Page:Carroll Rankin--Dandelion Cottage.djvu/249

 Rh  During her brief absence, the girls bathed their eyes and made sundry other futile attempts to do away with all outward signs of grief.

"He says," cried Mabel, bursting in excitedly, "that sixty cents is the regular price daytimes, but it's forty cents for a night message. It seems kind of mean to wake folks up in the middle of the night just to save twenty cents, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Bettie. "I couldn't be impolite enough to do that to anybody I like as well as I like Mr. Black. If we haven't money enough to send a daytime message, we mustn't send any."

"Well, we haven't," said Jean. "We've only thirty-five cents."

"And we wouldn't have had that," said Mabel, "if I hadn't remembered that wallpaper just in the nick of time."

Strangely enough, not one of the girls thought of the money in the bank. Perhaps it did not occur to them that it would