Betty Gordon in Washington | Page 5

practical mind to consideration of the immediate
moment. The so-called parlor was hopeless she knew, and she
dismissed it from the list of possibilities at once. It was a sparsely

furnished, gloomy room, damp and musty from being tightly closed all
summer, and the unpainted, rough boards had never been carpeted.
"There's the porch," said Betty suddenly. "Luckily that's shady in the
afternoon, and we can bring out the best things to make it look used.
You let me fix it, Mrs. Peabody. And you can wear--let me see, what
can you wear?"
Mrs. Peabody waited patiently, her eyes mirroring her explicit faith in
Betty's planning powers.
"Your white shirtwaist and skirt," announced the girl at length. "They're
both clean, aren't they? I thought so. Well, I'll lend you a ribbon girdle,
and you can turn in the high neck so it will be more in style. You'll see,
it will look all right."
While Mrs. Peabody washed her dishes with more energy than usual
because she had a definite interest in the coming hours, Betty flew to
the shabby room that was titled by courtesy the parlor. She flung up the
windows and opened the blinds recklessly. She would take only the
plain wooden chair and the two rockers, she decided, for the stuffed
plush furniture would look ridiculous masquerading as summer
furnishings. The sturdy, square table would fit into her scheme, and
also the small rug before the blackened fireplace.
She dashed back to the kitchen and grabbed the broom. She did not
dare scrub the porch floor for fear that it would not dry in time, but she
swept it carefully and spread down the rug. Then one by one, and
making a separate trip each time, she carried out the table and the
chairs. With a passing sigh for the bouquet abandoned in the field and
probably withered by this time, she managed to get enough flowers
from the overgrown neglected garden near the house to fill the really
lovely colonial glass vase she had discovered that morning.
"It looks real pretty," pronounced Mrs. Peabody, when she was brought
out to see the transformed corner of the porch. "Looks as if we used it
regular every afternoon, doesn't it? Do you think it will be all right not
to ask him in, Betty?"

"Of course," said Betty stoutly. "Don't dare ask him in! If he wants a
drink of water, call me, and I'll get it for him. You must be sitting in
your chair reading a magazine when he comes and he'll think you
always spend your afternoons like that."
"I'll hurry and get dressed," agreed Mrs. Peabody, giving a last satisfied
glance at the porch. "I declare, I never saw your beat, Betty, for making
things look pretty."
Betty needed that encouragement, for when it came to making Mrs.
Peabody look pretty in the voluminous white skirt and stiff shirtwaist
of ten years past, the task seemed positively hopeless. Betty, however,
was not one to give in easily, and when she had brushed and pinned her
hostess's thin hair as softly as she could arrange it, and had turned in
the high collar of her blouse and pinned it with a cameo pin, the one
fine thing remaining to Mrs. Peabody from her wedding outfit, adding a
soft silk girdle of gray-blue, she knew the improvement was marked.
Mrs. Peabody stared at herself in the glass contentedly.
"I didn't know I could look that nice," she said with a candor at once
pathetic and naive. "I've been wishing he wouldn't come, but now I
kinda hope he will."
Betty gently propelled her to the porch and established her in one of the
rocking chairs with a magazine to give her an air of leisure.
"You'll come and talk to him, won't you?" urged Mrs. Peabody
anxiously. "It's been so long since I've seen a stranger I won't know
what to say."
"Yes, you will," Betty assured her "I'll come out after you've talked a
little while. He won't stay long, I imagine, because he will probably
have a number of calls to pay."
"Well, I hope Joseph stays out of sight," remarked Joseph Peabody's
wife frankly. "Of course, in time the new minister will know him as
well as the old one did; but I would like to have him call on me like
other parishioners first."

CHAPTER III
BOB HAS GREAT NEWS
The new minister proved to be a gentle old man, evidently retired to a
country charge and, in his way, quite as diffident as Mrs. Peabody. He
was apparently charmed to be entertained on the porch, and saw
nothing wrong with the neglected house and grounds. His near-sighted
eyes, beaming with kindness and good-will, apparently took comfort
and serenity for granted, and when Betty