Bettie, however, was sorely troubled. There was Jean shut in with attractive Henrietta and getting "chummier" with her every minute. There was Bettie, a solitary prisoner in a fuzzy red wrapper and bed slippers, sighing for her beloved Jean. To be sure, Bettie had brothers of assorted sizes and complexions, but not one of them could fill Jean's place in Bettie's troubled affections.
Had Bettie but known it, however, Jean was not having an entirely comfortable day. It happened to be one of Henrietta's "Frederika" days. The lively girl tormented bashful Wallace by pretending that she herself was excessively shy, and, as shyness was not one of her attributes, her victim was covered with confusion. She teased and bewildered Roger by chattering so rapidly in French that he couldn't understand a word she said, although he had studied the language for three years under Miss McGinnis and was proud of his progress. A number of times she became so witty at Jean's expense that "Sallie" had to rush to the rescue with profuse apologies. Also, she disturbed both Mr. and Mrs. Mapes by her extreme restlessness.
"My sakes," confided Mrs. Mapes, in the privacy of the kitchen, whither she had fled for the sake of quiet, "I'm glad that girl doesn't belong to me; she isn't still a minute."
"Perhaps," said Roger, who had escaped on the pretext of blacking his shoes, "it's because she has traveled so much. Maybe she feels as if she had to keep going."
"Bettie's certainly a great deal quieter," agreed Jean, who looked tired, "and she doesn't talk all night when a body wants to sleep; but Henrietta's more fun. You see, you never know what she's going to do next, but Bettie's always just the same."
At dinner time that day, Mrs. Mapes asked her husband if he knew whether the School Board had accomplished anything at the meeting held the night previously.
"No," replied Mr. Mapes, a tall, thin man with a preoccupied air. "And they never will as long as each one of them wants to put that schoolhouse in a different place. They can't come to any sort of an agreement."
Indeed, the poor School Board was having a perplexing time. The citizens that lived at the north end of the town wanted the new school built there. Other tax-payers declared that the southern portion of Lakeville, being more densely populated, offered a more suitable site. Then, since the town stretched westward for a long distance, a third group of persons were clamoring for the building in _their_ part of the town. Besides all these, there were persons who declared that the old site was the _only_ place for a school building. As the Board itself was divided as to opinion, it began to look as if Lakeville would have to get along without a schoolhouse unless it could afford to build four, and the tax-payers said it couldn't do that.