Understood Betsy - Dorothy Canfield Fisher (autobiographies to read TXT) 📗

stepping as though on eggs, their manes and

tails braided with bright ribbon; and then, “Oh, Betsy, LOOK at the

pig!” screamed Molly again—the smaller animals, the sheep, the calves,

the colts, and the pig, which waddled along with portly dignity.

 

Betsy looked as well as she could over her shoulder … and in years to

come she can shut her eyes and see again in every detail that rustic

procession under the golden, September light.

 

But she looked anxiously at the clock. It was nearing five. Oh, suppose

the girl forgot and danced too long!

 

“Two bottles of ginger ale and half a dozen doughnuts,” said a man with

a woman and three children.

 

Betsy looked feverishly among the bottles ranged on the counter,

selected two marked ginger ale, and glared at their corrugated tin

stoppers. How DID you get them open?

 

“Here’s your opener,” said the man, “if that’s what you’re looking for.

Here, you get the glasses and I’ll open the bottles. We’re in kind of a

hurry. Got to catch a train.”

 

Well, they were not the only people who had to catch a train, Betsy

thought sadly. They drank in gulps and departed, cramming doughnuts into

their mouths. Betsy wished ardently that the girl would come back. She

was now almost sure that she had forgotten and would dance there till

nightfall. But there, there she came, running along, as light-footed

after an hour’s dancing as when she had left the booth.

 

“Here you are, kid,” said the young man, producing a quarter. “We’ve had

the time of our young lives, thanks to you.”

 

Betsy gave him back one of the nickels that remained to her, but he

refused it.

 

“No, keep the change,” he said royally. “It was worth it.”

 

“Then I’ll buy two doughnuts with my extra nickel,” said Betsy.

 

“No, you won’t,” said the girl. “You’ll take all you want for nothing …

Momma’ll never miss ‘em. And what you sell here has got to be fresh

every day. Here, hold out your hands, both of you.”

 

“Some people came and bought things,” said Betsy, happening to remember

as she and Molly turned away. “The money is on that shelf.”

 

“Well, NOW!” said the girl, “if she didn’t take hold and sell things!

Say … “—she ran after Betsy and gave her a hug—“you smart young one,

I wish’t I had a little sister just like you!”

 

Molly and Betsy hurried along out of the gate into the main street of

the town and down to the station. Molly was eating doughnuts as she

went. They were both quite hungry by this time, but Betsy could not

think of eating till she had those tickets in her hand.

 

She pushed her quarter and a nickel into the ticket-seller’s window and

said “Hillsboro” in as confident a tone as she could; but when the

precious bits of paper were pushed out at her and she actually held

them, her knees shook under her and she had to go and sit down on the

bench.

 

“My! Aren’t these doughnuts good?” said Molly. “I never in my life had

ENOUGH doughnuts before!”

 

Betsy drew a long breath and began rather languidly to eat one herself;

she felt, all of a sudden, very, very tired.

 

She was tireder still when they got out of the train at Hillsboro

Station and started wearily up the road toward Putney Farm. Two miles

lay before them, two miles which they had often walked before, but never

after such a day as now lay back of them. Molly dragged her feet as she

walked and hung heavily on Betsy’s hand. Betsy plodded along, her head

hanging, her eyes all gritty with fatigue and sleepiness. A light buggy

spun round the turn of the road behind them, the single horse trotting

fast as though the driver were in a hurry, the wheels rattling smartly

on the hard road. The little girls drew out to one side and stood

waiting till the road should be free again. When he saw them the driver

pulled the horse back so quickly it stood almost straight up. He peered

at them through the twilight and then with a loud shout sprang over the

side of the buggy.

 

It was Uncle Henry—oh, goody, it was Uncle Henry come to meet them!

They wouldn’t have to walk any further!

 

But what was the matter with Uncle Henry? He ran up to them, exclaiming,

“Are ye all right? Are ye all right?” He stooped over and felt of them

desperately as though he expected them to be broken somewhere. And Betsy

could feel that his old hands were shaking, that he was trembling all

over. When she said, “Why, yes, Uncle Henry, we’re all right. We came

home on the cars,” Uncle Henry leaned up against the fence as though he

couldn’t stand up. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead and he

said—it didn’t seem as though it could be Uncle Henry talking, he

sounded so excited—“Well, well—well, by gosh! My! Well, by thunder!

Now! And so here ye are! And you’re all right! WELL!”

 

He couldn’t seem to stop exclaiming, and you can’t imagine anything

stranger than an Uncle Henry who couldn’t stop exclaiming.

 

After they all got into the buggy he quieted down a little and said,

“Thunderation! But we’ve had a scare! When the Wendells come back with

their cousins early this afternoon, they said you were coming with the

Vaughans. And then when you didn’t come and DIDN’T come, we telephoned

to the Vaughans, and they said they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of ye, and

didn’t even know you were TO the Fair at all! I tell you, your Aunt

Abigail and I had an awful turn! Ann and I hitched up quicker’n scat and

she put right out with Prince up toward Woodford and I took Jessie down

this way; thought maybe I’d get trace of ye somewhere here. Well, land!”

He wiped his forehead again. “Wa’n’t I glad to see you standin’

there … get along, Jess! I want to get the news to Abigail soon as I

can!”

 

“Now tell me what in thunder DID happen to you!”

 

Betsy began at the beginning and told straight through, interrupted at

first by indignant comments from Uncle Henry, who was outraged by the

Wendells’ loose wearing of their responsibility for the children. But as

she went on he quieted down to a closely attentive silence, interrupting

only to keep Jess at her top speed.

 

Now that it was all safely over, Betsy thought her story quite an

interesting one, and she omitted no detail, although she wondered once

or twice if perhaps Uncle Henry were listening to her, he kept so still.

“And so I bought the tickets and we got home,” she ended, adding, “Oh,

Uncle Henry, you ought to have seen the prize pig! He was TOO funny!”

 

They turned into the Putney yard now and saw Aunt Abigail’s bulky form

on the porch.

 

“Got ‘em, Abby! All right! No harm done!” shouted Uncle Henry.

 

Aunt Abigail turned without a word and went back into the house. When

the little girls dragged their weary legs in they found her quietly

setting out some supper for them on the table, but she was wiping away

with her apron the joyful tears which ran down her cheeks, such white

cheeks! It seemed so strange to see rosy Aunt Abigail with a face like

paper.

 

“Well, I’m glad to see ye,” she told them soberly. “Sit right down and

have some hot milk. I had some all ready.”

 

The telephone rang, she went into the next room, and they heard her

saying, in an unsteady voice: “All right, Ann. They’re here. Your father

just brought them in. I haven’t had time to hear about what happened

yet. But they’re all right. You’d better come home.”

 

“That’s your Cousin Ann telephoning from the Marshalls’.”

 

She herself went and sat down heavily, and when Uncle Henry came in a

few minutes later she asked him in a rather weak voice for the ammonia

bottle. He rushed for it, got her a fan and a drink of cold water, and

hung over her anxiously till the color began to come back into her pale

face. “I know just how you feel, Mother,” he said sympathetically. “When

I saw ‘em standin’ there by the roadside I felt as though somebody had

hit me a clip right in the pit of the stomach.”

 

The little girls ate their supper in a tired daze, not paying any

attention to what the grown-ups were saying, until rapid hoofs clicked

on the stones outside and Cousin Ann came in quickly, her black eyes

snapping.

 

“Now, for mercy’s sake, tell me what happened,” she said, adding hotly,

“and if I don’t give that Maria Wendell a piece of my mind!”

 

Uncle Henry broke in: “I‘M going to tell what happened. I WANT to do

it. You and Mother just listen, just sit right down and listen.” His

voice was shaking with feeling, and as he went on and told of Betsy’s

afternoon, her fright, her confusion, her forming the plan of coming

home on the train and of earning the money for the tickets, he made, for

once, no Putney pretense of casual coolness. His old eyes flashed fire

as he talked.

 

Betsy, watching him, felt her heart swell and beat fast in incredulous

joy. Why, he was proud of her! She had done something to make the Putney

cousins proud of her!

 

When Uncle Henry came to the part where she went on asking for

employment after one and then another refusal, Cousin Ann reached out

her long arms and quickly, almost roughly, gathered Betsy up on her lap,

holding her close as she listened. Betsy had never before sat on Cousin

Ann’s lap.

 

And when Uncle Henry finished—he had not forgotten a single thing Betsy

had told him—and asked, “What do you think of THAT for a little girl

ten years old today?” Cousin Ann opened the flood-gates wide and burst

out, “I think I never heard of a child’s doing a smarter, grittier

thing … AND I DON’T CARE IF SHE DOES HEAR ME SAY SO!”

 

It was a great, a momentous, an historic moment!

 

Betsy, enthroned on those strong knees, wondered if any little girl had

ever had such a beautiful birthday.