"Why don't you go if you want to?" inquired Robbie Belle as she reflectively picked up her roll again. "We can invite somebody else to take your place at the table. Bea and Lila are going to the hothouse for smilax and chrysanthemums."
"Why don't I go?" Berta leaned back and drew a long and melancholy sigh from the bottom of her boots. "Girls," she turned to the others who were still lingering over their breakfast, "she asks why I don't go to hear grand opera. And it costs two dollars railroad fare even on a commutation ticket, and seats are three dollars up, and I have precisely thirty-seven cents to last me till Christmas."
"Oh," commented Robbie Belle repentantly, "I didn't think. I'd love to pay for all of you, only I haven't any money either."
Berta clutched at her heart and bent double in a bow of gratitude unspeakable. Robbie Belle continued to stare at her thoughtfully. "If you truly want to, Berta, we might save up and go to the opera some other day. I'm willing."
"Willing! Dear child! Willing! Behold how she immolates herself upon the altar of friendship! She is willing to go to grand opera and sit listening to sweet sounds from dawn to dark----"
"Oh, Berta!" interrupting in alarm, "not from dawn to dark really? How about----"
"Luncheon?" the other caught up the sentence tragically. "Ah, no, but calm thyself, dear one. Be serene--as usual. There is an intermission for luncheon. We could go to a restaurant. It would be a restaurant with a vinegar cruet in the centre of the table and plates of thick bread at each end and lovely little oyster crackers for the soup. Perhaps if you had two dollars extra you might order terrapin."
"And pickles," put in Bea generously, "with striped ice-cream."
"And angel food with chocolate frosting an inch thick," contributed Lila.
"It's a long time till spring," said Robbie Belle regretfully, "but very likely we will need all that while to save it up."
As it turned out, they did need all that while to save it up. For beauty-loving Berta with her eternally slim purse and hopelessly meagre account-book, the plan at first seemed only a vision of the moment. Nobody can save out of nothing, can she? Robbie Belle, however, had a stubborn fashion of clinging to an idea when once it became fixed. Her ideas, furthermore, were apt to be clean-cut and definite. This is how she reasoned it out: