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In truth she had good need of comfort, for Berta Abbott herself had said that she was peculiar. And peculiar meant queer! That evening Robbie sat down to study for the Latin test announced for the next day. Miss Cutter was studying, too, harder than ever. The green shade was pulled so fiercely forward that a fringe of hair stood up in a crown where the elastic had rumpled it.
But the eyes were no longer unnaturally dilated, and the face had a more healthful pallor. "Mrs. Greening begged me to look out for you. She is so anxious about Berta. We have been doing everything we can, but I am afraid the child is seriously ill. It is the third shelter from the end, south side." She pointed out the place. He had lifted his hat with his short, brusque salute.
"Oh, that was different," exclaimed Berta. "I am perfectly capable of judging for myself. But Bea is such a scatterbrain that I can't help feeling" she hesitated, then added as if to herself, "There isn't any sense in feeling responsible. She is old enough " "I can't hear when you mumble," called Robbie. "Bea is an awful idiot," replied Berta in a louder key.
Berta Franke says that when one is dark under the eyes one has it and that when one gets a baby then one doesn't have it any more until one gets another. She told us too how one gets it, but I didn't really believe what she said, for I thought she did not know herself exactly. Then she got very cross and said: "All right, I won't tell you any more. If I don't know myself."
We waited till one day in June when she asked us how we had managed to win Mary out of her shell. As I look back now I cannot possibly understand how we succeeded. It was the most discouraging, hopeless, hardest work I ever stuck to. Over and over again Berta and I would have given up if it had not been for Lila. She said that she dared not fail.
And she had leaped from the moving steps and vanished through the great iron gates of the Lodge. Back in the dormitory before the bulletin-board Miss Bonner, the graduate fellow, was staring at the new placard. She gave a slight start of astonishment at a glimpse of Berta hastening past her.
Two of the seniors who were going shopping lamented that they had neglected to apply for opera tickets until the house had been sold out. Berta gazed at them pityingly. To have the money and to be in the city, and yet not to be able to go! Why hadn't they thought of it in time? She had anticipated it years in advance.
Then because she had heard the story from Robbie Belle two minutes earlier, she pretended to be absorbed in the notices, for she suspected that any comment would start the tears that Berta was holding back. However, she was smiling to herself after the girl had vanished up the stairs.
"That's the great thing I miss at college, don't you, Bea? There aren't any babies here. We ought to borrow some once in a while to vary the monotony of books. I have three little nieces at home, you know. Such darlings! I wish I had one here now this minute." "Which do you choose the baby or the book? Oh, Berta! Would you sacrifice this book for a mere child?
There! the third girl from Berta was trying to explain her own ignorance and failing brilliantly. Now the second was stammering through a transparent bluff. Berta had settled back, coolly resigned to fate. How she must suffer, after having stooped to ask for aid! Poor Robbie Belle! Poor, lonely, disappointed Robbie Belle!
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