"
"Would you like to have me tell her? I think she'll understand there are
some things you haven't learned for you haven't a mother to teach you."
"Uncle Dan says maybe I'll have to live with the old ladies all the
time, so they might as well know I wasn't trying to be mean," she
whispered resignedly.
"I'll tell Miss Maria, then, and perhaps you and she will be better
friends from now on because she'll know you want to please her. And now,
I came over to tell you that the U.S.C. is going into New York to-day to
see something of the Botanical Garden and the Arboretum. I'm going with
them and they'd be glad to have you go, too."
"They won't be very glad, but I'd like to go," responded the girl, her
face lighted with the nearest approach to affection Mrs. Smith ever had
seen upon it.
CHAPTER XV
FUR AND FOSSILS
When the Club gathered at the station to go into town Mary was arrayed
in a light blue satin dress as unsuitable for her age as it was for the
time of day and the way of traveling. The other girls were dressed in
blue or tan linen suits, neat and plain. Secretly Mary thought their
frocks were not to be named in the same breath with hers, but once when
she had said something about the simplicity of her dress to Ethel Blue,
Ethel had replied that Helen had learned from her dressmaking teacher
that dresses should be suited to the wearer's age and occupation, and
that she thought her linen blouses and skirts were entirely suitable for
a girl of fourteen who was a gardener when she wasn't in school.
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