Part 6 (1/2)
”She's Diantha Leavitt, and she works in the rubber factory, and studies just awfully at home, and I help her some going and coming on the train.”
”Oh, she is not one of the Seminary girls, then? She has never been here? Dear child, how do you think she can graduate if she has never been here to school?”
Glory's eager face fell. ”I didn't know but you'd let her,” she said, slowly. ”She's just as smart as can be. I'm just sure she can pa.s.s the examinations. It would mean so much to Diantha to pa.s.s. I'm sorry I troubled you, Miss Sweet.w.a.ter--I didn't know.”
But the kind-hearted Princ.i.p.al detained Glory and drew out the whole wistful little story of the Other Girl. At the end, she said, ”I am glad to know of her. Such a girl must be encouraged. I will keep mindful of her and see if I cannot help her in some way.”
”Thank you. I hope you can help her. She wants to do so much if she can ever get to earning. It seems as though almost anyone could learn if they had a mother to help, and a Tiny Tim. There's an Aunt Hope. I can do it for her. I'm glad I've got to work. And thanks to Di, I do not stand so bad a show of graduating--with a great deal of honor, too. Dear old Di!”
More of the late winter days snowed past, and there came, by and by, hints of spring--faint suggestions of green in the bare, brown spots, whiffs of spring tonic in the air and clear little bird-calls overhead. New courage was born in Glory's heart and the Other Girl's, and both studied harder and harder with each day that went by. The Crosspatch Conductor took note of the two brown heads bent over the book and wondered behind his grim mask.
”What is it, anyhow?” he asked one day, late in the spring, stopping before them in the aisle.
The two pairs of eyes met his laughingly. ”Oh--things. Splendid things!” Glory said. ”Certificates and diplomas some day, and sick folks with glad faces, and little boys with twin legs! Isn't that enough to 'pay'?”
”Umph!” the Crosspatch Conductor muttered in his beard, and strode on down the aisle. But he beckoned Glory aside that night on the home trip and questioned her about the Other Girl. Glory told him the whole story in a few hurried words.
”That's why she's studying so hard,” she wound up, out of breath.
”She wants to get it all and some day be a teacher.”
”And you're helping her,” the Crosspatch Conductor said, gruffly.
”Mercy, no! She's helping me. That's why _I'm_ studying so hard! I don't see what you mean--oh! In the very beginning, you mean? _That?_ I'd forgotten there ever was a time when I helped her. I s'pose I might have a little, at first.”
The conductor put his big hand on Glory's shoulder with a touch as light and caressing as that of a woman.
”You're the right kind, both o' you,” he said. ”It never comes amiss to help anybody. I've half a mind to try a little of it myself. See here, don't you tell her and go to raising hopes, but it kind of seems to me as though I knew a place where she could teach right away. I know a boy who hasn't any mother that wants to learn things.
She'd make a pretty good sort of a teacher for a little feller who can never go outdoors and get the suns.h.i.+ne, and all that, now wouldn't she?”
”Oh, are you sure there is such a boy? Can you get him for Diantha?
Would it pay her money--lots of it?”
”Easy! Easy! Don't go too fast. It wouldn't pay her a fortune, 'cause fortunes ain't found like hazel nuts, growing on bushes. But it ought to pay her pretty tolerable. I'm sure enough about the boy;” and a sad look came into the conductor's eyes. ”He hasn't any mother, you see, and it's pretty hard for the little chap.”
”Is he your boy?” asked Glory, putting her little hand on the conductor's sleeve and looking sympathetically up into the grave eyes.
The conductor nodded. ”He's mine, and his grandmother says he ought to be learning things--poor Dan! That girl over there wouldn't be a very bad one to help him get hold, now would she?”
”Oh! Oh! Oh! What will she say? Why, if I had a little boy and he couldn't go out into the suns.h.i.+ne, and he wanted to learn, I'd rather have Diantha's little finger to help him with than the whole of some folks. You don't know Di.”
The conductor laughed. ”I guess I haven't been watching you two this winter without finding out something,” he said, his eyes holding a twinkle. Then the old, gruff manner came back to him and he added brusquely, ”But there, don't you go to countin' the chickens before they're hatched. I'll have to talk with grandma first; maybe she'd rather have a sort of circ.u.mspect person.”
”But your Danny wouldn't--you said his name was Dan,” said Glory, her face one sea of dimples, and her eyes like diamonds. ”'Most seems as if a little boy who couldn't go out in the suns.h.i.+ne ought to have the one he'd like best with him. He wouldn't care much for a--a circ.u.mspect person, would he?” asked Glory, a merry twinkle in her eyes.
”There now, you go along!” said the conductor, laughing in spite of himself.
But Glory did not ”go along” until she had caught the big hand and squeezed it between her soft little palms as it was extended to help her down to the Douglas platform.