come here and get hugged!”

Mrs. Browning could not understand. She was honestly bewildered by Betty’s attitude, by what she called her “desertion.”

“No one sympathizes with me,” she moaned. “No one! The fact that I must give up my home, my servants, my cars, means nothing to any one. Betty, to whom it should mean as much as it means to me, seems to think it will all be a pleasant adventure, losing everything and being as poor as church mice!”

“I don’t expect it to be pleasant,” Betty began patiently, only to have her mother wave her aside with an angry, impatient gesture.

“Oh, don’t speak to me! Don’t talk to me! I know just how it is! Don’t think I can’t understand! You care more for your father than you do for me! You will stand up for him, no matter what he has done!”

“But he hasn’t done anything, purposely,” Betty cried, exasperated, only to have her mother throw up her hands and moan:

“You see? She stands up for her father against everything and everybody—even her poor mother!”

Against this, of course, Betty could do nothing. Nor could Mr. Browning. They gave up trying after a while and left Mrs. Browning to her lamentations, while together, father and daughter, they tried to pick up the pieces of their ruined fortunes in the hope of salvaging something from the wreck.

Meanwhile, Jane was very busy in Mr. Garwick’s office. While she wondered a great deal about unfortunate Mr. Browning and his pretty daughter, she heard nothing further concerning them and so allowed herself to become absorbed in her work.

She saw a great deal of Billy, even though she knew that Greenville talked about her friendship with him and was prone to extend the dark cloud of suspicion that hovered over him to include her also if she flaunted her championship of him too openly.

The Powell front porch became a veritable “parking place” for Billy, as he himself expressed it. While both Mr. and Mrs. Powell liked the young fellow very much and were in their hearts convinced that Billy knew no more of the origin of the Martin and Hull fire than they did themselves, they disliked to see Jane too intimate with him.

Mr. Powell ventured a gentle protest one night, but Jane flamed out right royally in defense of her friend and Mr. Powell retired, defeated, in chuckling admiration of her loyalty.

“She’s true blue, that girl,” he told his wife. “I took a chance for her sake. But I’m glad she didn’t listen to me. I’d have thought the worse of her for it if she had.”

Then came the wonderful day when Mr. Garwick gave Jane her second increase in salary. This gave her twenty dollars a week, and it wafted Jane to the seventh heaven of delight and hopefulness.

Without saying anything to anybody, Jane started a little fund.

“We managed to get along fairly well on my salary before I got the increase,” she told herself, experiencing all the delight of a cheerful conspirator. “It won’t be so very long before I have quite a little sum, and then—oh just wait till I tell Billy!”

After that she worked harder than ever for her employer. Mr. Garwick came more and more to depend upon the quick-witted sensible girl. He even began to discuss little business problems with her that bothered him and was amazed and delighted by her quick grasp of the subject and her clear reasoning.

As a matter of fact, Jane was head over ears in love with the business and welcomed the occasional confidences of Mr. Garwick more eagerly than she would the reading of an adventure story—and Jane loved stories of adventure, especially when there was a spice of mystery in them.

Delighted at the eager interest of his young assistant, Mr. Garwick initiated her more and more into his confidences until there came a day when he admitted to his wife that he scarcely knew who ran the business, himself or Jane!

While she lost herself in her absorbing work, things were happening in the Powell cottage that were to effect Jane’s entire future.

When Mrs. Cross had died in Coal Run, leaving Jane to the kindly Mrs. Powell’s care, there had been a trunk of the girl’s things that were to be used for Jane by Mrs. Powell as the latter saw fit.

The trunk had remained in the Powell’s storeroom from that day, untouched and practically forgotten. Jane, who knew of her mother’s habit of saving practically worthless things, had felt no interest in it. When they moved from Coal Run the trunk had come too, and had been put in the open attic of the new house.

It would in all probability have remained there indefinitely, to be covered with dust and cobwebs and finally forgotten if Mrs. Powell had not been reminded of it by necessity.

Jane must have clothes. That much was certain, but where to get them was the problem.

Mrs. Powell thought that she could do with her old clothes at home, but Jane, as temporary wage-earner of the family, should be well dressed—if such a thing were possible.

Dubiously, Mrs. Powell examined her own wardrobe and Jane’s, only to decide finally that they were hopeless. Everything Jane had, had been changed and made over and dyed so often that they were only fit now for the rag-bag.

“Poor child, she must have some new clothes! But how?”

It was here that Mrs. Powell thought of the old trunk in the attic.

“Just the very thing! Why didn’t I think of it before?”

Mrs. Powell had the key of the trunk somewhere. It took her a considerable time to find it, but finally, armed and triumphant, she ascended to the attic to examine the things left by Mrs. Cross.

There was something almost eerie about the proceeding. The attic seemed very close and dusty, the silence of the empty house oppressive as Mrs. Powell fitted the key in the lock of the trunk and flung back the lid.

The contents lay revealed to her, clothing neatly folded, laid there by the hands of the dead woman.

Mrs. Powell felt a curious reluctance to disturb those things. She wanted suddenly to close the lid of the trunk, lock it, and leave the trunk, contents and all, to the accumulative cobwebs and dust of the attic.

“Nonsense!” she scolded, ashamed of her mood. “The things belong to Jane, they were to be used for her. Don’t be such a fool, Lou Powell!”

She took out layer after layer of faded, worn dresses, things that had been carefully laid away by a careful woman as having some possible use in time to come.

“Nothing for Jane here,” Mrs. Powell muttered, disappointed. “The clothes she has now are better than these old things. Hello—what’s this?”

“This” was a carefully folded piece of dark blue serge.

Here was a discovery! Enough for a new dress for Jane, probably.

Mrs. Powell shook it out eagerly, and to her amazement a large white envelope fell from the folds of it.

She picked up the envelope curiously and examined the words that were scrawled across it in pencil.

“To be read by Jane’s guardian and the contents to be disclosed to Jane, should the guardian see fit.

“Sarah Cross.”

Mrs. Powell stared at the envelope for a long time, her brow wrinkled with bewilderment. Then, suddenly making up her mind, she tore open the flap of the envelope and drew forth a folded slip of paper.

Whatever the message of the dead woman, it disturbed Mrs. Powell profoundly.

She read and re-read the words on the paper, the frown on her face growing, the look of pain in her eyes deepening.

“My poor Jane! My poor, dear, loyal little Jane. Oh, this is dreadful, dreadful!” she moaned.

She sat there on the floor of the attic, the bit of paper in her hand, until the lengthening shadows warned her that the afternoon was almost gone.

She roused herself then and, with a deep sigh, she thrust the paper back into the envelope.

“Awful, awful! What shall I do?”

Automatically she replaced the faded dresses in the trunk, keeping out only the piece of dark serge that was to make Jane the much-needed new dress.

Then she rose wearily and stumbled down the steep steps of the attic.

She went into Jane’s room, that little barrack of a room with the one window where the sun seldom penetrated. Slowly Mrs. Powell looked about the room. In spite of its bareness, it was neat, clean, cheerful—like Jane herself.

“Dear child! I can’t tell her! I won’t tell her! Why, it would break her heart!”

CHAPTER XIX A CHANGE OF EMPLOYERS

All unconscious that anything unusual had happened, Jane came home that night, beaming with happiness.

“Everything is going so beautifully at the office,” she told her kind friend, and added, as she took off her hat and put on her apron preparatory to helping with the dinner:

“What do you think? Pretty Betty Browning’s house has been sold!”

Mrs. Powell put down the potato masher and looked at Jane thoughtfully.

“Is that so? Who bought it?” she asked.

“A man named Ridgeway. I understand from Mr. Garwick that he is a business acquaintance of Mr. Browning’s. Anyway,” with a smile, “he seemed to have plenty of money. And I guess he had to have, to be able to buy the Browning place. He paid a big price for it, I can tell you.”

“H’m!” Mrs. Powell was thoughtful for some time. Then she said slowly: “I wonder what the Browning family will do now.”

“I don’t know.” Jane took off the cover of the teapot to see if she had filled it too full, found she had, and poured out some of the amber-colored liquid. “They may take a small house in town, I suppose.”

Mrs. Powell gave a short, scornful laugh.

“I can’t imagine Mrs. Browning being content to live in a small house anywhere,” she said. “And from all I can hear, that daughter of hers is just like her. I feel sorry for poor Mr. Browning, I tell you!”

In spite of the fact that she tried to keep up a cheerful conversation, Jane could see that Mrs. Powell was worried about something and several times tried to draw her around to the subject.

But Mrs. Powell insisted there was nothing at all the matter—except perhaps with Jane’s imagination!

“How can I tell you what’s troubling me, Jane Cross, when there isn’t a thing?” she cried at last in simulated exasperation.

Faced with this unanswerable query, Jane was silenced, but unconvinced. Mrs. Powell found the girl looking thoughtfully at her several times that evening and realized that she must guard her secret very carefully if she was to guard it at all!

After that several days passed uneventfully—though they were always eventful enough for Jane, absorbed as she was in the fascination of her work. The only cloud on the girl’s horizon at this time was Billy.

The young man was downhearted and morose much of the time. When he was out with her his attempts at cheerfulness were pathetic. He would not talk about his inventions, and Jane was afraid that he had become definitely discouraged.

She thought wistfully of the little pile of money growing in her bureau drawer. It grew so slowly and Billy’s need was so great! If she could only think of a way to make a big sum of money all at once!

Poor Jane! How many people before her had felt that way and been just as hopeless as she of attaining their heart’s desire!

Jane was bitter against the people of Greenville for treating Billy so. Why could not some one with money see the real worth of his inventions as she did and believe in him enough to back him and give him his chance? If she could only prove him innocent of any connection with the Martin and Hull fire some one might give him that chance. But in this she was powerless, too.

Then one day Mr. Garwick brought startling news to her.

Jane had barely entered the office and taken off her hat when he announced it.

“I’m going to sell out, Jane,” he said, holding her with his twinkling gaze. “You are going to have a new boss.”

Jane stared at him for a moment, thinking he must be joking.

“A new boss!” she repeated dazedly. “Why, I don’t understand!”

“I’ve sold out the business,” Mr. Garwick repeated, enjoying her mystification. “I’ve sold out to Clyde Browning!”

Jane sat down hard in a chair. If Mr. Garwick had told her the world was coming to an end she could not have been much more surprised, nor startled.

“But why? I don’t understand!” she cried.

“Well, now, I’ll tell you.” Mr. Garwick put the tips of his fingers together as he always did when about to launch into an explanation of some importance. “I’m getting old, Jane——”

“Old!” cried Jane impulsively. “Oh, you’re not!”

Mr. Garwick pretended to smile at this, but he was pleased just the same.

“You are a flatterer, young woman, but we’ll let that pass. Even if I’m not old, I often feel old and pretty tired. I want to rest a little, travel, and see something of the world; in other words get a little good out of the money I’ve been piling up all these years. Do you see?”

“Why, yes—but I—oh, I’m sorry! We—I—I was so happy working for you, Mr. Garwick!”

Mr. Garwick was touched by her sincerity. He patted her hand in fatherly fashion and smiled on her with genuine affection.

“Well, there, Jane, I’m glad you’ve been happy in your work and that I’ve been able to make things pleasant for you. But this won’t be a question at all of your losing your position, you know.”

Jane looked at him questioningly.

“Why, I don’t know what you mean?” she said slowly. “Do you think that after Mr. Browning has taken over the business he’ll want me here?”

“I’m quite sure of it—especially when I tell your new boss that he has a chance of getting the best go-getter in the business. That’s what I’m going to tell him, Jane. And furthermore,” he paused and regarded her with twinkling eyes, “I don’t know but what I’ll make that a provision of the sale. Take Jane Cross, too, or nothing!”

Jane laughed, unsteadily.

“You’re awfully kind,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t know how to thank you for all your kindness, but—it won’t seem the same at all!”

She met Billy on the way home from work that evening and talked it over with him.

“I wouldn’t let it worry me much,” said the latter reassuringly. “Mr. Garwick meant what he said about recommending you to Mr. Browning. He’s a mighty good sort, Jane, and I’ve not a bit of doubt that after he gets through talking, Mr. Browning will be only too glad to get you.”

“Mr. Garwick is awfully good,” said Jane thoughtfully, her eyes on the street ahead. “And from what I’ve seen and heard of Mr. Browning, he’s a mighty nice man, too. I might be able to keep my position there if it wasn’t for——”

She paused, and Billy looked at her curiously.

“I bet you’re thinking of Betty Browning,” he said after a minute. Then he added: “Don’t worry, Jane. Pretty Betty isn’t going to stick her curly head into old dad’s office. I heard some people in the store to-day say that Mrs. Browning has already gone to some relatives out of town, and I’ve no doubt our lovely Betty will soon follow. Soft, rich folks like those, Jane, don’t show up very well when they have to come up against a few of the hard knocks of life,” he philosophized, kicking a stone out of the way and watching it intently as it went spinning over and over in the roadway. “They don’t know how to take ’em—the hard knocks, that is—and their first instinct is to get as far from the scene of disaster as possible. Oh, no, Betty’ll be flying to those rich relatives of hers, don’t you worry, and she won’t even know that there is such a person as Jane Cross in her dad’s office.”

“They’ve sold their house, Billy. Do you know where they are going to live? Oh, yes, I remember! Mr. Garwick said they were making a deal for that empty cottage on Maple Street where the Devoes used to live.”

Billy whistled softly.

“Quite a change from Rose Hill!” he said. “Poor old Browning! I sure pity him!”

Jane was very thoughtful for the rest of that evening and for the next few days—the time that had necessarily to elapse before the final consummation of the deal between Mr. Garwick and Clyde Browning.

Jane hoped that Billy had been right about Betty, but she was not by any means sure.

Then one day her employer and Mr. Browning came into the office, laughing and joking in friendly fashion.

“Browning,” said Mr. Garwick, turning to Jane with his pleasant, twinkling smile, “this is the young lady I’ve been telling you about and whose services you can’t afford to lose. Miss Cross—Mr. Browning!”

CHAPTER XX BETTY COMES THROUGH

Apparently Jane was very much at ease as she gave her hand to Mr. Browning and smiled at him. In reality she was only a frightened girl wondering what would happen next.

But Mr. Browning was very nice, very courteous and pleasant, and before they had been in conversation five minutes Jane felt that they would get along together and that the change she had so dreaded was not going to be so dreadful after all.

For the rest of that day Jane remained in almost complete charge of the office while her old employer and new went over details of the business together.

Mr. Garwick was very nice, often referring to her and asking her for certain details that he knew she had right at her tongue’s end.

Jane felt that he was doing this to impress Mr. Browning with her worth, and she appreciated and in her heart thanked him for it even while tears of regret rose often to her eyes at thought of severing the old connection.

The day was over at last. Mr. Garwick slapped down a huge sheaf of papers on the desk and rose to his feet. He held out a hand to Mr. Browning.

Jane watched them, her heart beating rapidly, knowing that the moment of parting had come.

“Well, I’ve done all I can for you, Browning,” Mr. Garwick said, as the two men shook hands heartily. “If there’s anything you want to know about, you know where you can get in touch with me at a moment’s notice. Although,” and here he turned to Jane, “I’m quite sure you will find I am leaving you a veritable dictionary of information in the person of Miss Cross here. Call on her for anything, Browning, and if you’re ever disappointed in her, then my name’s not John Garwick!”

Feeling embarrassed but very grateful to her old employer, Jane found herself shaking hands with him and saying with a little catch behind the words:

“Thank you for—everything, Mr. Garwick. I wish you the best luck in the world!”

There was a pleasant response, and then the door closed behind John Garwick and Jane was left alone with her new employer.

“Well, Miss Cross,” Mr. Browning was speaking and Jane liked the way he included her in his sweeping gesture about the office, “we seem to have been left in possession of the field. We’ve done about enough work for one day, I should think. Suppose we close the office and start fresh again to-morrow morning?”

Jane gave him a smile that said she would be perfectly willing, and went for her hat. She put it on and went toward the door. Mr. Browning rose and came over to her, holding out his hand.

“Mr. Garwick has given me a most excellent recommendation of you,” he said. Jane thought how handsome he was but how tired he looked with those deep lines about the corners of his mouth. “I am convinced that I could not have a worthier helper than Miss Jane Cross. I hope you will find things just as pleasant here as you did under Mr. Garwick’s regime.”

Jane thanked him and went out. She was very thoughtful all the way home.

“I like him—and I’m very sorry for him,” she told herself, remembering the lines of suffering in the face of her new employer. “What a shame that his wife and daughter can’t stand by him now! I’d like to go to that Betty Browning and give her a piece of my mind!”

Meanwhile, the subject of Jane’s rather strenuous reflections was living through a period in her life that seemed to the former rich girl as bewildering and tantalizing as a dream.

Her solid world had been knocked from beneath her feet. Everything was new, unreal. The only solid fact of her existence was her father, and to him she clung with a desperation that soon ripened into a beautiful affection.

“I never knew dad before,” she told herself, wondering. “He seemed always to be there, but I just never—thought about him!”

That had been the fault of her up-bringing, though Betty did not realize it. Brought close to the hard facts of existence, she could see her father as an individual, not merely the holder of the money-bags to whom one went when the allowance ran short and a new dress seemed an absolute necessity.

Viewed as an individual, Betty found her father very interesting and, more than anything else, lovable. He responded to her new personal dependence upon him in a wonderful way, and Betty began to wonder vaguely if, in losing everything she had heretofore regarded as necessary to her very existence, she had not found something far more precious and desirable in the new relationship between herself and her father.

The parting with her mother was a wrench—a bad one. Betty loved her mother despite the fact that she was bewildered by the selfish indifference with which she treated the man who had suffered so much.

Mrs. Browning’s father had evidently known his daughter, and he had left her the little he had to leave in the form of an annuity. It was a meager income according to Mrs. Browning’s standards, but at least it would not leave her a penniless dependent on her relatives, to whom she now went for the sake of the ease and luxury of their homes and to escape the narrow life her husband could give her in the little cottage.

“You don’t think of dad at all, mother,” Betty protested the day before Mrs. Browning was to leave Greenville for an indefinite stay with her relatives. “Don’t you suppose he is having a bad time, at all?”

“He deserves it,” Mrs. Browning snapped back at her. “He has been criminally careless, and he deserves everything he gets! In a case like this it’s the innocent family that suffers every time.”

“I don’t know as we have been so innocent,” said Betty slowly.

Her mother whirled about and stared at her for all the world, thought Betty, as though she were looking at a stranger. And so she was, for Mrs. Browning, who thought she knew her daughter so well, was looking at this Betty for the first time.

“Not innocent! What do you mean, Elizabeth?”

Betty turned and met her mother’s cold glance steadily.

“Well, we have gone on spending money just the same, haven’t we?” said the girl. “Even when dad said we were too extravagant and asked us to be careful, we never tried to help him. I am only trying to say,” she added, seeing that her mother’s stony gaze never wavered from her, “that perhaps dad isn’t altogether to blame for—what happened.”

“This is your father’s work,” said Mrs. Browning angrily. “He has turned you against me!”

“Oh, never!” cried Betty. “He has never said a word!”

“Silence!” Mrs. Browning held up a white, jeweled hand—she had refused to part with any of her jewels. “I’ll not listen to another word. If you prefer your father to me, Elizabeth, you are free to make your choice. Stay here with him—and may you enjoy the experience more than I think you will!”

That was the first wrench. The second came with the actual selling and vacating of their house.

That was hard, for pretty Betty had loved her home, and the thought of moving into strange quarters, poor ones, filled her with terror.

She shrank from the solicitude of her friends. Some of them, to whom the social leadership of the Brownings had always been a thorn in the flesh, gloated almost openly. Others pretended sympathy and patronizingly gave Betty to understand that a mere loss of fortune need make no difference in their relations.

But it scarcely mattered which group they belonged to, for Betty was to realize with an aching sense of loss that among all her so-called friends there was not one—not one!—who had an actual claim to that term! She began to realize dimly that just as she had failed to think of her father, so she had failed, by her selfishness, to make true and lasting friends.

She came to long only for the time when she and her father might be alone together in whatever place he might choose for them. There would be some privacy at least, a place where they could shut the door against the cruel curiosity of their “friends.”

Again her father was the only solid, real, unchanging thing on her horizon.

Despite his absorption in the winding up of his affairs and preparation for a new start in business, he watched her closely with those understanding eyes of his and seemed ever at her side when she needed comfort.

There was that time after Gladys Vane had been to call and had left Betty wincing beneath the venomous thrusts of her poisonous tongue.

Mr. Browning came in as Gladys went out. He made straight for the library and found Betty crouched in one of the big chairs, staring unseeingly before her.

“Never mind, Betty,” her father said and touched her cheek gently as he sat on the arm of her chair. “The life we’re going to, you and I, may not be as glittery as the one we’re leaving but it’s a lot more real. You will make real friends from now on, Betty girl, friends that are worthy of the name.”

“Well,” said Betty bravely as she cuddled her cheek against his hand, “I’ve got one mighty good friend, already! Daddy,” she added after a pause, “I don’t see quite how it was, but I guess it was in part my fault. I wasn’t always nice to the girls, and if we don’t give friendship I suppose we don’t get it—not the real kind.”

Then there was the day when they were to move into their “new quarters” as Mr. Browning always called the cottage he had rented for himself and Betty.

Betty had never seen it—she could not bring herself to speak of it even to her father.

No one ever learned how she had pictured the place in her mind, nor just what kind of life she thought she was to be called upon to endure, now that they were poor.

Her mother had so harped upon their poverty and pictured the horrors of it so vividly that it was not at all strange if, in trying to picture it to herself, Betty beheld in her mind the ugly vision of the tenements across the railroad where herded a drifting, lazy class of occasional workers and sometimes beggars of Greenville with their slipshod families.

However that may be, when the day of her actual parting with the old life arrived Betty found herself in sore need of comfort.

She was standing by the window in her own sitting room, watching for the van that was to take a few—a very few—of their belongings to the new home, when she heard her father’s quick step in the hall.

Betty felt her father’s hands on her shoulders, turning her about so that she must face him. There were telltale tears in her eyes, but she smiled, hoping that he would not notice them.

He did notice them, as he noticed everything about her now. The lines about his eyes and mouth deepened and he looked very tired, almost old.

“The van will be here in a few minutes, Betty,” he said. “And before it comes, I want to tell you a few things about our new home—I want to prepare you.”

“It’s coming!” thought Betty. She braced her shoulders for the shock, but even then did not forget to smile. How tired he looked, how weary and discouraged. She would not make things harder for him!

“It’s very different from this; but it’s not so bad, Betty. It’s a little cottage set well back from the street, and it has five rooms in it that could be made into a home—if anybody cared—” His voice broke but he went on quickly. “It has a pleasant kitchen and a nice porch with neglected roses that might be coaxed into blooming sometime—perhaps next spring. It isn’t so bad, Bettykin. We might be pretty happy there——”

Looking into his pleading, tired eyes, Betty forgot herself, forgot everything but that he was appealing to her for hope and comfort and that she must not fail him.

“Why, then, daddy,” she said, putting her arms about him, “I’ll make a home for you. We’ll make it together. And, daddy dear, I do love roses!”

If Betty had wanted any reward she got it in the strength of his arms about her and his muffled cry.

“Betty, I knew you had it in you—you good little sport!”

CHAPTER XXI THE NEW HOME

That was the beginning of a happier time for Betty Browning.

After having imagined such terrible things about her new home, she found the reality strangely unappalling.

The cottage, set well back from the street, was not pretentious, certainly, but neither was it unbeautiful. It had a good-natured, flat, comfortable look like a fat, jolly, woman who needs only a white apron to make her perfect.

A coat of paint—white paint—thought Betty, would work wonders.

Inside the rooms were pleasant. Bare at first, of course, but the distribution of the furniture brought from the house on Rose Hill soon remedied that.

Betty took a curious delight in putting the new home to rights. If any one had told her two months before that she would actually enjoy swathing herself in an unbecoming gingham apron and doing tasks that then the more superior of her mother’s servants would have scorned, she would have laughed at the joker.

But she did enjoy these things now, not so much for the sake of the tasks themselves as in her anticipation of the smile on her father’s tired face when, in triumph, she brought him in to exclaim over some further proof of her unsuspected housewifely talents.

He never failed to exclaim and, even on the occasions when the roast was overdone or the biscuits underdone, ate on manfully under Betty’s half-proud, half-fearful eye. In thinking of it afterward, Betty was convinced that he would have died of indigestion if need be, rather than disappoint her in the slightest thing!

There were disappointments, of course, and mistakes, some of them ludicrous and some of them almost tragic. But, in all, it was a happy time in which Betty and her father grew very close together and the cottage became a real home.

Meanwhile, time was passing swiftly. Late summer merged into fall, fall into early winter.

As Betty was Mr. Browning’s “right-hand man” at home, so Jane had become his “right-hand man” at the office.

Mrs. Powell had made up the dark blue serge she had found in the trunk—not without many unhappy thoughts of the secret she had discovered there at the same time.

Jane needed a coat, but she would have to wait for that. Meanwhile, the old one, carefully brushed and mended in a place or two where its shabbiness was most glaringly apparent, would have to do.

Mr. Powell’s hands were well at last, and, though he would always be dreadfully scarred and the left hand would always be a trifle stiff, he was able to look for work again.

The business of Martin and Hull had never been reopened. The two old men, without the heart to start again in the business fight, had pocketed their losses and were living in comparative obscurity on the outskirts of the town.

No chance for Mr. Powell there. But there must be other places in town where his services would be needed. With his usual optimism, Mr. Powell started on the dreary round of job hunting.

Mrs. Powell tried to be hopeful, too. With another wage earner in the family to lift the burden from Jane’s shoulders, the girl could have the clothes she needed.

Poor child! What if she could guess that secret hidden in the trunk upstairs! With all her heart, Mrs. Powell prayed that Jane might never know it!

In time the day came when Betty made her first visit to her father’s place of business.

In the talks between father and daughter, business news had crept in, too. Mr. Browning had mentioned Jane’s name occasionally, and Betty had become faintly jealous of this assistant of whom her father spoke in such glowing terms.

Betty longed to know this person, and finally decided that there was no reason why she should not.

It was on a dazzlingly bright day when the nippy tang of fall had given place to more bitter winter weather that Betty finally decided to visit her father’s office.

Her beautiful clothes and personal jewelry Betty had brought with her from the old life. She had found very little use for them since she had become her father’s housekeeper.

Now she took the clothes from her closet almost with a feeling of wonder that she had ever worn those things as a matter-of-course. She selected a beautiful jade-green dress that set off her brilliant fairness to perfection. Then she found the prettiest pair of black suede slippers she had and cobweb thin silk stockings.

She got out her squirrel coat with the silver fox collar. It was a beautiful thing, that coat. Betty thought of the many times she had worn it with her mother, and her heart was sore.

Betty wanted her mother more than she confessed, and many nights she could not sleep for wondering if that mother would ever come to her. There was dad. He needed her, too. Was he to be separated from his wife forever?

On these points Mrs. Browning herself did not enlighten Betty. She wrote often, but her letters were one long reproach to her daughter and the girl received little comfort from them.

That her father had letters too, Betty knew. They often came in the morning mail and Betty put them beside her father’s plate at dinner time, hoping that he would read them then and perhaps tell her something that was in them.

But this her father never did, and when his long silence on the subject of her mother continued Betty began to fear that the separation between the two people she loved best in the world was indeed final and that she would have to choose definitely between them in the end.

Now she fingered the squirrel coat caressingly, thinking of her mother, and at last put it on and pulled a small velvet hat of the same shade as the coat down tight over her ears.

The close-fitting hat hid all but a few distracting tendrils of golden hair. Betty arranged these in a still more becoming fluff about her face and regarded her reflection approvingly.

She was certainly as pretty a girl as one would see in a long winter’s walk, and, to do Betty justice, she knew it.

With a high heart she left the modest little cottage looking like the daughter of a millionaire, and walked downtown. People turned to stare at her as she went, and those who knew her wondered if Clyde Browning had got his money back or made another fortune.

“Certainly, pretty Betty looks like ready money!” observed one admiring youth.

Betty paused before the real estate office upon whose window her father’s name was emblazoned in large gold letters. It seemed a modest place to the girl, and there was resentment in her heart at the thought that her father must work there.

With a toss of her head and a discontented droop to her mouth, Betty turned the knob of the door and entered the office.

CHAPTER XXII BETTY IS JEALOUS

Betty was about to call out a greeting to her father when something stopped her. That something was the sight of her father bending over a desk and smiling into the delighted eyes of—“that girl!”

For in the flash of a second Betty recognized in her father’s assistant that awfully plain girl who was always stumbling against people and knocking bundles out of their hands!

She was not so awfully plain now, though, thought Betty, and was suddenly conscious of a keen stab of jealousy.

“What right has that girl to look at my dad like that!” her jealousy whispered.

As a matter of fact, neither Jane nor Mr. Browning was aware of Betty’s presence at the moment. In fact, Jane was living through one of the most wonderful moments of her life.

Just a short time before Mr. Browning had said with that nice look in his tired eyes:

“I believe you know almost more of the business than I do, Miss Cross. You are a born realtor. You are so full of enthusiasm that you communicate it to our customers. I’ve kept tabs on you, young lady, and I know that you have brought actual business into this office, and that that business is computed in terms of gratifying profit on our books. We are doing well—better than I dared to hope. Now, under the circumstances, what do you think I ought to do about it?”

Jane, who had flushed beneath her employer’s commendation, smiled demurely at this.

“I really—don’t know,” she said, and tried not to look as pleased and proud as she felt.

“Well then, I’ll tell you.”

It was at this point that Mr. Browning rose and went over to her desk—yes, Jane had risen to the dignity of a desk of her own by this time—and it was at this point also that Betty chanced to come into the office.

“The first thing I’m going to do,” Betty heard her father’s pleasant voice say, “is to raise your salary five dollars a week.”

“Mr. Browning, that—that’s marvelous!” There was a choke of sheer joy in Jane’s voice.

But Mr. Browning raised a hand and smiled.

“But that isn’t all,” he said. “I’ve noticed, too, that you have a knack in handling people, of getting a lot out of them without letting them guess it. I don’t know whether you’ve guessed what a valuable asset that is in the real estate business, but it is extremely valuable just the same—especially when it comes to a question of collecting rents.”

Jane sat very still and looked at him.

Betty stood very still and looked at him, too. Probably that is the reason Mr. Browning and Jane remained unaware of her presence.

“How would you like to have a rent route to collect?” asked Jane’s employer, smiling at her just as calmly as if he were not paying her the greatest compliment in his power. “That will mean a small percentage on all the rents you collect—just a little encouragement for you to use all your tact on those slippery customers who invariably run and hide the moment a rent-collector shows his—or her—nose about the corner. Come now—what do you say?”

Jane drew a long breath.

“Say!” she repeated. “What can I say except that you are giving me the chance of a lifetime, and I—when shall I start?”

Mr. Browning laughed and broke the tension.

Betty started forward from her place beside the door.

“Dad!” she cried.

Mr. Browning wheeled about and his face lit up with pleasure at the unexpected visit.

Jane, who had flushed a bright red upon recognizing Betty, busied herself absorbedly with the papers on her desk.

But after his first greeting of his daughter, Mr. Browning showed no intention of leaving Jane out of things. He drew Betty, the latter reluctant but not quite liking to protest, over to Jane’s desk and introduced the two girls.

There was the barest conventional murmur from Jane accompanied by a steady look at Betty that showed her on the defensive. From Betty a condescending nod and a frigid, “Charmed, I’m sure!” that etched a line between her father’s brows.

Then Betty promptly and pointedly ignored the plain girl. It was time, she thought, to teach that girl a lesson, to put her in her place! So Betty perched herself like a charming butterfly on the edge of her father’s desk and chatted merrily.

She found her father disappointing. He did not play up to her mood. After his first pleased greeting of her he became moody and distrait and did not seem to hear half of what she said.

When Betty taxed him with this a little pettishly he looked up at her and smiled, the old patient, tired look in his eyes.

“You’ll have to bear with me, my dear,” he said. “It’s been a very busy day and there is still a great deal to do before I can relax. Just a moment, daughter.”

He swung about in his chair and his glance fell on Jane. The girl met his look, smiled and half rose.

“Do you want me to see Mr. Bleeker now and arrange for his lease?” she asked, in her clear bright voice.

“If you please.” Another sharp pang of jealousy stabbed Betty as she saw how the tired look left her father’s eyes as he spoke to this other girl, how his shoulders straightened and the years seemed to fall from him.

“And while you’re out, Miss Cross, you might just scout about a bit and get used to your rent route. You won’t be able to do much to-day—in the way of collecting rents I mean—although you might try your hand at it if you like. Here, I’ll give you that list of addresses——”

“But Mrs. Buell, who was coming in to-day to arrange terms for the Haddock house——”

“Don’t worry.” Mr. Browning smiled teasingly at Jane, thought Betty, as her small foot in the pretty suede slipper tapped the floor. There was an air of comradery, of perfect understanding, between these two that puzzled Betty as much as it angered her.

“I’ll take care of Mrs. Buell; though I admit I probably shan’t be able to handle her as well as you. Still, I’ll do my best! Meanwhile, here’s the list of the tenements you will have to visit. I’m afraid you won’t find it the finest or most exclusive neighborhood in Greenville.”

So, on and on, with their heads close together while Betty must sit in idleness and simulated patience while that plain Jane Cross monopolized her father!

There—it was over at last!

Jane slipped into her shabby old coat, crushed the shabby old hat down over her shining hair, and, laughing, thrust the paper of addresses into her pocket.

“I’ll do my best,” she said, in answer to some remark of her employer. “And if I don’t come back with more money than I’m taking away with me, it certainly won’t be my fault!”

“That shouldn’t be hard,” murmured Betty, her head in the air as a draught of cold air advertised Jane’s exit into the street. “From the look of her she couldn’t very well have less money than she has right now.”

Mr. Browning turned his slow, thoughtful gaze upon his daughter. Betty, for some reason she could not understand, became restless and ill-at-ease under the scrutiny.

“Why do you look at me like that, daddy?” she pettishly broke out at last. “Is there anything wrong with my clothes?”

“No,” said Mr. Browning. His eyes were very weary again, a little quizzical. “I was merely thinking, Bettykin, how impossible it would have been for Jane Cross to have made a remark like that one of yours a moment ago.”

“Jane Cross!” Betty jumped to her feet, her hands clenched at her side, her pretty mouth hard with sudden fury. “I suppose that plain-faced, frumpy-looking girl is everything fine and wonderful! I suppose you’d like to have a girl like that for your daughter!”

The eyes of father and daughter met. Betty’s were the first to waver and fall before that encounter.

“Jane Cross is the salt of the earth,” said Mr. Browning quietly. “She is the kind of girl who goes around making the world a better and happier place for the rest of us to live in. If she wears shabby clothes, it is because she loves others a little better than herself. Her clothes make no difference to me, nor to any one else who really knows her. Pretty clothes are a good thing to have, but a heart and courage like Jane’s are a better thing. Think it over, Bettykin—it’s true.”

Betty ran out of the office then with a hand childishly covering her ears as though she could not bear to hear another word.

The unbelievable had happened. She had gone to conquer and had come away conquered! Jane Cross in her shabby clothes with her plain face was strong where she, Betty Browning, was weak. Betty was tasting defeat, and at first it made her bitter.

She got home and walked the floor thinking of Jane Cross and hating her.

Jane had turned her father against her! Jane was responsible for everything! Her father, her beloved dad, had actually held this plain-faced chit up to her, Betty, as an example to be followed! Oh, it was dreadful, incredible!

Then she thought of how hard she had tried to gain her father’s love and complete confidence and sat down in his favorite easy chair and cried.

The tears softened Betty’s anger, and gradually a different mood came to her.

By the time Mr. Browning came home that night she had definitely decided what she would do.

“Dad,” she said, meeting him at the door, “I—I want a job!”

CHAPTER XXIII JANE AND BILLY

At first Mr. Browning laughed at the suggestion. But he was wise enough to see that Betty was in dead earnest and, realizing his mistake, laughed no more.

He tried reasoning.

“You have all you can do at home here, Betty,” he told her. “What would I do without my housekeeper?”

“I have ever so much time to spare,” Betty returned. “There are hours when I have to sit with my hands folded and nothing to do, or else go for a walk and take a chance of meeting people who—well, who make it a point to be nice to me. It isn’t very pleasant, daddy—and I really want to help.”

That was the way it started.

Mr. Browning could not see at first how he could use Betty in his own business, and he was reluctant to have her try for work anywhere else.

Finally he compromised by saying that she might take charge of the office during Jane’s absence. She could be of real use there when Mr. Browning himself was forced to be absent on business.

A bitter pill for Betty! But she swallowed it bravely and reported promptly Monday morning for work.

It says much for Betty’s change of mood—and mind—that she did not wear an ornate dress in the hope of impressing plain Jane Cross with her superiority, but selected one of plain cloth instead. The very simplicity of this frock made it distinguished, and one could see at a glance that it had never been designed for wear in an office. But it was the most appropriate thing Betty had, and it at least showed a desire to improve.

Mr. Browning regarded the dress approvingly as Betty took off her coat and the line between his brows smoothed out a little.

“She’s true blue,” he thought. “Trust her to make the grade all right.”

Jane took Betty in hand and “showed her the ropes.”

“There really isn’t anything very hard about it,” Jane would say when Betty’s pretty forehead puckered in bewilderment over rows of figures and realty terms that were as clear as day to Jane. “You simply have to get used to it, that’s all. Now, here’s this deed of Mr. Small’s. Suppose he wanted to take up a two-thousand-dollar mortgage on it. What would he do?”

So on and on, coaching, explaining, impervious to Betty’s fits of temper and her pettish moods, until gradually Betty’s tolerance for Jane grew into grudging admiration and finally into a reluctant liking.

“She’s clever,” said Betty, watching the pleasant, energetic girl at her work. “Whatever else she may be, you’ve got to admit she’s clever!”

If Jane had not been Jane, she might have gloated a little at her ascendency over the pretty girl. Instead, she was sorry for her and sincerely wanted to help her.

About the time of the first deep winter snow Jane became conscious of a change in Billy Dobson. Billy had finished and patented a new invention—a new type of store scales that he was enthusiastic over.

He showed the scales to Jane, and she shared his enthusiasm.

“What I need now is money enough to get away from here and interest some big company in the thing,” he told Jane, the old wistful hunger in his eyes. “I know I can put it over this time, Jane! I’m sure I could, if I only had a chance!”

Jane thought of that steadily growing secret fund that she had put away in her drawer against just this emergency. Her rent commissions had increased this some. Now as she waded through the first heavy snowfall of the winter, she decided the time was ripe.

Billy was coming to-night! To-night she would tell him!

Jane was filled with a strange excitement as she went down to the cozy living room that night to wait for Billy. Would he understand what she was trying to do, she wondered, or would he, in his stubborn pride, resent it?

She had not long to ask herself this question, for she had just settled comfortably in one of the mission armchairs when a sharp ring at the bell announced Billy’s arrival.

She ran to answer the doorbell and the young man swept into the house laughing and bringing a draft of cold air with him.

“You look like Santa Claus!” cried Jane, as he shook the snow from his overcoat.

“And feel like it,” laughed Billy.

His face was ruddy from the cold, his blue eyes snapped. He took Jane’s hand and drew her into the living room where he laughingly seated her in a big chair and drew up another close before her.

“Jane,” he announced, “something wonderful has happened! I’ve got my big chance!”

Jane’s heart skipped a beat, two beats!

“Oh, I might have known it by the way you looked! Tell me, Billy! Hurry!”

“I found the names of several big men in the city,” said Billy, “men I thought might be interested in my new type of scales. I described it to them or, at least, just enough to whet their appetites for more—so I hoped. Well,” Billy paused and Jane could see by the tightening of his jaw and the grip of his hand on the chair arm what a great thing this was to him, “I got a letter from one of them to-day, Jane, saying he was interested and would like to see me. He hinted that if my scales were as good as I had led him to believe—and I’ve no doubt on that score, Jane!—he might be ready to talk business!”

“Billy!”

“So I’ve wired to him that I’ll be in town to-morrow! Say, Jane, I want to know—how’s that?”

“Oh, marvelous, Billy! I’m so glad for you! If this man likes your scales, just what will that mean? I’m so ignorant about these things, you know!”

“Mean!” Billy got up and strode about the room, hands thrust deep in his pockets. “It will mean everything, Jane. It means that this man will back my patent by putting up hard cash and in return will get a certain percentage of the profits. But I’ll get a percentage, too—enough probably, if everything goes well, to about fix me for life. How’s that, Jane?”

“I always told you you’d do it, Billy, didn’t I?” Jane looked up at him proudly and Billy, pausing in his restless pacing of the room, sat down again and took her hand gently in his.

“You bet you did, Jane!” he said exuberantly. “And don’t think I’m forgetting the little pal that backed me when every one else was dead set against me. I haven’t won out yet, Jane, but if I do—and I begin to feel now as though I would—I want you to know that a good deal of it is your doing! I don’t think even you know just how much you’ve helped.”

“I’m glad Billy. And—it gives me courage to say something else.” Her voice was little more than a murmur and Billy had to lean close to catch her words. “I thought the time might come when you would need—a little practical help—from your friends. So I—I—oh, here, Billy, take it—and please don’t be offended with me!”

Jane thrust a little packet into his hand, rose quickly and went to the window where she stood looking out into the stormy night.

Billy looked at her wonderingly, then back again to the packet in his hand. Slowly he unwrapped the covering.

A roll of neatly folded bills—that slowly accruing little fund that had lain for so long at the back of Jane’s dresser drawer!

Billy looked at it for a long moment; then he crushed it in his hand and turned to Jane. She was still watching the storm outside the window.

“You meant this for me, Jane?” said Billy slowly.

Wordlessly Jane nodded. She did not turn about or look at him.

Billy got up softly and went over to her. He took her hand, put the roll of bills in it, then closed her fingers over it gently, one by one.

Jane said, in a stifled voice:

“Then—then you don’t need it, Billy?”

“I’ve a little of my own saved up. But, Jane—say, Jane,” his voice had lowered and was very gruff, “I can’t say what I’m feeling. Guess you’ll have to guess at it. But that was more than good of you, Jane!”

The warm clasp of his hand, the look in his eyes, was answer enough for Jane. Billy did not need her money, perhaps, but he did need her friendship.

The next day when she started for her rent route she met Billy. He was going to the station, and if ever any one looked buoyant and hopeful and headed for success, that young man was Billy Dobson.

Betty, from the windows of her father’s office, saw the meeting, and a frown puckered her white forehead.

“I never knew Billy Dobson was so good looking,” she thought. “And there seems to be no doubt whatever what he thinks of Jane. It’s wonderful how that girl, plain as she is, can wind men around her little finger! She has something you haven’t, Betty Browning, for all that your eyes are blue and your hair naturally curly! I wonder if it really was Billy Dobson that set Martin and Hull’s on fire and started all our bad luck! I must say, he doesn’t look like that sort of person.”

Betty saw Jane hold out both her hands impulsively and saw the eager way the youth grasped them. Then Billy was gone, with a buoyant lift of his hat, and Jane, in her shabby coat, disappeared around the corner.

With a sigh Betty turned to the tiresome work of straightening up Jane’s desk and her father’s and laying the latter’s letters close to his hand.

It was several hours later, and Mr. Browning had been in, consulted with several clients and gone out again with one of them to arrange a new lease on some property or other—Betty could never remember the details of these transactions as Jane did—and Betty was once more alone and feeling rather bored when the door opened and a shabby, poorly dressed old woman entered the office.

Betty looked up, surprised as the newcomer paused at the door and seemed in doubt whether to advance or retreat.

“Come in,” said Betty. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Well,” hesitated the woman, “I was hoping to see Mr. Browning—or Miss Jane Cross.”

Betty winced inwardly, as she still did when any one expressed a preference for Jane, but she said politely enough:

“Mr. Browning and Miss Cross are both out at present. If you will leave a message with me, I’ll see that it gets to them safely.”

“We—ell—” The woman came forward and seated herself gingerly on the edge of a chair. “I came to tell you what started the Martin and Hull fire.”

Betty could be pardoned for her stare of amazement.

“You have?” she asked incredulously.

“Leastways, my husband says he thinks he knows what started it,” the old woman continued, taking no note of Betty’s amazement. “He never listens much to what people are sayin’ or what gossip goes about the town but the other evenin’ when he heard some of the men talkin’ about Billy Dobson and sayin’ as how the lad had set Martin and Hull’s on fire, why, that sort of got him right het up, as you might say, and he says right off that he knowed what set the place afire.”

“What did?” cried Betty excitedly. Here, miraculously, it seemed, was the answer to the question she had asked herself only that morning!

“The wires was all wrong,” said the woman, whose name was Mrs. Shiff. “Martin Shiff—that’s my man—and he’s a lineman for the electric light company—says as how he told Mr. Hull time and again there’d be trouble if they didn’t get busy and have some new wirin’ done. But the old man kept puttin’ it off and off, and Martin says it looks like he just got what was coming to him.”

Betty had jumped to her feet. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright.

“Is your husband sure of this?”

“He’s as sure,” said Mrs. Shiff dryly, “as he can be of anything on this earth!”

CHAPTER XXIV A SURPRISE

Betty Browning waited until she and her father were seated at dinner that night before she told of the electrician’s important disclosures concerning the defective wiring of Martin and Hull’s place.

Mr. Browning was greatly interested and promised Betty that he would set an investigation afoot at once to discover whether there was any truth in Mr. Shiff’s assertions.

“First of all, we’ll get a signed statement from this electrician. Then with that we’ll confront Mr. Hull and ask him to confirm it. If he will and if we can also find some one else who will testify that the wiring was defective or can even testify that he heard Shiff say as much previous to the blaze, we’ll have gone a long way toward clearing Billy Dobson’s name. Jane will be glad,” he finished. “She has always championed Billy.”

“I know.” Betty played with a spoon and did not look toward her father. “And that brings me to something else I want to say, dad. I’d just a little rather Jane didn’t know until—until we’ve got it all fixed up.”

Mr. Browning regarded his daughter’s pretty profile thoughtfully a moment. Then he put his hand understandingly over the hand that still played restlessly with the spoon.

“A surprise? All right, honey; that’s an easy promise.”

Several days later—when Jane’s surprise was almost ready for her—Jane herself received a shock that sent her little world crashing about her ears.

It happened one day when she was out collecting rents from the tenement dwellers on the farther side of the railroad tracks.

There was a new family in 18 Blecker Street, so Mr. Browning had told her. Jane was to collect the first month’s rent from them that day and in addition had been commissioned to look them over and report as to their general character, reliableness, etc. Mr. Browning had long ago found that Jane’s judgment in such matters was almost infallible. If Jane found any one trustworthy in her estimation, Mr. Browning regarded her recommendation more highly than the best references. References he must have, of course, but Jane’s intuition, in her employer’s opinion, was even more to be trusted.

So Jane toiled up the steps of the tenement house at 18 Blecker Street, and with a feeling of curiosity rang the bell of Apartment 18.

A thin, dark-haired woman came to the door and regarded the girl with suspicion. Jane was used to this. She supposed most rent collectors had to be. She did not allow it to affect her friendly attitude nor the pleasant way she stated her errand.

She was conscious that the woman was regarding her very intently, but at that was scarcely prepared for the latter’s next statement, or rather question.

“You’re the girl who used to live with Mrs. Cross, ain’t you?”

Jane was startled by the abrupt change of subject, but she said, still pleasantly:

“I am Mrs. Cross’s daughter, yes.”

“Her daughter!” blurted the woman. “Why, she never had no daughter!”

“Never had a daughter!” Jane cried, anger mingling with her astonishment. “What are you talking about? I am her daughter!”

The woman appeared to be one of those little souls who delight in creating a sensation, no matter who may be wounded or hurt during the process.

“Me and my husband came to Coal Run about the same time as Mrs. Cross and her man,” the woman continued, while Jane stood staring at her in a daze. “But before that we lived in Walling—you mind that’s not more than twenty miles from Coal Run. The Crosses lived there too, and one day when the orphan asylum burned they adopted a little girl who had been brought to the asylum when she was a baby.”

“A little girl,” said Jane dazedly. “And that little girl was—was——”

“You,” said the woman, with a sharp laugh. “They called you Janet at the asylum, but seems like that struck Mrs. Cross too fancy-like, so she changed it to Jane.”

Since she had not given her name to this woman the fact that the latter knew it seemed a sort of confirmation of her incredible story. Jane felt numbed, and yet her brain was acting with extraordinary clearness.

“If this thing is true,” she said slowly, “how is it that I don’t recognize you?”

“We didn’t live in Coal Run long,” said the woman, with a shrug of her shoulders. “Probably you was so little when we moved away that you couldn’t remember us. Well, might as well get down to business. I suppose you’ve got to have the rent?”

“Yes,” said Jane, speaking automatically, “I’ve got to have the rent.”

But after the woman had given her the money—her name was Hensel—Jane collected no more rents that day.

She went straight home and walked in suddenly upon Mrs. Powell, who was working in the kitchen.

The latter looked at Jane’s white, stricken face and dried her hands.

“My dear child! What is it?”

Jane dropped into one of the straight kitchen chairs and looked at this kind friend, the friend that had tried to take a mother’s place to her—a mother’s place——

“Aunt Lou! Aunt Lou!” she cried, her lips quivering, “who is my mother?”

Mrs. Powell paused and looked strangely at Jane. Then with a cry she sank to her knees and gathered the white-faced girl into her arms.

“Oh, my poor child! You’ve found out then——”

Jane pushed Mrs. Powell gently away from her and held her at arm’s length for a moment. Her brown eyes were oddly still as they met the pitying gaze of the older woman.

“It’s true then?” she said slowly. “I was—taken from an orphan asylum by the one I thought was—my mother? My name—is not—Jane Cross, at all?”

“I’m afraid not, Jane.” Mrs. Powell was abashed by the girl’s quietness, by the intentness of her look. “Mrs. Cross took you from an asylum in Walling when you were a small child. If she had lived you might never have found out the truth.”

“When did you find this out?” asked Jane in the same quiet voice.

“Just a short time ago, Jane.” Mrs. Powell’s tone had become pleading. She was more alarmed by the quietness of Jane’s manner than she would have been by the most hysterical outburst of tears. “It was when I found the material for your serge dress.”

“As long ago as that!” said Jane softly. “And you never told me?”

“I didn’t dare, Jane,” pleaded Mrs. Powell. “I was afraid it would break your heart. You are not angry with me for keeping the secret from you, Jane?”

“No—oh, no!” In the same dazed way, Jane pushed Mrs. Powell gently from her, got up, and walked over to the window. “How could I be angry with you, who have been so good to me always? No, no, I’m not angry.”

But when Mrs. Powell would have gone to her to take her in her arms again and try to comfort her, Jane raised her hand in a weary little gesture.

“Please,” she said very softly, “I want to be alone for a little while, dear Aunt Lou. You don’t mind?”

Jane went toward the door, hand outstretched before her as though she could not see.

Mrs. Powell watched her pityingly and heard her murmur just before she crossed the threshold, “Mother! Who—was—my mother?”

Jane did not cry that day or the next while she went mechanically about the business of collecting rents—the business she had neglected the day before. She could not cry, but something within her that had been bright and warm and laughter-loving had frozen into a cold aching indifference to everything but her pain.

Because she was out of the office almost all the next day, Betty had no chance to spring the “surprise” upon her that had been so carefully prepared by her father and herself with the invaluable help of Martin Shiff and several friends of the latter. These friends were ready to swear at a moment’s notice that Shiff had made in their presence much the same statement concerning the faulty wiring of Martin and Hull’s that Mrs. Shiff had made to Betty.

Betty had been impatiently awaiting Jane’s arrival all afternoon, and when the latter came at last, almost at closing time, Betty turned eagerly toward the sound of the opening door.

“Oh, I’m so glad you came!” she cried, advancing eagerly toward Jane. “I’ve got a surprise for you, Jane, a marvelous surprise!”

Jane regarded the vision of Betty’s flushed cheeks and dancing eyes wonderingly. Betty had never approached her in this way before. Jane took off her hat and coat and turned a wan, listless face to the pretty girl.

“That’s nice,” she said, trying to smile. “What is it?”

Betty bore her triumphantly to the desk and picked up the paper that had been written and signed by Martin Shiff, the electrician.

“Read that!” she said, thrusting the paper into Jane’s hand. “Read that and tell me what you think of it!”

Jane read the paper at first indifferently and then with growing interest.

“Why,” she said, looking up at Betty, who pressed laughingly close to her shoulder, “this man seems to think it was defective wiring that caused the Martin and Hull fire!”

Betty nodded.

“And what’s more, we’ve found lots of others who think so, Jane—now that this electrician has had the courage to come out into the open and declare himself. Even Mr. Hull admits that Shiff urged him time and again to have his place newly wired!”

“Why, then,” said Jane, a thrill in her voice, “this thing practically clears Billy——”

“Practically clears Billy! Hear the girl!” cried Betty gayly. “Why, it clears Billy altogether! By this time next week I’m willing to wager that not a person in town will believe that silly accusation old Hull made against him!”

Jane had been reading the paper again. Now she glanced up at Betty.

“This was your surprise for me?” she asked slowly. “You did this for me—because you knew it would please me?”

“Dad and I did—with the able assistance of this electrician person. Why, Jane, I believe you’re crying!”

Jane got up quickly and walked over to her desk, where she stood with her back to Betty, struggling with herself.

Betty hesitated a minute, then went over to the other girl and took her cold hand within her own warm one.

“Jane—I—I believe there was something wrong when you came in just now.” She hesitated, but a warm rush of pity urged her on. “Something dreadful has happened to you, Jane, to make you look like that. I—I know you—have reasons for not caring to confide in me. I’m ashamed of the way I’ve acted sometimes. But, Jane, if—if you feel like—letting me—help a little—I want to, really.”

“How would you like to find out suddenly that you had no mother?” Jane’s fingers suddenly curled about Betty’s hand in a way that hurt. Her voice was harsh with pain. “How would you like to find out that the person you had loved as your mother, the person you had mourned as your mother after her death, was not your mother at all, but some one who, out of pity, had taken you from an orphan asylum and brought you up in ignorance of the truth? How would you like to feel,” Jane’s voice broke, but her grip on Betty’s hand did not relax, “that—that you had never known your mother—or your father——”

“Jane, dear!” pleaded Betty, but Jane rushed on, unheeding.

“To feel that you did not even know your right name—that—that you had no real place in the world? Just an orphan, picked up out of an asylum—no—no good to any one——”

“Why, Jane, do you know what I think?”

Betty at last broke through the rush of words and put her arm tight about the trembling girl. Jane’s eyes were downcast and she traced strange designs on the top of her desk with her finger.

“I think,” said Betty in a curiously sweet voice, “that there are lots of people who know all about themselves—their names and everything—that aren’t half the use in the world that you are, Jane. Why, just look at me!” with a quiver of laughter that was half a sob in her voice. “See what you’ve done to me, Jane! You’ve made me see that the people who are really worth while are the people who do things and don’t just sit around and watch other people do them. You go around making life bright for people until they just can’t do without you. Yes, you do! I’ve watched you, and I know! Dad’s one. Billy’s another. And I—I’m another, Jane! If I had a sister I’d want her just like you. Now, look here—this silly girl’s crying again. Where did I put that hanky!”

CHAPTER XXV THE REVELATION

When Mr. Browning entered the office a few moments later he found the two girls clasped in each other’s arms.

Betty was wiping Jane’s eyes with her inadequate little handkerchief and Jane was trying to laugh and making a poor business of it.

No wonder that he paused in amazement at this sight. No wonder, either, that his heart leaped with pride and hope as he saw his pretty Betty in the new role of comforter to Jane.

“She’s come through!” he told himself. “I knew she’d make the grade!”

Then he coughed by way of tactfully announcing his presence.

Betty pulled him down on the settee beside them and, still holding on to Jane, told the latter’s story.

Mr. Browning was wonderful to her, Jane thought afterward, and so comforting. He said that he would try at once to find out more about her parentage, that he would write to the orphan asylum, or perhaps go to Walling personally.

“Their records are usually pretty accurate,” he told Jane. “In the meantime, don’t worry, young lady. A girl like you can’t have sprung from any but good stock. When we find out who your parents were, I’ll guarantee you can be proud of them. Meantime, I think I’ll have a talk with Mr. Powell.”

This he did, and his conference with Mr. Powell resulted immediately in one good thing, at least. He was able to find the latter a position in Drake’s big hardware store, where he started at a salary equal to the one he had had with Martin and Hull and where, he was assured, there was good opportunity for advancement.

About Jane, neither Mr. Powell nor Mr. Browning was so sure. They were almost afraid to investigate for fear they would find out something concerning the girl’s parents that might cast a shadow over her entire life. Nevertheless, they pledged themselves to help her, and went about it with a will.

When Mr. Browning could not obtain satisfactory information by mail he announced to Jane and Betty one day his intention of going to Walling in person.

He seemed vaguely excited about something, but though both girls questioned him, Betty more insistently than Jane, he would give them no satisfaction, merely saying that when he found out anything definite he would tell it to them at once but that at present he had gained no really authentic information.

He left the office in charge of Jane, and that meant that the girl was kept “on her toes all day” doing both her own work and the work of her employer. This was perhaps just as well, since it kept her from useless brooding. But it was a trying time, even though an exciting one, for both the girls left behind.

Meanwhile, Billy Dobson came back to Greenville triumphant. He had been gone for some time, and since he had not written, Jane was beginning to worry for fear his mission had ended in failure after all.

He burst unceremoniously into the office one morning just as Jane was putting her hat on to go out.

Billy was handsomer than ever and there was an air of success about him just now that was rather thrilling. At least, so thought Betty from the modest obscurity of her own little desk in the rear of the office.

Billy rushed directly to Jane and swallowed up both her outstretched hands in his two great brown ones.

“Congratulations, Jane! Give ’em to me quick! I’ve done it!”

“Billy!”

Jane’s face was shining; her heart was thumping gloriously.

“You mean that man has really accepted your invention?”

“Accepted! Oh, boy, I’ll say he has! And at a price—oh, such a price! Jane, feast your eyes upon me, for you’re looking at a rich man—a man, moreover, who some day will be much richer! Are you getting an eyeful?”

“You’re crazy, of course!” Jane laughed helplessly as Billy continued to hold on to her hands and beam upon her. “But I don’t blame you at all, Billy. I feel sort of—unbalanced—myself!”

They had a perfectly marvelous, idiotic time after that, and Jane drew Betty into it, telling Billy of the investigation the latter had instigated and giving him the signed statement of Martin Shiff to read.

Billy looked thoughtfully at Betty after he read it, and then quietly offered his hand.

“Thanks!” he said. “That was a mighty fine thing for you to do, and it means a lot to me.”

Betty accepted the hand but nodded mischievously at Jane, all her pretty dimples in evidence.

“I did it for Jane,” she said demurely. “I knew how pleased she’d be.”

Billy turned to Jane, a slow smile on his lips.

“Were you?” he asked.

Jane flushed, and was surprised and angry at herself for doing it.

“Of course I was glad,” she returned almost shortly. “Who wouldn’t be?”

“I’d be very sorry,” said Billy gravely, “if Jane wasn’t just a little bit more pleased than—any one else.”

Jane smiled, her own bright, cordial smile, and gave him her hand again.

“Of course I am glad, Billy,” she said. “You know how much, without my telling you.”

Betty smiled knowingly and hid her face so that the mischievous dimples would not betray her thought. For who can say that all women—even quite young ones—are not matchmakers at heart!

It was some days before Mr. Browning came home again, and the suspense made Jane thin and etched dark circles under her eyes.

Billy, of course, had been let into her confidence, and he and Betty between them did all they could to comfort and encourage her. But Jane could not sleep at night for the question that said itself over and over in her mind. “Who was my mother? Who was my father? Oh, what will Mr. Browning find out about them?”

Then came the night when Mr. Browning arrived quite unexpectedly in Greenville.

He had engaged a woman in the neighborhood—a bustling wiry person by the name of Joyce—to stay with Betty during his absence. The latter protested that she would be perfectly safe without the wiry Mrs. Joyce, but Mr. Browning would not hear of her staying alone in the house.

On this particular night Betty was just about ready for bed when a familiar step on the porch and a key in the door announced the arrival of her father.

She ran down to him. The flood of questions trembling on her lips was checked by the look on her father’s face. He shut the door quietly and then, with a hand on Betty’s arm, drew her into the front room.

“Dad, is anything wrong? Has anything——”

“Listen, Betty.” Mr. Browning seated himself in a chair and drew Betty down on his knee as though she were a little child again. He had not even thought to take off his overcoat. “I have something very important to tell you. I wanted you to know before I saw Jane. That’s why I timed my arrival after dark. Are you listening?”

The next day Betty entered her father’s office, trying to mask her excitement. Jane was at her desk, sorting and arranging the morning mail. Betty went directly to her.

“Jane, dear,” she said, “daddy is in town and he wants very much to see you.”

Jane started to her feet, her face suddenly very white.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“At home. He thought that perhaps he’d better tell you—what he wants to—there. Come along.”

“But the office——”

“Oh, bother the old office! It can take care of itself for a little while!”

Jane was in her coat, her hat on her head in a moment. She closed and locked the office and automatically put the key in her pocket.

The girls had almost reached Betty’s house, walking swiftly and in silence, when Jane put a hand on the pretty girl’s arm.

“Tell me just one thing, Betty,” she begged. “Is this news—very bad?”

“Bad? No! Don’t ask me any questions, Jane Cross, or I’ll never keep the secret—never!”

They said no more until they stepped up on the porch and the door was opened by Mr. Browning from the inside. Mrs. Joyce had been dismissed that morning.

Jane was trembling when Mr. Browning helped her off with her coat, and then led her into the front room.

“Oh, whatever you have to tell me, please tell me quickly,” she cried, her breath catching. “I can’t bear this a moment longer!”

“All right, then.” Mr. Browning pushed the girl gently down on the couch and drew up a chair near her. Betty sat down close to Jane, one arm about her.

“My news isn’t bad news, Jane; so don’t look like that, my dear girl. But it is strange, so strange that it may be something of a shock to you. Are you ready to listen?”

“Oh, yes, yes!” cried Jane.

“Well then, this is the story of a girl I know.” Mr. Browning took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it, feigning an ease he did not feel. “She was brought up by a woman whom she thought to be her mother. When she found out this woman was not her mother but had taken her from an orphan asylum, the truth came, naturally, as a great shock to her.”

Jane sat very still now, her eyes fixed on Mr. Browning.

“There was a man who took a great interest in her, and who promised to solve the mystery of her parentage for her. He went to the town where the orphan asylum was located in the hope of finding out from the authorities there something concerning this girl’s parents. He did find out something.”

Mr. Browning paused and regarded the tip of his cigar intently for a moment. Jane neither moved nor spoke, but sat with her eyes intently on him.

“He found out something so strange and startling,” Mr. Browning continued, “that he could not bring himself to believe the truth of it at first, but must first satisfy himself with absolute proofs. He found the proofs.” He paused, and for the first time his eyes met Jane’s. The girl stirred, reached out her hands toward him imploringly.

“He found,” said Mr. Browning slowly, “that the child’s real name was not Jane, but Janet, and that her mother was Martha Harper and that her father was Mark Harper, a sailor who lost his life in a great gale off the coast.”

Jane was trembling again and Betty’s arm tightened about her.

“The mother,” continued Mr. Browning in a low voice, and even amid the whirling of her own thought, Jane wondered why he became so agitated, so distressed at the mention of her mother’s name, “tried to make her living and support her baby, but her heart was broken and she died, leaving the baby, the little girl, to the charity of strangers.”

Jane found herself speaking.

“That girl was I?” she asked.

“I am coming to that,” said Mr. Browning. He bent forward and held Jane’s gaze with his own. “This is the strange part, the almost unbelievable part of it. I once had a sister, a gay, high-spirited girl, who fell in love with—and finally married—a sailor. My parents opposed the match, and when the girl married against their wishes, declared they would have nothing more to do with her.”

“Oh, they were cruel!” cried Jane, with a catch in her voice. “Cruel!”

“Yes, it was cruel,” said Mr. Browning. He regarded the end of his cigar for a moment, then turned his gaze again to Jane. “I want you to listen very carefully to what I am saying now.” His tone was so grave that Jane stared at him fascinated, her heart pounding. “That sister of whom I have not until now been able to find a trace, though I have tried, bore the name of Martha, and the man she married was Mark Harper! Now, Jane, do you understand?”

Jane did not understand for a moment. She was so slow, in fact, that Betty’s patience could not stand the strain.

“Jane, don’t you see?” she cried. “Your mother and my father were brother and sister! That makes us—well, what does it make us, you big silly?”

Jane stared at her, while the almost incredible truth flashed to her mind.

“Why, Betty, it can’t be! It isn’t possible! That makes us cousins!”

“First cousins, you old darling! And, Jane, I feel as if I’d found a million dollars!”

Betty hugged Jane and hugged her father—whose face was no longer lined and weary—then went back to Jane and put a mischievous finger under her chin, lifting up her serious, still incredulous face.

“I wanted you for a sister, Jane,” she said. “’Member? Well, I couldn’t have you for my sister. But I can have you for my cousin, and that’s almost as good, now, isn’t it?”

“Almost as good!”

It was a long time before Jane could realize the fact that she and Betty—pretty Betty Browning who had once lived in the finest house on Rose Hill—were cousins. It was a still longer time before she could drag her mind away from that marvelous fact.

Mr. Browning had papers to prove his assertion, but Jane only glanced at them. His word was enough.

Mr. Browning, fine, distinguished Mr. Browning, was her uncle—the next best thing to one’s own father, thought Jane, and tried wistfully to picture that Mark Harper who had died at sea. Mr. Browning was to be Uncle Clyde after this. How intimate it sounded and how she loved Uncle Clyde and Betty for being so good to her!

That mother, that impetuous pretty girl Martha, who had braved the displeasure of her family to marry the man she loved! What of her?

Mr. Browning had brought a tiny locket, a pretty baby’s locket, and in it was a sweet smiling face whose loveliness brought the tears smarting to Jane’s longing eyes.

It had been part of the possessions of the little girl, Janet Harper, when she came to the asylum and had been forgotten when she left. The authorities had lost sight of her, but had kept the tiny locket, thinking that some day some one belonging to her would come and claim it, as some one did!

“Mother! Mother!” whispered Jane, and looking at the lovely pictured face, gradually lost it in a swimming mist of tears.

It is to be feared that very little work was done at Mr. Browning’s real estate office that day. True, there was some one there most of the day and Mr. Browning went about his duties in a perfunctory way, but Jane and Betty were somewhere in the clouds together and could not come down to earth.

Mrs. Powell had to be told the wonderful news, of course, and laughed and cried and exclaimed over Jane to her heart’s content. Marion came in in the midst of the jubilation and almost had hysterics in her joy.

“Best girl in the world!” she cried, bobbing and smiling. “Deserves everything good! Yes, indeed. You have my blessing, Jane—or I should say, Janet! Good luck go with you, my dear. Yes indeed, I wish it. Truly.”

“Marion!” Lydia spoke sternly from the doorway. She had followed her sister to the door and looked with disapproval upon the scene. “Do come away, Marion! You talk too much!”

“Aren’t they funny?” giggled Betty a few moments later, as she linked her arm through Jane’s and started toward home. It had been arranged that Jane should celebrate by having dinner with her newly acquired relatives.

“But Marion and Lydia are good-hearted,” said Jane. “They will do anything in the world for you if they think you need help. I’ll never forget how good they were to us when we first came to Greenville.”

“Well, if you love ’em, Jane, I suppose I’ll have to love ’em too,” said Betty, with a sigh of mock resignation. “Here’s the butcher store. We’ll have to stop and get the makings of a dinner.”

“Here’s the whole day gone and I’ve hardly done a stroke of work,” said Jane. “Mr. Brown——”

“Uncle Clyde!” corrected Betty.

“Uncle Clyde,” repeated Jane with a heightened color and a quick squeeze of Betty’s hand, “will be firing me!”

“He can’t now,” chuckled Betty, and displayed all her dimples. “Because, you see, you’re in the family!”

A short time later the girls let themselves into Betty’s house, chatting gayly, their arms full of bundles.

“Here comes dad,” said Betty, pausing on the threshold and looking back to wave to her father as he turned the corner and came swiftly toward them. “Let’s wait for him.”

So it happened that they entered the house together, Mr. Browning with an arm about each of “his girls,” as he proudly called them.

Something unusual in the atmosphere halted them just within the door.

It was the appetizing smell of a roast browning in the oven.

“Why, dad, you didn’t tell Mrs. Joyce to come back, did you?” asked Betty, staring at him.

“No,” answered her father briefly, and started toward the kitchen. The girls followed, wondering.

Through the kitchen doorway they saw some one slip a pan of biscuits in the oven—a tall handsome some one, swathed in a gingham kitchen apron.

Mr. Browning paused as if stupefied and stood staring.

Betty drew her arm from Jane’s, shrieked wildly:

“Mother! Mother! Mother!”

She flung herself like a young meteor past her father and into the arms of the tall, handsome woman in the gingham apron.

“Mother! Dear, darling mother! It isn’t you, is it? It’s some one that looks like you all dressed up in my funny old apron! Oh, mother, tell me it’s you and that I’m not dreaming!”

“You foolish child, stop mauling me so! You nearly made me spoil the soup, and the roast will burn——”

“Oh, bother the roast! Dad—daddy, she’s come back to us!”

All this time Jane had stood, frozen by surprise, scarcely able to move.

She saw Mr. Browning go forward slowly and take his wife’s hand, saw the questioning look in his eyes.

“I couldn’t stay away any longer, Clyde,” she heard the proud woman say, her eyes humble, almost pleading. “What Betty can do I can do, and I’m ashamed that I let the child teach me this lesson. I’d like to stay and—do my part—if you want me——”

“Well,” said Mr. Browning slowly, “I guess we won’t exactly put her out, shall we, Bettykin?”

Jane realized then that this scene was not for her, and she turned away, feeling for the moment just a little lonely.

But only for a moment.

Betty came flying after her, took her hand, and drew her toward the kitchen.

“Mother!” she cried in her merry voice, all her dimples flashing, “allow me to present another member of the family!”

Several years passed by, and Jane, wandering in the garden that she and Mrs. Powell had coaxed into a riot of color, smiled as she thought of the changes those years had seen.

She still worked in Mr. Browning’s office, and Betty, not to be outdone in anything by her beloved cousin, worked side by side with her.

The business had prospered. Mr. Browning was well on the way to becoming a rich man again, and it began to look as though before long he would be able to buy back the big house on Rose Hill if he cared to. But they were so happy in the little cottage where the roses over the door no longer drooped their heads in sad neglect that it is doubtful whether they would ever have the heart to leave it.

Although Mr. and Mrs. Browning urged Jane to come and live with them and pretty Betty tried all her dimples and all her wiles, Jane would not leave the Powells, those good friends who had been kind to her when she needed kindness most. Mr. Browning had been able to throw a little business in the way of Mr. Powell now and then that he could look after in his leisure hours, so that he, as well, was better off than he had ever dreamed of being.

Billy had prospered too—oh, mightily.

Jane’s smile deepened when she thought of Billy. He was off on one of his many important trips to the city now, but Jane expected him back almost any time. The marketing of his one invention had made much easier the placing of the others. There had been something in that last letter of his——

A quick footstep on the gravel path behind her.

Jane turned to see Billy coming toward her, his fair hair shining in the sun.

“’Lo Jane! Aunt Lou said I’d find you here talking to the posies. Thought maybe you’d rather talk to me.”

“Well, so I would, perhaps. How was the trip, Billy?”

“Pretty slick. All I had to do was tell ’em to sign on the dotted line. We’re going to be rich, Jane!”

“We?” queried Jane, with a smile.

“Yes, I said we! Because you’re going to marry me, whether you know it or not. Don’t you think, Jane, you’ve kept me waiting long enough?” he went on more soberly.

Perhaps it was the smell of the flowers or perhaps it was the spring sunshine or perhaps—it was only Billy. Anyway, Jane said, “Perhaps I have,” and Billy seemed to think he had his answer.

“Oh-h, excuse me!” A pretty face was poked about the edge of the rose arbor, a face framed in lovely flyaway golden hair. “You ought to hang out a sign, you two, warning everybody off the premises!”

“Come in,” grinned Billy. “You’re just in time to be invited to our wedding.”

“When’s it to be?” came with a chuckle from Betty.

“Next week.”

“Oh, Billy!”

“Don’t talk, darling.” Betty put a hand over Jane’s mouth. “He’s made up his mind, and when a man makes up his mind there’s no use arguing with him. You might just as well submit as unprotestingly as possible.”

“But, Billy, I can’t possibly——”

“No but, young lady. I have to go to the city again next week, and you’re going with me. We’ll buy what you need when we get there.”

“No,” said Jane. “I must have at least a month, Billy.”

“A month!” cried Billy reproachfully. “How can I wait a month?”

Betty sighed and turned away.

“I see you don’t need me,” she murmured, with a mischievous glance. She picked a rose from a bush near by and leveled it at them sternly. “I’ll let you have this wedding on one condition!”

“What’s that?” they asked her, smiling.

“That you’ll let me be the bridesmaid.”

“Betty! As though we’d have any one else!”

They watched the pretty figure in the rose-colored frock until it was out of sight, then Jane and Billy turned to walk slowly down the path toward the garden of their dreams.

THE END

By MAY HOLLIS BARTON

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. With colored jacket

Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid

May Hollis Barton is a new writer for girls who is bound to win instant popularity. Her style is somewhat of a mixture of that of Louise M. Alcott and Mrs. L. T. Meade, but thoroughly up-to-date in plot and action. Clean tales that all girls will enjoy reading.

1. THE GIRL FROM THE COUNTRY
or Laura Mayford’s City Experiences

Laura was the oldest of five children and when daddy got sick she felt she must do something. She had a chance to try her luck in New York, and there the country girl fell in with many unusual experiences.

2. THREE GIRL CHUMS AT LAUREL HALL
or The Mystery of the School by the Lake

When the three chums arrived at the boarding school they found the other students in the grip of a most perplexing mystery. How this mystery was solved, and what good times the girls had, both in school and on the lake, go to make a story no girl would care to miss.

3. NELL GRAYSON’S RANCHING DAYS
or A City Girl in the Great West

Showing how Nell, when she had a ranch girl visit her in Boston, thought her chum very green, but when Nell visited the ranch in the great West she found herself confronting many conditions of which she was totally ignorant. A stirring outdoor story.

4. FOUR LITTLE WOMEN OF ROXBY
or The Queer Old Lady Who Lost Her Way

Four sisters are keeping house and having trouble to make both ends meet. One day there wanders in from a stalled express train an old lady who cannot remember her identity. The girls take the old lady in, and, later, are much astonished to learn who she really is.

5. PLAIN JANE AND PRETTY BETTY
or The Girl Who Won Out

The tale of two girls, one plain but sensible, the other pretty but vain. Unexpectedly both find they have to make their way in the world. Both have many trials and tribulations. A story of a country town and then a city.

By ALICE B. EMERSON

12mo. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors

Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid

Ruth Fielding was an orphan and came to live with her miserly uncle. Her adventures and travels make stories that will hold the interest of every reader.

Ruth Fielding is a character that will live in juvenile fiction.

1. RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
2. RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
3. RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
4. RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
5. RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
6. RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
7. RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
8. RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
9. RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
10. RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
11. RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
12. RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
13. RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
14. RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
15. RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
16. RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
17. RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST
18. RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE
19. RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING
20. RUTH FIELDING IN THE FAR NORTH
21. RUTH FIELDING AT GOLDEN PASS
22. RUTH FIELDING IN ALASKA
23. RUTH FIELDING AND HER GREAT SCENARIO

By ALICE B. EMERSON

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors

Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid

1. BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
or The Mystery of a Nobody

At twelve Betty is left an orphan.

2. BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON
or Strange Adventures in a Great City

Betty goes to the National Capitol to find her uncle and has several unusual adventures.

3. BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL
or The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune

From Washington the scene is shifted to the great oil fields of our country. A splendid picture of the oil field operations of to-day.

4. BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL
or The Treasure of Indian Chasm

Seeking treasures of Indian Chasm makes interesting reading.

5. BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP
or The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne

At Mountain Camp Betty found herself in the midst of a mystery involving a girl whom she had previously met in Washington.

6. BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK
or School Chums on the Boardwalk

A glorious outing that Betty and her chums never forgot.

7. BETTY GORDON AND HER SCHOOL CHUMS
or Bringing the Rebels to Terms

Rebellious students, disliked teachers and mysterious robberies make a fascinating story.

8. BETTY GORDON AT RAINBOW RANCH
or Cowboy Joe’s Secret

Betty and her chums have a grand time in the saddle.

9. BETTY GORDON IN MEXICAN WILDS
or The Secret of the Mountains

Betty receives a fake telegram and finds both Bob and herself held for ransom in a mountain cave.

10. BETTY GORDON AND THE LOST PEARL
or A Mystery of the Seaside

Betty and her chums go to the ocean shore for a vacation and there Betty becomes involved in the disappearance of a string of pearls worth a fortune.

By AGNES MILLER

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors

Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid

This new series of girls’ books is in a new style of story writing. The interest is in knowing the girls and seeing them solve the problems that develop their character. Incidentally, a great deal of historical information is imparted.

1. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE MYSTERY HOUSE
or The Story of Nine Adventurous Girls

How the Linger-Not girls met and formed their club seems commonplace, but this writer makes it fascinating, and how they made their club serve a great purpose continues the interest to the end, and introduces a new type of girlhood.

2. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE VALLEY FEUD
or The Great West Point Chain

The Linger-Not girls had no thought of becoming mixed up with feuds or mysteries, but their habit of being useful soon entangled them in some surprising adventures that turned out happily for all, and made the valley better because of their visit.

3. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THEIR GOLDEN QUEST
or The Log of the Ocean Monarch

For a club of girls to become involved in a mystery leading back into the times of the California gold-rush, seems unnatural until the reader sees how it happened, and how the girls helped one of their friends to come into her rightful name and inheritance, forms a fine story.

4. THE LINGER-NOTS AND THE WHISPERING CHARMS
or The Secret from Old Alaska

Whether engrossed in thrilling adventures in the Far North or occupied with quiet home duties, the Linger-Not girls could work unitedly to solve a colorful mystery in a way that interpreted American freedom to a sad young stranger, and brought happiness to her and to themselves.

By JANET D. WHEELER

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors

Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid

1. BILLIE BRADLEY AND HER INHERITANCE or The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners

Billie Bradley fell heir to an old homestead that was unoccupied and located far away in a lonely section of the country. How Billie went there, accompanied by some of her chums, and what queer things happened, go to make up a story no girl will want to miss.

2. BILLIE BRADLEY AT THREE-TOWERS HALL
or Leading a Needed Rebellion

Three-Towers Hall was a boarding school for girls. For a short time after Billie arrived there all went well. But then the head of the school had to go on a long journey and she left the girls in charge of two teachers, sisters, who believed in severe discipline and in very, very plain food and little of it—and then there was a row! The girls wired for the head to come back—and all ended happily.

3. BILLIE BRADLEY ON LIGHTHOUSE ISLAND
or The Mystery of the Wreck

One of Billie’s friends owned a summer bungalow on Lighthouse Island, near the coast. The school girls made up a party and visited the Island. There was a storm and a wreck, and three little children were washed ashore. They could tell nothing of themselves, and Billie and her chums set to work to solve the mystery of their identity.

4. BILLIE BRADLEY AND HER CLASSMATES
or The Secret of the Locked Tower

Billie and her chums come to the rescue of several little children who have broken through the ice. There is the mystery of a lost invention, and also the dreaded mystery of the locked school tower.

5. BILLIE BRADLEY AT TWIN LAKES
or Jolly Schoolgirls Afloat and Ashore

A tale of outdoor adventure in which Billie and her chums have a great variety of adventures. They visit an artists’ colony and there fall in with a strange girl living with an old boatman who abuses her constantly. Billie befriended Hulda and the mystery surrounding the girl was finally cleared up.

By HOWARD R. GARIS

Author of the famous “Bedtime Animal Stories”

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors

Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid

1. THE CURLYTOPS AT CHERRY FARM
or Vacation Days in the Country

A tale of happy vacation days on a farm.

2. THE CURLYTOPS ON STAR ISLAND
or Camping out with Grandpa

The Curlytops camp on Star Island.

3. THE CURLYTOPS SNOWED IN
or Grand Fun with Skates and Sleds

The Curlytops on lakes and hills.

4. THE CURLYTOPS AT UNCLE FRANK’S RANCH
or Little Folks on Ponyback

Out West on their uncle’s ranch they have a wonderful time.

5. THE CURLYTOPS AT SILVER LAKE
or On the Water with Uncle Ben

The Curlytops camp out on the shores of a beautiful lake.

6. THE CURLYTOPS AND THEIR PETS
or Uncle Toby’s Strange Collection

An old uncle leaves them to care for his collection of pets.

7. THE CURLYTOPS AND THEIR PLAYMATES
or Jolly Times Through the Holidays

They have great times with their uncle’s collection of animals.

8. THE CURLYTOPS IN THE WOODS
or Fun at the Lumber Camp

Exciting times in the forest for Curlytops.

9. THE CURLYTOPS AT SUNSET BEACH
or What Was Found in the Sand

The Curlytops have a fine time at the seashore.

10. THE CURLYTOPS TOURING AROUND
or The Missing Photograph Albums

The Curlytops get in some moving pictures.

11. THE CURLYTOPS IN A SUMMER CAMP
or Animal Joe’s Menagerie

There is great excitement as some mischievous monkeys break out of Animal Joe’s Menagerie.

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CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers

New York