Page:Girls of Central High on the Stage.djvu/200

190 declared Mr. Belding, jovially. "I'd a good deal rather have little Mother Wit here half a Tom-boy"

"Which I'm not, I hope, Papa Belding!" cried Laura, quickly.

"I should hope not," said her mother.

"All right," laughed Mr. Belding. "But I would rather you were than like a few of the girls who attend your school. Some of them are growing up to womanhood too quickly to suit me. There's that Pendleton girl"

"What do you know about Lily Pendleton, Father?" asked Laura, quickly.

"Why, she dresses like a girl of twenty-five—and acts that grown up, too," observed the jeweler. "She was in the store a week or so ago. Now! there's another bad thing. Her mother lets her do just about as she pleases, I guess."

"Mrs. Pendleton has always been very lenient with Lillian," agreed his wife.

"The girl brought into my store a jewel box in which were things valued at more than a thousand dollars, I believe. Old-fashioned jewels left her by her grandmother. She thought of having some re-set. And she really wanted me to buy some of them. She said her mother wouldn't care what she did with them."