“Oh, Mother!” repeated Jess. “What a splendid chance!”
“Why, Josephine, not so very splendid,” said her mother, slowly. “He only guarantees me five dollars weekly. That is not much.”
“It will feed us—if we are careful,” gasped Jess.
“Goodness, Josephine! What a horribly practical child you are getting to be. I don’t know what the girls of to-day are coming to. Now, that would never have appealed to me when I was your age. I never knew how papa and mamma got food for us.”
Jess might have told her that conditions had not changed much since her girlhood!
“But five dollars regularly will help us a whole lot, Mother,” she urged.
“And it will necessitate my going out considerably—and appearing at receptions and places. Really—I have refused a number of invitations because of my wardrobe. My excuse of ‘work’ is not always strictly true,” sighed Mrs. Morse.
“But do, _do_ try it, Mother!” cried Jess.
“Well,” said the lady, “it may do no harm. And it may be an opening for something better. But, really, nobody must know that I am a mere society reporter on the Centerport _Courier_.”
The girls of the Junior class in modern history were filing out on Friday.
“What do you know about that?” hissed Bobby Hargrew, in the ears of her chums. “Gee Gee is getting meaner and meaner every day she lives.”
“What did she do to you now?” demanded Dora Lockwood, one of the twins.
“Didn’t you notice? She sent Postscript to hunt up Moscow on the map of Russia. Now! you know very well that Moscow was burned in 1812!”
“You ridiculous child!” exclaimed Nellie Agnew. “You will never do anything in school but make jokes and try the patience of your teachers.”
“I am no friend to teachers, I admit,” confided Bobby to Dora and Dorothy. “Don’t you think they ought to be made to earn their money?”
“Any teacher who is so unfortunate as to have you in his, or her, class, is bound to earn all the salary coming to them,” declared Dorothy.
“Bad grammar—but you don’t know any better,” declared the harum-scarum. “You’re just as bad as Freddie Atkinson. Dimple asked him who compiled the dictionary, and Freddie said, ‘Daniel Webster.’
“‘Oh, Professor!’ exclaimed Fred. ‘I thought Noah compiled the Ark?’”
As the girls were laughing over this story of Bobby Hargrew’s, Eve Sitz came up briskly. Laura and Jess were near at hand, and in a moment a group of the Juniors who always “trained together” were in animated discussion.