Betty Trevor Part 14

"Clothes!" cried Mrs Trevor vaguely.

"Clothes!" echoed her husband.

"Clothes!" shrieked Betty in a shrill treble.

"Cl-othes!" repeated the boys curiously. Only Jill's face lit up with comprehension, mingled with a spice of resentment.

"I know--I know! _Old_ clothes, she means! She has been selling old clothes--our old clothes, if you please--to 'All a-growing all a- blowing' in exchange for the palm! He likes them better than money. I heard him say so one day when Pam was seeing me off at the door. That's where dad's old coat has gone to, that's where your blouse is, Betty, not to mention some of the boys' ties, and gloves, and my umbrella. Oh, you wretched child! The hours I've spent searching for it! That's where everything has gone that we have been searching for for the last month. She has been gathering them together for the palm!"

Mrs Trevor's face was a study of complex emotion as she looked at her baby, but Pam's triumphant satisfaction did not waver for a moment. She nodded her head, and cried cheerfully--

"Oh, lots more things than that! He wanted so much, because palms is most expensive of all before Christmas, and I bought it when you were all out, and cook hid it, and we sprayed its leaves to make them bright.

In her last place Miss Bella did them every week with milk-and-water to make them s.h.i.+ne!"

She had not the least idea that there was anything to be ashamed of in her action; on the contrary, she was full of pride in her own cleverness. But it was impossible to allow such an occasion to pa.s.s, even on Christmas evening, when discipline is necessarily relaxed. Mrs Trevor's face was an eloquent mingling of tenderness and distress as she said--

"But did it never strike you, Pam dear, that these things were not your own to sell? That you had no right to sell them?"

"They were no use. You said to father, 'That coat is too disgraceful to be worn,' and Betty said the blouse mortified her pride, and Jill made fun of her umbrella because it was three and eleven-pence, and the wires bulged out. She said, 'I can't think why it is that I always lose silk ones, and I can't get rid of this wretched thing, do what I will!' I thought,"--Pam's voice sounded a tremulous note of disappointment--"I thought you would all be pleased with me for clearing them away."

"It would have been different, dear, if you had asked our permission, though we all have to put up with shabby things sometimes. As it was, it was both wrong and dishonest to take things which belonged to other people, and sell them without permission."

"But I sold my own too! My blue coat and hat, because you said yourself they didn't suit me, and you couldn't bear to see them on. I heard you speaking to Betty, and saying those very words. I thought you'd be pleased if you never did see them again!"

Mrs Trevor gasped in consternation.

"Oh, Pam, Pam, what am I to say to you? This is worse than I imagined!

Your blue coat--and it was quite good still! I can't possibly accept a present obtained in such a way!"

She cast an appealing glance at her husband, who had been sitting covering his mouth with his hand, and trying in vain to subdue the twinkle in his eyes as he listened to Pam's extraordinary confession.

Now he looked at the child's frightened, shrinking face, and said kindly--

"I think Pam and I will have a quiet talk together while you adjourn to the drawing-room. She did not mean to do wrong, and I am sure she will never offend again in the same way when she understands things in their right light."

So Mrs Trevor and the elder children went to the drawing-room, and, ten minutes later, a subdued little Pam crept up to her mother's side, holding out a bright crown-piece on her palm.

"Father says General Digby would like me best to pay my debts. Will you please give some to the others to pay for the things I took?"

"Thank you, Pam. I shall be very pleased to do so," said Mrs Trevor quietly. Her heart ached at being obliged to take the child's fortune from her, but she knew it was the right thing to do, and would not allow herself to hesitate. "And now, darling, I shall be delighted to have the palm. It is indeed the very thing I wanted."

Pam tried to smile, but her lips quivered. A whole crown-piece, and a new one into the bargain! A Vanderbilt deprived of his millions could not have felt his poverty more bitterly than she did at that moment!

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

THE CONCERT.

Next afternoon Betty left Jill engaged in filling up the blanks in her Christmas letters, and Pam lovingly dressing up Pamela junior in her various costumes, and, accompanied by her father and Miles, called for Cynthia and set out to walk across the Park to the Albert Hall, where Miss Beveridge and a friend had arranged to meet them in the box.

Cynthia looked delightfully graceful and pretty in a blue costume and hat, which had already caused Betty many pangs of envy, and perhaps it was a remembrance of his own youth which made Dr Trevor pa.s.s his hand through Betty's arm and lead her ahead, so that his son should have the pleasure of a talk with this very charming little lady. Miles was the best of good fellows, all solid goodness and worth, but he was still in the boorish stage, and it would do him good to be drawn out of himself, and forced to play the gallant.

Miles himself was by no means sure that he approved of the arrangement.

He would have preferred to walk behind Cynthia, and admire her pretty hair, her tiny feet, and the general air of daintiness which was to him the greatest charm of all, but he had not the slightest idea what to say, and thought of the long walk before him with something approaching consternation. Fortunately for him Cynthia was not in the least shy, and had so seldom an opportunity of talking to anyone of her own age, that she could have chattered away the whole afternoon without the slightest difficulty.

"It isn't often _you_ have a holiday, is it?" she said, smiling at him in her bright, friendly manner. "Once when I was up very early I saw you going out before six o'clock, and now if I'm awake I hear the door slam--you do slam it very loudly, you know!--and know it is you going out to your work. It makes me feel so lazy, because I am supposed to do half an hour's practising before nine o'clock breakfast, and I do feel it such a penance."

Miles laughed shortly.

"Did you ever see me coming back?" he inquired, and when Cynthia nodded, with a twinkle in her eye--"Betty was afraid you would believe I was a _real_ workman," he told her. "She thought you would put us down as quite impossible people, having a workman living in the house!"

"Betty is a goose," said Betty's new friend cheerily, "but she is a nice goose. I like her. I guessed you were learning to be an engineer, because I have a cousin who did the same. I like a man to do manly work. I suppose you are dreadfully interested in all those noisy engines and things. Tell me about them."

It was rather a large order, and Miles would have answered shortly enough if an ordinary acquaintance had put such a question, but there was a magnetism about Cynthia which broke down reserve, and to his own astonishment he found himself answering quite easily and naturally.

"I am not studying for railway engineering--I am going in for mines.

It's a different course altogether, and in some ways much more difficult. There seems nothing that a mining engineer ought not to know--a.s.saying, and surveying, and everything to do with minerals, and, of course, a thorough understanding of pumps, and all the machinery employed. Then he ought to know something about doctoring, and even cooking, if he wants to be an all-round success, for ten to one he will be sent to some out-of-the-way wilderness where there is no one else to look after the comfort of his men--"

"Is that what you intend to do? Go and bury yourself at the end of the world?"

"I expect so--any time after the next six months. I shall have finished my course by that time, and be on the look-out for the first opening that comes!"

"What will Betty do without you?"

Betty's brother shrugged his shoulders with the unconcern with which, it is to be feared, most lads regard their sisters' feelings.

"Oh, she'll get used to it! It's no use sticking at home if one wants to get on in the world. I should never be content to jog along in a secondary position all my life, as some fellows do. I don't care how hard I work, but I mean to get to the very top of the tree!"

"Wish I'd been born a boy! It must be delicious to rough it in the wilds," sighed Cynthia, stepping daintily over a puddle, and looking down with concern to see if perchance there was a splash on her boots.

"Boys have much the best of it; they have a chance of doing something great in the world, while girls have to stay at home and--darn their socks! All the great things are done by men--in war, in science, in discovery, even in art and literature, though a few women may equal them there. All the great things are made by men, too, the wonderful cathedrals and buildings, and the great bridges and battles.h.i.+ps--all the big things. There's so little left for us."

Miles looked at her beneath drawn brows, his rugged face softening with the smile that Betty loved to see.

"And who makes the men?" he asked simply, and Cynthia peered at him in startled, eager fas.h.i.+on, and cried--

"You mean--_we_ do? Women, mothers and sisters and wives? Is _that_ what you mean? Oh, I _do_ think you say nice things!" (Shy, silent old Miles being accused of saying "nice things" to a member of the opposite s.e.x! Wonders will never cease!) "I shall remember that, next time I see a lucky boy pa.s.s by rattling the railings, and looking as if the world belonged to him, while I must stand behind the curtains, because it's not 'lady-like' to stare out of the windows! I do ramp and rage sometimes!"

Miles' laugh rang out so merrily that Betty turned to stare in amazement. The idea of Cynthia doing anything so violent as "ramp and rage" seemed impossible to realise, as one looked at her dainty figure and sweet pink-and-white face. All the same it was a pleasure to find that she did not belong to the wax-doll type of girl, but had a will and a temper of her own.

"Yes, you may laugh," she cried, laughing herself, "but it's quite true.

Or perhaps it would be more 'lady-like' to say that I feel like 'a caged bird,' as people do in books. In future I shall console myself with the thought that I may be the lever which supplies the force. Is that simile right, or ridiculously wrong? It's rash of me to use engineering terms before you. I mean that I'll try to be a good influence to some man, and so inspire work, if I can't do it myself.

The worst is, I know so few men! Father is abroad, all our relations are far away, and until I come out I seem to meet nothing but girls, old and young. Of course, if I got to know you better, I might influence _you_!"

She turned her laughing face upon him, the face of a frank, innocent child, for, though she was nearly seventeen years old, Cynthia was absolutely innocent of the flirtatious instinct which is strong in some little girls in the coral and pinafore stage. She offered her friends.h.i.+p to Betty's brother as composedly as she had done to Betty herself; it was Miles who blushed, and stared at the pavement, and his voice sounded hoa.r.s.e and difficult as he mumbled his reply--

"I wish you--I'm sure I should--awfully good thing for me if you did!"

"Very well; but you will have to do great things, remember! I shan't be satisfied with anything less. It will be good for me too, for I shall have to be very stern with myself, if I am to influence someone else.