“Oh, I wish I could, Dan!” said a young voice near her.  “But honest!  Momma’d just eat me up alive if I left the booth for a minute!”

Betsy turned quickly.  A very pretty girl with yellow hair and blue eyes (she looked as Molly might when she was grown up) was leaning over the edge of a little canvas-covered booth, the sign of which announced that home-made doughnuts and soft drinks were for sale there.  A young man, very flushed and gay, was pulling at the girl’s blue gingham sleeve.  “Oh, come on, Annie.  Just one turn!  The floor’s elegant.  You can keep an eye on the booth from the hall!  Nobody’s going to run away with the old thing anyhow!’’

“Honest, I’d love to!  But I got a great lot of dishes to wash, too!  You know Momma!” She looked longingly toward the open-air dancing floor, out from which just then floated a burst of brazen music.

“Oh, please!” said a small voice.  “I’ll do it for twenty cents.”

Betsy stood by the girl’s elbow, all quivering earnestness.

“Do what, kiddie?” asked the girl in a good-natured surprise.

“Everything!” said Betsy, compendiously.  “Everything!  Wash the dishes, tend the booth; you can go dance!  I’ll do it for twenty cents.”

The eyes of the girl and the man met in high amusement.  “My!  Aren’t we up and coming!” said the man.  “You’re most as big as a pint-cup, aren’t you?” he said to Betsy.

The little girl flushed—­she detested being laughed at—­but she looked straight into the laughing eyes.  “I’m ten years old today,” she said, “and I can wash dishes as well as anybody.”  She spoke with dignity.

The young man burst out into a great laugh.

“Great kid, what!” he said to the girl, and then, “Say, Annie, why not?  Your mother won’t be here for an hour.  The kid can keep folks from walking off with the dope and ...”

“I’ll do the dishes, too,” repeated Betsy, trying hard not to mind being laughed at, and keeping her eyes fixed steadily on the tickets to Hillsboro.

“Well, by gosh,” said the young man, laughing.  “Here’s our chance, Annie, for fair!  Come along!”

The girl laughed, too, out of high spirits.  “Wouldn’t Momma be crazy!” she said hilariously.  “But she’ll never know.  Here, you cute kid, here’s my apron.”  She took off her long apron and tied it around Betsy’s neck.  “There’s the soap, there’s the table.  You stack the dishes up on that counter.”

She was out of the little gate in the counter in a twinkling, just as Molly, in answer to a beckoning gesture from Betsy, came in.  “Hello, there’s another one!” said the gay young man, gayer and gayer.  “Hello, button!  What you going to do?  I suppose when they try to crack the safe you’ll run at them and bark and drive them away!”

Molly opened her sweet, blue eyes very wide, not understanding a single word.  The girl laughed, swooped back, gave Molly a kiss, and disappeared, running side by side with the young man toward the dance hall.