Plain Jane and Pretty Betty

OR

The Girl Who Won Out

BY

MAY HOLLIS BARTON

Author of “The Girl from the Country,” “Nell Grayson’s Ranching Days,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Books for Girls

By MAY HOLLIS BARTON

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

THE GIRL FROM THE COUNTRY Or Laura Mayford’s City Experiences

THREE GIRL CHUMS AT LAUREL HALL Or The Mystery of the School by the Lake

NELL GRAYSON’S RANCHING DAYS Or A City Girl in the Great West

FOUR LITTLE WOMEN OF ROXBY Or The Queer Old Lady Who Lost Her Way

PLAIN JANE AND PRETTY BETTY Or The Girl Who Won Out

(Other volumes in preparation.)

Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York

Copyright, 1926, by

Cupples & Leon Company

Plain Jane and Pretty Betty

Made in the U. S. A.

CONTENTS

[Pg 1]

PLAIN JANE AND PRETTY BETTY

CHAPTER I ON THE MOVING VAN

“Here’s the moving van now!”

Jane Cross ran into the front room where Mrs. Powell was sitting patiently on one of the many roped boxes that was to go with the load.

“It isn’t more than half an hour late, at that,” Jane added, as Mrs. Powell looked up at her questioningly.

“Pretty good for a moving van,” said the latter, with a faint smile. “Especially in Coal Run. Is it here?”

For answer, Jane pointed to the big van that had backed its yawning doors close to the broken boardwalk that led from the road to the Powell front porch.

Mrs. Powell got up with a gesture of weariness and went out to two burly men who dropped from the van. Jane followed and remained on the porch, watching.

[Pg 2]

Queer thoughts were running through Jane’s head, jubilant thoughts, almost.

She was leaving Coal Run! That dirty, dreary little town the population of which consisted to a great extent of miners with their more or less dirty and stupid families.

Jane was not at home with these people, with the boys and girls who attended the dingy schoolhouse on Cattle Creek. For some reason that she could not fathom, the crude ways, the uncouth manners of the inhabitants of the mining town offended and puzzled her.

Jane had fought against this inherent difference, this instinctive shrinking. She had been brought up to believe that pride was sinful. She believed this, and honestly tried to change herself since she alone was odd among the children of Coal Run.

It was hard, though; and Jane Cross had succeeded but indifferently. If one had asked her schoolmates, they would have said that she succeeded not at all, would have given her no credit for a hard fight.

Meanwhile, they felt her difference and resented it.

No matter how poor her clothes, Jane was always neat, her hands and face were scrubbed to a shining cleanliness, her bobbed brown hair [Pg 3]was brushed sleekly close to her small round head until it shone.

Though she was not homely, was even nice looking in a simple unobtrusive way, the school children of Coal Run had retaliated by calling her “Plain Jane,” jeering at her and taunting her in a way that made the sensitive girl’s life miserable.

There was nothing that she could regret leaving behind in Coal Run except, perhaps, the little house where she had lived contentedly with Mrs. Cross for as long back as she could remember.

The latter had been a widow—this, too, for as long as Jane could remember. Mr. Cross, a miner, had been killed in a mine explosion. The company he had worked for had provided for his widow during her lifetime and would have continued to provide for her if she had lived twenty years longer.

But Mrs. Cross had died quietly one night in her sleep, and Jane awoke to find herself alone in the world and—penniless.

Things might have gone very hard for the girl—then only ten—had it not been for the prompt friendliness of Mr. and Mrs. Powell. This plump and kindly couple took the heartbroken girl into their home, and into their hearts as well, and from that time on treated her as though she were their own.

[Pg 4]

Now Jane was sixteen, though looking and seeming younger by a year or two, and misfortune had come to Mr. Powell. There was a merger and a change of officers in the coal company for which Mr. Powell had worked in their local office for years, with the result that Jane’s benefactor presently found himself without a position and with only a little money in the bank.

It was hard on him, a change like this coming late in life, and for a time it seemed as though the blow had paralyzed him. He rallied soon, emerging from his dazed state to find himself a position in the thriving town of Greenville, forty miles from Coal Run.

It was a bookkeeper’s job that did not pay much that had been offered him, but it was a raft to cling to until he could look about and find something better. Mr. Powell accepted the post gratefully and immediately made preparations for the removal of Mrs. Powell and Jane to their future home.

Jane was not sorry to leave Coal Run. Greenville might prove little better, but at least it would be a change from the mining town, and youth is hopeful. Jane would try to be very pleasant and patient and helpful in Greenville. She would truly try to make people like her.

The wounds inflicted by the thoughtlessly cruel children of Coal Run went deeper than even Jane [Pg 5]thought, and, unless quickly healed, promised to leave scars that might gravely affect her future.

Even now she was shy, shrinking, super-sensitive, quick to see a slight even where none was intended. It was good for her that she was leaving Coal Run before the habit of thinking herself inferior became a fixed obsession.

Now as she watched the moving-men and Mrs. Powell from the vantage point of the porch she was surprised to see Mr. Powell descend from the truck, his short legs dangling so far from the ground that he had to jump to reach it.

Mr. Powell was so short and round and comfortable-looking generally that few suspected him of possessing the temper of a lean six-footer. This temper would blaze out at times, blasting all before it, only to retire as suddenly as it had come, leaving Mr. Powell as bland and round and smiling as ever. It was a righteous temper however, and only flashed forth in a righteous cause. Therefore, people feared it and were wont to treat its owner with a respect they might not otherwise have accorded him.

Jane loved him, as indeed she loved both these kindly people, and would have gone on hands and knees to serve either one of them.

Mr. Powell was not in a temper now, Jane was glad to see. In fact, he appeared very much [Pg 6]pleased with himself and was on exceedingly friendly terms with both the burly moving-men.

“You see I came with them, to make sure they got here before night, Lou,” the girl heard him call to Mrs. Powell. “And what’s more, I’m going all the way to Greenville with them, to make sure of the same thing.”

“What’s to become of Jane and me?” Mrs. Powell retorted.

“You will go on the train, of course,” returned her husband. “Unless,” jokingly, “you’d like to ride on top of the van.”

It was then that Jane had her bold thought. How she dared put it into words she never afterward could tell. But in a moment she found herself running over the broken boards of the walk toward Mr. Powell.

“Oh!” she cried, “I don’t suppose you really would let me go with you on the van?”

“Bless us!” cried Mr. Powell, appealing to the cheerfully grinning moving-men to share the joke with him. “Jane has taken me seriously. She really does want to ride on the top of the van.”

“Not on the top of the van,” Jane wheedled—and she knew just how to do it, too, with those she loved. “In the front seat, or in the van, or on the furniture itself—anywhere, so long as I can go with you.”

[Pg 7]

“Bless us!” said Mr. Powell again. “The child’s in earnest. After all,” shaking his head and looking attentively at the moving-men, “what’s to prevent?”

“Nothing, sir,” said one of the latter, grinning broadly. “I can sit up behind with the load and there’s room for three on the front seat, if the young lady wants to go along.”

Jane’s eyes began to dance. There was color in her usually pale face. She looked appealingly at Mrs. Powell.

“Do you mind?” she asked. “Will it be very lonesome for you, going up without me on the train?”

Mrs. Powell smiled reassuringly.

“I am so tired that I shall probably sleep all the way to Greenville, anyway,” she said. “If it will be any pleasure to you, go along on the truck, my dear child, by all means!”

So it was settled, and Jane waited impatiently while the furniture was piled on the truck and securely fastened in at the back with ropes.

This took only a short time, for the possessions of the Powells were limited, and Jane was soon standing beside the truck, her hat and coat on, waiting for one of the men to hand her to the high seat.

While she stood there, her eyes happened to turn up the road.

[Pg 8]

She became suddenly white and grasped at the arm of the man nearest her.

“Oh, please!” she gasped. “Can’t we get away from here? Oh, I must get away from here, in a hurry!”

Alarmed by her look and manner, the good-hearted fellow half lifted Jane to the high seat and swung himself up after her.

“All set, Bill!” he called to his mate. “Mr. Powell, ready?”

At the words Mr. Powell himself appeared at the side of the truck and swung himself up into the seat beside Jane. The girl huddled down between the two men, her eyes fixed steadily on the road ahead of her.

As the engine of the truck turned over with a grumbling roar the sound of children’s shrill voices raised tauntingly came from the road behind them.

“Plain Jane! Plain Jane! Had to ride in the van! Couldn’t ride in the train! Plain Jane! Plain Jane!”

Long after the voices had been drowned by distance and by the roaring of the motor they rang in Jane’s ears, filled her eyes with tears and her heart with an aching pain.

Oh, she was glad to leave Coal Run! Glad! Glad!

After a while the cool air on her face and Mr. [Pg 9]Powell’s gently tactful and very funny conversation soothed her and brought a faint smile to her lips.

After all, she was a very lucky girl to have such dear, kind friends as the Powells. And she was leaving Coal Run! Greenville could not be worse. It might be much, much better.

A half-hour passed. Coal Run was left far behind when a sudden lurch of the truck caused her to grip the seat with both hands. The driver was taking a sharp curve on a rough, hilly road at a perilous rate of speed, Jane thought. She wished he would not be quite so daring.

Then came a noise like the exploding of a cannon in her ears.

Jane cried out in terror as the truck lurched, then skidded sickeningly across the road.

[Pg 10]

CHAPTER II A BAD SPILL

If the tree had not been directly in the way a serious accident might have been avoided.

But the tree was in the way. The driver wrenched at his wheel in an effort to right the van and regain the road.

No use!

With a terrific impact van and tree came together, and Jane was hurled from her seat. For an instant that seemed an eternity she felt herself flying through the air, then came with a crash and a crackle of broken twigs into a mass of bushes fifteen feet from the road.

She lay there dazed for a moment, the breath knocked out of her body. She was almost afraid to try to move, for fear she would find she could not do so.

It had been an accident, a pretty bad accident. She ought, by all rights, she thought, to have been killed!

It was consideration for Mr. Powell and what might have happened to him that made her decide [Pg 11]to get up. This, she found, was by no means an easy matter!

She seemed to be lying on a bed of thistles, and her slightest gesture dug a sharp point deeper into her shrinking flesh. She was becoming increasingly conscious that her body was all one dull ache. Her nerves were jumping, and she had an absurd desire to cry.

Some one was breaking through the bushes behind her.

They were not all dead then! Some one had survived!

That some one was lifting her up from her uncomfortable couch, some one who chuckled softly.

“Well, we’re all alive, anyway,” said the author of the chuckle as he set Jane gently on her feet. “And, judgin’ from the sounds back there, some of us are kickin’, too!”

Jane saw nothing to laugh about, or even chuckle over. She was sore all over and her legs wabbled painfully. The thought came to her that perhaps moving-men were used to knocking trees over with their moving vans, and so did not take such incidents as seriously as more ordinary people.

“Is—is—Mr. Powell—all right?” Jane asked tremulously. Her lips would quiver.

“Yes, Miss. Hale and hearty as ever and in [Pg 12]full possession of his lungs, as you’ll hear if you listen quiet for a minute.”

Jane listened, and was inclined to believe that the moving-man was right. Mr. Powell was evidently in one of his towering rages and was giving the unfortunate driver of the truck full benefit of it.

Shakily, with the arm of the moving-man through hers, Jane made her way back to the road.

She was not badly hurt. In fact, it seemed a miracle to her that none of them was badly hurt. Except for a good many bruises, a severe shaking up, and the shock, they seemed as good as ever!

The furniture appeared to have got the worst of it. Not new to start with and showing an irritating tendency to fall apart even before they had been loaded into the van, several of the chairs and other articles of furniture belonging to the Powells had been rather severely damaged.

It was this fact that Mr. Powell was pointing out to a bruised and sheepish moving-man when Jane and her rescuer reappeared on the road.

“But I couldn’t help it if a tire burst,” the man pointed out, not unreasonably. “That’s likely to happen to any one. We was on a hill and I couldn’t keep the blamed thing from skiddin’.”

“Yes, that may be all very well! But why were going so fast on the hill?” cried Mr. Powell, his [Pg 13]point not unreasonable either. “I thought you were going too fast and, if you will remember, I said so several times.”

“It wouldn’t have made no difference,” the man persisted doggedly. “When a tire busts a truck skids, and the heavier the truck the worse the skid.”

“Then do you mean to tell me,” Mr. Powell rose on tiptoes and fairly towered in his wrath over the taller man, “that you and your company don’t hold yourself responsible for my broken furniture? Do you mean to tell me that because a tire is likely to burst and cause an accident, I will have to pay for the damages that result from that accident? Do you mean to tell me——”

“I ain’t meanin’ to tell you anything!” the moving-man interrupted belligerently. He was evidently a good-tempered, easy-going fellow, but almost any one will lose his natural good temper if a wrathful finger is shaken long enough beneath his nose. “It ain’t my business to tell you anything! If you’ve got to fight any one, go fight the company. I ain’t got nothing to say about it! Anyway——”

“No, but if I have anything to say about it, you’ll lose your job!” cried Mr. Powell, his anger whetted by opposition. “When I do put in a complaint to your company, I’ll tell them——”

[Pg 14]

“What will you tell ’em?” growled the moving-man, and moved a little closer.

Here Jane thought it was time for her to take a hand in the discussion. This she did literally, taking Mr. Powell’s hand that was doubled into a belligerent fist and clinging to it resolutely.

“Please don’t, Uncle Dink,” she begged. Mr. Powell’s first name was Dickinson, but every one called him “Dink” and it seemed, somehow, to fit him.

Mr. Powell tried to take his hand away, but Jane still clung to it.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it, Uncle Dink——”

“Who said he meant it?” Mr. Powell pretended to growl at the girl, but he was weakening. Jane followed up her advantage.

“It was an accident, Uncle Dink. I’m sure the company will make good on any damage——”

“Sure, it will,” broke in the moving-man, for he was a peaceable fellow when given half a chance. “It don’t want no dissatisfied customers, and it’ll make good on all the damage. Although lot of the makin’ good will come out of my pocket,” he added ruefully.

“And serve you right!” snapped Mr. Powell, still irate, though softened. “Now if you’ll get busy and try to make up for lost time I’ll be obliged to you. We’ve a long way to go and I’d like to reach there before dark.”

[Pg 15]

“So would I,” growled the driver, with a doubtful glance at the van. “The question right now is—will the old bus run?”

In the next few minutes that proved to be a very pertinent question indeed! Something had been done to the engine of the “old bus” that made it very doubtful if it would ever run again.

As the two men several times declared in the exasperating hour that followed, they had been employed to move furniture, not to repair engines.

“You’ve been employed to get me to Greenville this afternoon,” said Mr. Powell irascibly. “How are you going to do it?”

The driver glared at the smaller man.

“If you could tell us that, you might save us a lot of trouble,” he grumbled. “And now if you want to get to Greenville at all, you’d better stop talking.”

Again Jane acted the part of peacemaker.

“If we could get some horses to tow us,” she suggested, “maybe we could find some place where we could get help.”

“There ain’t no sech animal, Miss,” the second man assured her gloomily. “As for horses, it would take about six to tow this load. And where are we going to get ’em?”

Another question, and still unanswerable.

It seemed to Jane as time passed and the driver [Pg 16]still tinkered vainly with his engine that they might spend the night in that lonely place.

Once one of the men suggested that the two passengers might walk on to the railway station. It was only about a mile-and-a-half away, he said, and Mr. Powell and the young girl could go on to Greenville, leaving them to follow with the disabled van, as soon as they could.

This suggestion Mr. Powell would not listen to for a moment.

“I’ll stick with the furniture,” he said. “Though you can go, Jane, if you like. I’ll take you to the station.”

But Jane was game and decided to stick, too.

It was about an hour after that that the engine gave a few puffs and then turned over once or twice. This was at least more encouraging than dead silence, and Jane began to view the efforts of the moving-men with more hopefulness.

They finally managed to get the motor to running haltingly. Then the damaged tire was replaced by a spare, and everybody climbed hastily aboard, determined to make the best of their luck while it lasted.

It was a never-to-be-forgotten trip. The van stopped every quarter of a mile or so, and every time it stopped Jane held her breath for fear it would never start on again.

Mr. Powell did not hold his breath—nor his [Pg 17]tongue. If Jane had not been there to act as peacemaker, it is quite certain that “Uncle Dink” and the driver of the truck would have come to blows at some point along the road to Greenville.

When they finally reached the fringe of the town it was well after dark. Jane was tired and ravenously hungry. Also she was disappointed that her first acquaintance with their adopted town could not have been made by daylight.

“If Lou has reached here before us I hope she had sense enough to go to an inn or a hotel, or at least to a neighbor’s house,” said Mr. Powell, voicing a thought that had been worrying Jane for some time. “Kind of dreary going to an empty house and waiting and having no one come. I suppose,” with a worried frown, “she’s had us killed some dozen times already!”

They—or rather the van—limped through the streets of Greenville and finally stopped in a street devoid of lights.