Plain Jane and pretty Betty

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.

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 w...

“Oh, I’m so relieved!” cried Mrs. Powell, as she hugged Jane and threw her arms about her husband’s neck. “I have the key to the house right here, Dink, if you want to let the m...

Lydia was tall, built on heroic lines with a breadth of shoulder amazing in a woman. She had a face that matched the rest of her, large featured, rugged, with a mouth that seldo...

This was a girl of about her own age, perhaps a little older. It was hard for Jane to judge, dazzled as she was by the magnificence of the girl.

The front room was small, but once dressed with Mrs. Powell’s mission furniture, red tablecover, cushions and rugs, with immaculate muslin curtains covering no less immaculate w...

“I think it is!” replied Mr. Powell, as he flung into his room. “But you can bet I’m going to find out! I’ve got some papers in my desk that I’m going after, if it is!”

Many willing, kindly hands came to Jane’s aid and helped carry Mrs. Powell into a shoe store near by. Her temporary faintness was perhaps a good thing for both Mrs. Powell and J...

“What is all the noise about?” she cried, and would have stamped her foot had she been on the floor instead of in bed. “Something ought to be done about that siren, waking peopl...

It seemed a miracle to Jane when she thought of it afterward that Mr. Powell had not been more seriously injured. The other two men who had been taken from under the ruins of th...

Finally when they had just about given up hope of finding anything there, one man came up and of his own accord volunteered the information they had been looking for.

There was something in the fearless honesty of the young man’s eyes that convinced most of those in the crowd. There were some who doubted, however; one who doubted openly, and...

“Well, anyway, a business girl,” Jane compromised. “Yes, ma’am, I’m going to get a job, and I think I’ll start out looking for it no later than to-morrow morning. Now, Mrs. Powe...

Jane had supposed the girl in the iron cage had explained her errand. It was a shock to find that she was to be forced to break the ice twice over.

Jane Cross could not believe that she had heard the real estate dealer correctly. She tried to smile, but her lips trembled. She pressed them tight together and continued to loo...

Some of those disembodied voices over the wire were so soft that Jane could scarcely hear them, and she disliked to ask them to repeat too many times, for fear of appearing stupid.

Her father often called her into the library when he had anything special to speak to her about. The summons usually meant a row about her allowance, she thought, with a suggest...

“No one sympathizes with me,” she moaned. “No one! The fact that I must give up my home, my servants, my cars, means nothing to any one. Betty, to whom it should mean as much as...

“Everything is going so beautifully at the office,” she told her kind friend, and added, as she took off her hat and put on her apron preparatory to helping with the dinner:

Apparently Jane was very much at ease as she gave her hand to Mr. Browning and smiled at him. In reality she was only a frightened girl wondering what would happen next.

The cottage, set well back from the street, was not pretentious, certainly, but neither was it unbeautiful. It had a good-natured, flat, comfortable look like a fat, jolly, woma...

Betty was about to call out a greeting to her father when something stopped her. That something was the sight of her father bending over a desk and smiling into the delighted ey...

“I have ever so much time to spare,” Betty returned. “There are hours when I have to sit with my hands folded and nothing to do, or else go for a walk and take a chance of meeti...

Betty Browning waited until she and her father were seated at dinner that night before she told of the electrician’s important disclosures concerning the defective wiring of Mar...

No wonder that he paused in amazement at this sight. No wonder, either, that his heart leaped with pride and hope as he saw his pretty Betty in the new role of comforter to Jane.