Page:Dorothy Canfield - Understood Betsy.djvu/192

166 Brewster the horridest-looking child!" said Eliza, who had the second grade all to herself, although Molly now read out of the second reader with her.

"Mercy, yes! So ragged!" said Anastasia Monahan, called Stashie for short. She was a big girl, fourteen years old, who was in the seventh grade.

"He doesn't look as if he ever combed his hair!" said Betsy. "It looks just like a wisp of old hay."

"And sometimes," little Molly proudly added her bit to the talk of the older girls, "he forgets to put on any stockings and just has his dreadful old shoes on over his dirty, bare feet."

"I guess he hasn't got any stockings half the time," said big Stashie scornfully. "I guess his stepfather drinks 'em up."

"How can he drink up stockings?" asked Molly, opening her round eyes very wide.

"Sh! You mustn't ask. Little girls shouldn't know about such things, should they, Betsy?"