Understood Betsy / Fisher, Dorothy Canfield, 1879-1958

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Title: Understood Betsy

Author: Dorothy Canfield

Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5347]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 3, 2002]
[Date last updated: August 14, 2005]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDERSTOOD BETSY ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




UNDERSTOOD BETSY

BY

DOROTHY CANFIELD
Author of "The Bent Twig," etc.


ILLUSTRATIONS BY
ADA C. WILLIAMSON




[Illustration: Uncle Henry looked at her, eyeing her sidewise over the
top of one spectacle glass. (Page 34)]




CONTENTS

I    Aunt Harriet Has a Cough
II   Betsy Holds the Reins
III  A Short Morning
IV   Betsy Goes to School
V    What Grade is Betsy?
VI   If You Don't Like Conversation in a Book Skip this Chapter!
VII  Elizabeth Ann Fails in an Examination
VIII Betsy Starts a Sewing Society
IX   The New Clothes Fail
X    Betsy Has a Birthday
XI   "Understood Aunt Frances"




ILLUSTRATIONS

Uncle Henry looked at her, eying her sidewise
over the top of one spectacle-glass    Frontispiece

Elizabeth Ann stood up before the doctor.
"Do you know," said Aunt Abigail, "I think
it's going to be real nice, having a little girl
in the house again"

She had greatly enjoyed doing her own hair.

"Oh, he's asking for more!" cried Elizabeth Ann

Betsy shut her teeth together hard, and started across
"What's the matter, Molly? What's the matter?"

Betsy and Ellen and the old doll

He had fallen asleep with his head on his arms

Never were dishes washed better!

Betsy was staring down at her shoes, biting her
lips and winking her eyes






CHAPTER I

AUNT HARRIET HAS A COUGH

When this story begins, Elizabeth Ann, who is the heroine of it, was a
little girl of nine, who lived with her Great-aunt Harriet in a medium-
sized city in a medium-sized State in the middle of this country; and
that's all you need to know about the place, for it's not the important
thing in the story; and anyhow you know all about it because it was
probably very much like the place you live in yourself.

Elizabeth Ann's Great-aunt Harriet was a widow who was not very rich or
very poor, and she had one daughter, Frances, who gave piano lessons to
little girls. They kept a "girl" whose name was Grace and who had asthma
dreadfully and wasn't very much of a "girl" at all, being nearer fifty
than forty. Aunt Harriet, who was very tender-hearted, kept her chiefly
because she couldn't get any other place on account of her coughing so
you could hear her all over the house.

So now you know the names of all the household. And this is how they
looked: Aunt Harriet was very small and thin and old, Grace was very
small and thin and middle-aged, Aunt Frances (for Elizabeth Ann called
her "Aunt," although she was really, of course, a first-cousin-once-
removed) was small and thin and if the light wasn't too strong might be
called young, and Elizabeth Ann was very small and thin and little. And
yet they all had plenty to eat. I wonder what was the matter with them?

It was certainly not because they were not good, for no womenkind in all
the world had kinder hearts than they. You have heard how Aunt Harriet
kept Grace (in spite of the fact that she was a very depressing person)
on account of her asthma; and when Elizabeth Ann's father and mother
both died when she was a baby, although there were many other cousins
and uncles and aunts in the family, these two women fairly rushed upon
the little baby-orphan, taking her home and surrounding her henceforth
with the most loving devotion.

They had said to themselves that it was their manifest duty to save the
dear little thing from the other relatives, who had no idea about how to
bring up a sensitive, impressionable child, and they were sure, from the
way Elizabeth Ann looked at six months, that she was going to be a
sensitive, impressionable child. It is possible also that they were a
little bored with their empty life in their rather forlorn, little brick
house in the medium-sized city, and that they welcomed the occupation
and new interests which a child would bring in.

But they thought that they chiefly desired to save dear Edward's child
from the other kin, especially from the Putney cousins, who had written
down from their Vermont farm that they would be glad to take the little
girl into their family. But "ANYTHING but the Putneys!" said Aunt
Harriet, a great many times. They were related only by marriage to her,
and she had her own opinion of them as a stiffnecked, cold-hearted,
undemonstrative, and hard set of New Englanders. "I boarded near them
one summer when you were a baby, Frances, and I shall never forget the
way they were treating some children visiting there! ... Oh, no, I don't
mean they abused them or beat them ... but such lack of sympathy, such
perfect indifference to the sacred sensitiveness of child-life, such a
starving of the child-heart ... No, I shall never forget it! They had
chores to do ... as though they had been hired men!"

Aunt Harriet never meant to say any of this when Elizabeth Ann could
hear, but the little girl's ears were as sharp as little girls' ears
always are, and long before she was nine she knew all about the opinion
Aunt Harriet had of the Putneys. She did not know, to be sure, what
"chores" were, but she took it confidently from Aunt Harriet's voice
that they were something very, very dreadful.

There was certainly neither coldness nor hardness in the way Aunt
Harriet and Aunt Frances treated Elizabeth Ann. They had really given
themselves up to the new responsibility, especially Aunt Frances, who
was very conscientious about everything. As soon as the baby came there
to live, Aunt Frances stopped reading novels and magazines, and re-read
one book after another which told her how to bring up children. And she
joined a Mothers' Club which met once a week. And she took a
correspondence course in mothercraft from a school in Chicago which
teaches that business by mail. So you can see that by the time Elizabeth
Ann was nine years old Aunt Frances must have known all that anybody can
know about how to bring up children. And Elizabeth Ann got the benefit
of it all.

She and her Aunt Frances were simply inseparable. Aunt Frances shared in
all Elizabeth Ann's doings and even in all her thoughts. She was
especially anxious to share all the little girl's thoughts, because she
felt that the trouble with most children is that they are not
understood, and she was determined that she would thoroughly understand
Elizabeth Ann down to the bottom of her little mind. Aunt Frances (down
in the bottom of her own mind) thought that her mother had never REALLY
understood her, and she meant to do better by Elizabeth Ann. She also
loved the little girl with all her heart, and longed, above everything
in the world, to protect her from all harm and to keep her happy and
strong and well.

And yet Elizabeth Ann was neither very strong nor well. And as to her
being happy, you can judge for yourself when you have read all this
story. She was very small for her age, with a rather pale face and big
dark eyes which had in them a frightened, wistful expression that went
to Aunt Frances's tender heart and made her ache to take care of
Elizabeth Ann better and better.

Aunt Frances was afraid of a great many things herself, and she knew how
to sympathize with timidity. She was always quick to reassure the little
girl with all her might and main whenever there was anything to fear.
When they were out walking (Aunt Frances took her out for a walk up one
block and down another every single day, no matter how tired the music
lessons had made her), the aunt's eyes were always on the alert to avoid
anything which might frighten Elizabeth Ann. If a big dog trotted by,
Aunt Frances always said, hastily: "There, there, dear! That's a NICE
doggie, I'm sure. I don't believe he ever bites little girls. ... MERCY!
Elizabeth Ann, don't go near him! ... Here, darling, just get on the
other side of Aunt Frances if he scares you so" (by that time Elizabeth
Ann was always pretty well scared), "and perhaps we'd better just turn
this corner and walk in the other direction." If by any chance the dog
went in that direction too, Aunt Frances became a prodigy of valiant
protection, putting the shivering little girl behind her, threatening
the animal with her umbrella, and saying in a trembling voice, "Go away,
sir! Go AWAY!"

Or if it thundered and lightened, Aunt Frances always dropped everything
she might be doing and held Elizabeth Ann tightly in her arms until it
was all over. And at night--Elizabeth Ann did not sleep very well--when
the little girl woke up screaming with a bad dream, it was always dear
Aunt Frances who came to her bedside, a warm wrapper over her nightgown
so that she need not hurry back to her own room, a candle lighting up
her tired, kind face. She always took the little girl into her thin arms
and held her close against her thin breast. "TELL Aunt Frances all about
your naughty dream, darling," she would murmur, "so's to get it off your
mind!"

She had read in her books that you can tell a great deal about
children's inner lives by analyzing their dreams, and besides, if she
did not urge Elizabeth Ann to tell it, she was afraid the sensitive,
nervous little thing would "lie awake and brood over it." This was the
phrase she always used the next day to her mother when Aunt Harriet
exclaimed about her paleness and the dark rings under her eyes. So she
listened patiently while the little girl told her all about the fearful
dreams she had, the great dogs with huge red mouths that ran after her,
the Indians who scalped her, her schoolhouse on fire so that she had to
jump from a third-story window and was all broken to bits--once in a
while Elizabeth Ann got so interested in all this that she went on and
made up more awful things even than she had dreamed, and told long
stories which showed her to be a child of great imagination. But all
these dreams and continuations of dreams Aunt Frances wrote down the
first thing the next morning, and, with frequent references to a thick
book full of hard words, she tried her best to puzzle out from them
exactly what kind of little girl Elizabeth Ann really was.

There was one dream, however, that even conscientious Aunt Frances never
tried to analyze, because it was too sad. Elizabeth Ann dreamed
sometimes that she was dead and lay in a little white coffin with white
roses over her. Oh, that made Aunt Frances cry, and so did Elizabeth
Ann. It was very touching. Then, after a long, long time of talk and
tears and sobs and hugs, the little girl would begin to get drowsy, and
Aunt Frances would rock her to sleep in her arms, and lay her down ever
so quietly, and slip away to try to get a little nap herself before it
was time to get up.

At a quarter of nine every weekday morning Aunt Frances dropped whatever
else she was doing, took Elizabeth Ann's little, thin, white hand
protectingly in hers, and led her through the busy streets to the big
brick school-building where the little girl had always gone to school.
It was four stories high, and when all the classes were in session there
were six hundred children under that one roof. You can imagine, perhaps,
the noise there was on the playground just before school! Elizabeth Ann
shrank from it with all her soul, and clung more tightly than ever to
Aunt Frances's hand as she was led along through the crowded, shrieking
masses of children. Oh, how glad she was that she had Aunt Frances there
to take care of her, though as a matter of fact nobody noticed the
little thin girl at all, and her very own classmates would hardly have
known whether she came to school or not. Aunt Frances took her safely
through the ordeal of the playground, then up the long, broad stairs,
and pigeonholed her carefully in her own schoolroom. She was in the
third grade,--3A, you understand, which is almost the fourth.

Then at noon Aunt Frances was waiting there, a patient, never-failing
figure, to walk home with her little charge; and in the afternoon the
same thing happened over again. On the way to and from school they
talked about what had happened in the class. Aunt Frances believed in
sympathizing with a child's life, so she always asked about every little
thing, and remembered to inquire about the continuation of every
episode, and sympathized with all her heart over the failure in mental
arithmetic, and triumphed over Elizabeth Ann's beating the Schmidt girl
in spelling, and was indignant over the teacher's having pets. Sometimes
in telling over some very dreadful failure or disappointment Elizabeth
Ann would get so wrought up that she would cry. This always brought the
ready tears to Aunt Frances's kind eyes, and with many soothing words
and nervous, tremulous caresses she tried to make life easier for poor
little Elizabeth Ann. The days when they had cried they could neither of
them eat much luncheon.

After school and on Saturdays there was always the daily walk, and there
were lessons, all kinds of lessons--piano-lessons of course, and nature-
study lessons out of an excellent book Aunt Frances had bought, and
painting lessons, and sewing lessons, and even a little French, although
Aunt Frances was not very sure about her own pronunciation. She wanted
to give the little girl every possible advantage, you see. They were
really inseparable. Elizabeth Ann once said to some ladies calling on
her aunts that whenever anything happened in school, the first thing she
thought of was what Aunt Frances would think of it.

"Why is that?" they asked, looking at Aunt Frances, who was blushing
with pleasure.

"Oh, she is so interested in my school work! And she UNDERSTANDS me!"
said Elizabeth Ann, repeating the phrases she had heard so often.

Aunt Frances's eyes filled with happy tears. She called Elizabeth Ann to
her and kissed her and gave her as big a hug as her thin arms could
manage. Elizabeth Ann was growing tall very fast. One of the visiting
ladies said that before long she would be as big as her auntie, and a
troublesome young lady. Aunt Frances said: "I have had her from the time
she was a little baby and there has scarcely been an hour she has been
out of my sight. I'll always have her confidence. You'll always tell
Aunt Frances EVERYTHING, won't you, darling?" Elizabeth Ann resolved to
do this always, even if, as now, she often had to invent things to tell.

Aunt Frances went on, to the callers: "But I do wish she weren't so thin
and pale and nervous. I suppose it is the exciting modern life that is
so bad for children. I try to see that she has plenty of fresh air. I go
out with her for a walk every single day. But we have taken all the
walks around here so often that we're rather tired of them. It's often
hard to know how to get her out enough. I think I'll have to get the
doctor to come and see her and perhaps give her a tonic." To Elizabeth
Ann she added, hastily: "Now don't go getting notions in your head,
darling. Aunt Frances doesn't think there's anything VERY much the
matter with you. You'll be all right again soon if you just take the
doctor's medicine nicely. Aunt Frances will take care of her precious
little girl. SHE'll make the bad sickness go away." Elizabeth Ann, who
had not known before that she was sick, had a picture of herself lying
in the little white coffin, all covered over with white. ... In a few
minutes Aunt Frances was obliged to excuse herself from her callers and
devote herself entirely to taking care of Elizabeth Ann.

So one day, after this had happened several times, Aunt Frances really
did send for the doctor, who came briskly in, just as Elizabeth Ann had
always seen him, with his little square black bag smelling of leather,
his sharp eyes, and the air of bored impatience which he always wore in
that house. Elizabeth Ann was terribly afraid to see him, for she felt
in her bones he would say she had galloping consumption and would die
before the leaves cast a shadow. This was a phrase she had picked up
from Grace, whose conversation, perhaps on account of her asthma, was
full of references to early graves and quick declines.

And yet--did you ever hear of such a case before?--although Elizabeth
Ann when she first stood up before the doctor had been quaking with fear
lest he discover some deadly disease in her, she was very much hurt
indeed when, after thumping her and looking at her lower eyelid inside
out, and listening to her breathing, he pushed her away with a little
jerk and said: "There's nothing in the world the matter with that child.
She's as sound as a nut! What she needs is ..."--he looked for a moment
at Aunt Frances's thin, anxious face, with the eyebrows drawn together
in a knot of conscientiousness, and then he looked at Aunt Harriet's
thin, anxious face with the eyebrows drawn up that very same way, and
then he glanced at Grace's thin, anxious face peering from the door
waiting for his verdict--and then he drew a long breath, shut his lips
and his little black case very tightly, and did not go on to say what it
was that Elizabeth Ann needed.

Of course Aunt Frances didn't let him off as easily as that, you may be
sure. She fluttered around him as he tried to go, and she said all sorts
of fluttery things to him, like "But, Doctor, she hasn't gained a pound
in three months ...  and her sleep ... and her appetite ... and her
nerves ..."

[Illustration: Elizabeth Ann stood up before the doctor.]

The doctor said back to her, as he put on his hat, all the things
doctors always say under such conditions: "More beefsteak ... plenty of
fresh air ... more sleep ... SHE'll be all right ..." but his voice did not
sound as though he thought what he was saying amounted to much. Nor did
Elizabeth Ann. She had hoped for some spectacular red pills to be taken
every half-hour, like those Grace's doctor gave her whenever she felt
low in her mind.

And just then something happened which changed Elizabeth Ann's life
forever and ever. It was a very small thing, too. Aunt Harriet coughed.
Elizabeth Ann did not think it at all a bad-sounding cough in comparison
with Grace's hollow whoop; Aunt Harriet had been coughing like that ever
since the cold weather set in, for three or four months now, and nobody
had thought anything of it, because they were all so much occupied in
taking care of the sensitive, nervous little girl who needed so much
care.

And yet, at the sound of that little discreet cough behind Aunt
Harriet's hand, the doctor whirled around and fixed his sharp eyes on
her, with all the bored, impatient look gone, the first time Elizabeth
Ann had ever seen him look interested. "What's that? What's that?" he
said, going over quickly to Aunt Harriet. He snatched out of his little
bag a shiny thing with two rubber tubes attached, and he put the ends of
the tubes in his ears and the shiny thing up against Aunt Harriet, who
was saying, "It's nothing, Doctor ... a little teasing cough I've had this
winter. And I meant to tell you, too, but I forgot it, that that sore
spot on my lungs doesn't go away as it ought to."

The doctor motioned her very impolitely to stop talking, and listened
very hard through his little tubes. Then he turned around and looked at
Aunt Frances as though he were angry at her. He said, "Take the child
away and then come back here yourself."

And that was almost all that Elizabeth Ann ever knew of the forces which
swept her away from the life which had always gone on, revolving about
her small person, exactly the same ever since she could remember.

You have heard so much about tears in the account of Elizabeth Ann's
life so far that I won't tell you much about the few days which
followed, as the family talked over and hurriedly prepared to obey the
doctor's verdict, which was that Aunt Harriet was very, very sick and
must go away at once to a warm climate, and Aunt Frances must go, too,
but not Elizabeth Ann, for Aunt Frances would need to give all her time
to taking care of Aunt Harriet. And anyhow the doctor didn't think it
best, either for Aunt Harriet or for Elizabeth Ann, to have them in the
same house.

Grace couldn't go of course, but to everybody's surprise she said she
didn't mind, because she had a bachelor brother, who kept a grocery
store, who had been wanting her for years to go and keep house for him.
She said she had stayed on just out of conscientiousness because she
knew Aunt Harriet couldn't get along without her! And if you notice,
that's the way things often happen to very, very conscientious people.

Elizabeth Ann, however, had no grocer brother. She had, it is true, a
great many relatives, and of course it was settled she should go to some
of them till Aunt Frances could take her back. For the time being, just
now, while everything was so distracted and confused, she was to go to
stay with the Lathrop cousins, who lived in the same city, although it
was very evident that the Lathrops were not perfectly crazy with delight
over the prospect.

Still, something had to be done at once, and Aunt Frances was so frantic
with the packing up, and the moving men coming to take the furniture to
storage, and her anxiety over her mother--she had switched to Aunt
Harriet, you see, all the conscientiousness she had lavished on
Elizabeth Ann--nothing much could be extracted from her about Elizabeth
Ann. "Just keep her for the present, Molly!" she said to Cousin Molly
Lathrop. "I'll do something soon. I'll write you. I'll make another
arrangement ... but just NOW ... ."

Her voice was quavering on the edge of tears, and Cousin Molly Lathrop,
who hated scenes, said hastily, "Yes, oh, yes, of course. For the
present ..." and went away, thinking that she didn't see why she should
have ALL the disagreeable things to do. When she had her husband's
tyrannical old mother to take care of, wasn't that enough, without
adding to the household such a nervous, spoiled, morbid young one as
Elizabeth Ann!

Elizabeth Ann did not of course for a moment dream that Cousin Molly was
thinking any such things about her, but she could not help seeing that
Cousin Molly was not any too enthusiastic about taking her in; and she
was already feeling terribly forlorn about the sudden, unexpected change
in Aunt Frances, who had been SO wrapped up in her and now was just as
much wrapped up in Aunt Harriet. Do you know, I am sorry for Elizabeth
Ann, and, what's more, I have been ever since this story began.

Well, since I promised you that I was not going to tell about more
tears, I won't say a single word about the day when the two aunts went
away on the train, for there is nothing much but tears to tell about,
except perhaps an absent look in Aunt Frances's eyes which hurt the
little girl's feelings dreadfully.

And then Cousin Molly took the hand of the sobbing little girl and led
her back to the Lathrop house. But if you think you are now going to
hear about the Lathrops, you are quite mistaken, for just at this moment
old Mrs. Lathrop took a hand in the matter. She was Cousin Molly's
husband's mother, and, of course, no relation at all to Elizabeth Ann,
and so was less enthusiastic than anybody else. All that Elizabeth Ann
ever saw of this old lady, who now turned the current of her life again,
was her head, sticking out of a second-story window; and that's all that
you need to know about her, either. It was a very much agitated old
head, and it bobbed and shook with the intensity with which the
imperative old voice called upon Cousin Molly and Elizabeth Ann to stop
right there where they were on the front walk.

"The doctor says that what's the matter with Bridget is scarlet fever,
and we've all got to be quarantined. There's no earthly sense bringing
that child in to be sick and have it, and be nursed, and make the
quarantine twice as long!"

"But, Mother!" called Cousin Molly, "I can't leave the child in the
middle of the street!"

Elizabeth Ann was actually glad to hear her say that, because she was
feeling so awfully unwanted, which is, if you think of it, not a very
cheerful feeling for a little girl who has been the hub round which a
whole household was revolving.

"You don't HAVE to!" shouted old Mrs. Lathrop out of her second-story
window. Although she did not add "You gump!" aloud, you could feel she
was meaning just that. "You don't have to! You can just send her to the
Putney cousins. All nonsense about her not going there in the first
place. They invited her the minute they heard of Harriet's being so bad.
They're the natural ones to take her in. Abigail is her mother's own
aunt, and Ann is her own first-cousin-once-removed ... just as close as
Harriet and Frances are, and MUCH closer than you! And on a farm and
all ... just the place for her!"

"But how under the sun, Mother!" shouted Cousin Molly back, "can I GET
her to the Putneys'? You can't send a child of nine a thousand miles
without ..."

Old Mrs. Lathrop looked again as though she were saying "You gump!" and
said aloud, "Why, there's James, going to New York on business in a few
days anyhow. He can just go now, and take her along and put her on the
right train at Albany. If he wires from here, they'll meet her in
Hillsboro."

And that was just what happened. Perhaps you may have guessed by this
time that when old Mrs. Lathrop issued orders they were usually obeyed.
As to who the Bridget was who had the scarlet fever, I know no more than
you. I take it, from the name, she was the cook. Unless, indeed, old
Mrs. Lathrop made her up for the occasion, which I think she would have
been quite capable of doing, don't you?

At any rate, with no more ifs or ands, Elizabeth Ann's satchel was
packed, and Cousin James Lathrop's satchel was packed, and the two set
off together, the big, portly, middle-aged man quite as much afraid of
his mother as Elizabeth Ann was. But he was going to New York, and it is
conceivable that he thought once or twice on the trip that there were
good times in New York as well as business engagements, whereas poor
Elizabeth Ann was being sent straight to the one place in the world
where there were no good times at all. Aunt Harriet had said so, ever so
many times. Poor Elizabeth Ann!





CHAPTER II

BETSY HOLDS THE REINS

You can imagine, perhaps, the dreadful terror of Elizabeth Ann as the
train carried her along toward Vermont and the horrible Putney Farm! It
had happened so quickly--her satchel packed, the telegram sent, the
train caught--that she had not had time to get her wits together, assert
herself, and say that she would NOT go there! Besides, she had a sinking
notion that perhaps they wouldn't pay any attention to her if she did.
The world had come to an end now that Aunt Frances wasn't there to take
care of her! Even in the most familiar air she could only half breathe
without Aunt Frances! And now she was not even being taken to the Putney
Farm! She was being sent!

She shrank together in her seat, more and more frightened as the end of
her journey came nearer, and looked out dismally at the winter
landscape, thinking it hideous with its brown bare fields, its brown
bare trees, and the quick-running little streams hurrying along, swollen
with the January thaw which had taken all the snow from the hills. She
had heard her elders say about her so many times that she could not
stand the cold, that she shivered at the very thought of cold weather,
and certainly nothing could look colder than that bleak country into
which the train was now slowly making its way.

The engine puffed and puffed with great laboring breaths that shook
Elizabeth Ann's diaphragm up and down, but the train moved more and more
slowly. Elizabeth Ann could feel under her feet how the floor of the car
was tipped up as it crept along the steep incline. "Pretty stiff grade
here?" said a passenger to the conductor.

"You bet!" he assented. "But Hillsboro is the next station and that's at
the top of the hill. We go down after that to Rutland." He turned to
Elizabeth Ann--"Say, little girl, didn't your uncle say you were to get
off at Hillsboro? You'd better be getting your things together."

Poor Elizabeth Ann's knees knocked against each other with fear of the
strange faces she was to encounter, and when the conductor came to help
her get off, he had to carry the white, trembling child as well as her
satchel. But there was only one strange face there,--not another soul in
sight at the little wooden station. A grim-faced old man in a fur cap
and heavy coat stood by a lumber wagon.

"This is her, Mr. Putney," said the conductor, touching his cap, and
went back to the train, which went away shrieking for a nearby crossing
and setting the echoes ringing from one mountain to another.

There was Elizabeth Ann alone with her much-feared Great-uncle Henry. He
nodded to her, and drew out from the bottom of the wagon a warm, large
cape, which he slipped over her shoulders. "The women folks were afraid
you'd git cold drivin'," he explained. He then lifted her high to the
seat, tossed her satchel into the wagon, climbed up himself, and clucked
to his horses. Elizabeth Ann had always before thought it an essential
part of railway journeys to be much kissed at the end and asked a great
many times how you had "stood the trip."

She sat very still on the high lumber seat, feeling very forlorn and
neglected. Her feet dangled high above the floor of the wagon. She felt
herself to be in the most dangerous place she had ever dreamed of in her
worst dreams. Oh, why wasn't Aunt Frances there to take care of her! It
was just like one of her bad dreams--yes, it was horrible! She would
fall, she would roll under the wheels and be crushed to ... She looked up
at Uncle Henry with the wild, strained eyes of nervous terror which
always brought Aunt Frances to her in a rush to "hear all about it," to
sympathize, to reassure.

Uncle Henry looked down at her soberly, his hard, weather-beaten old
face quite unmoved. "Here, you drive, will you, for a piece?" he said
briefly, putting the reins into her hands, hooking his spectacles over
his ears, and drawing out a stubby pencil and a bit of paper. "I've got
some figgering to do. You pull on the left-hand rein to make 'em go to
the left and t'other way for t'other way, though 'tain't likely we'll
meet any teams."

Elizabeth Ann had been so near one of her wild screams of terror that
now, in spite of her instant absorbed interest in the reins, she gave a
queer little yelp. She was all ready with the explanation, her
conversations with Aunt Frances having made her very fluent in
explanations of her own emotions. She would tell Uncle Henry about how
scared she had been, and how she had just been about to scream and
couldn't keep back that one little ... But Uncle Henry seemed not to have
heard her little howl, or, if he had, didn't think it worth
conversation, for he ... oh, the horses were CERTAINLY going to one side!
She hastily decided which was her right hand (she had never been forced
to know it so quickly before) and pulled furiously on that rein. The
horses turned their hanging heads a little, and, miraculously, there
they were in the middle of the road again.

Elizabeth Ann drew a long breath of relief and pride, and looked to
Uncle Henry for praise. But he was busily setting down figures as though
he were getting his 'rithmetic lesson for the next day and had not
noticed ... Oh, there they were going to the left again! This time, in her
flurry, she made a mistake about which hand was which and pulled wildly
on the left line! The horses docilely walked off the road into a shallow
ditch, the wagon tilted ... help! Why didn't Uncle Henry help! Uncle Henry
continued intently figuring on the back of his envelope.

Elizabeth Ann, the perspiration starting out on her forehead, pulled on
the other line. The horses turned back up the little slope, the wheel
grated sickeningly against the wagonbox--she was SURE they would tip
over! But there! somehow there they were in the road, safe and sound,
with Uncle Henry adding up a column of figures. If he only knew, thought
the little girl, if he only KNEW the danger he had been in, and how he
had been saved ... ! But she must think of some way to remember, for sure,
which her right hand was, and avoid that hideous mistake again.

And then suddenly something inside Elizabeth Ann's head stirred and
moved. It came to her, like a clap, that she needn't know which was
right or left at all. If she just pulled the way she wanted them to go--
the horses would never know whether it was the right or the left rein!

It is possible that what stirred inside her head at that moment was her
brain, waking up. She was nine years old, and she was in the third A
grade at school, but that was the first time she had ever had a whole
thought of her very own. At home, Aunt Frances had always known exactly
what she was doing, and had helped her over the hard places before she
even knew they were there; and at school her teachers had been carefully
trained to think faster than the scholars. Somebody had always been
explaining things to Elizabeth Ann so industriously that she had never
found out a single thing for herself before. This was a very small
discovery, but an original one. Elizabeth Ann was as excited about it as
a mother-bird over the first egg that hatches.

She forgot how afraid she was of Uncle Henry, and poured out to him her
discovery. "It's not right or left that matters!" she ended
triumphantly; "it's which way you want to go!" Uncle Henry looked at her
attentively as she talked, eyeing her sidewise over the top of one
spectacle-glass. When she finished--"Well, now, that's so," he admitted,
and returned to his arithmetic.

It was a short remark, shorter than any Elizabeth Ann had ever heard
before. Aunt Frances and her teachers always explained matters at
length. But it had a weighty, satisfying ring to it. The little girl
felt the importance of having her statement recognized. She turned back
to her driving.

The slow, heavy plow horses had stopped during her talk with Uncle
Henry. They stood as still now as though their feet had grown to the
road. Elizabeth Ann looked up at the old man for instructions. But he
was deep in his figures. She had been taught never to interrupt people,
so she sat still and waited for him to tell her what to do.

But, although they were driving in the midst of a winter thaw, it was a
pretty cold day, with an icy wind blowing down the back of her neck. The
early winter twilight was beginning to fall, and she felt rather empty.
She grew very tired of waiting, and remembered how the grocer's boy at
home had started his horse. Then, summoning all her courage, with an
apprehensive glance at Uncle Henry's arithmetical silence, she slapped
the reins up and down on the horses' backs and made the best imitation
she could of the grocer's boy's cluck. The horses lifted their heads,
they leaned forward, they put one foot before the other ... they were off!
The color rose hot on Elizabeth Ann's happy face. If she had started a
big red automobile she would not have been prouder. For it was the first
thing she had ever done all herself ... every bit ... every smitch! She had
thought of it and she had done it. And it had worked!

Now for what seemed to her a long, long time she drove, drove so hard
she could think of nothing else. She guided the horses around stones,
she cheered them through freezing mud-puddles of melted snow, she kept
them in the anxiously exact middle of the road. She was quite astonished
when Uncle Henry put his pencil and paper away, took the reins from her
hands, and drove into a yard, on one side of which was a little low
white house and on the other a big red barn. He did not say a word, but
she guessed that this was Putney Farm.

Two women in gingham dresses and white aprons came out of the house. One
was old and one might be called young, just like Aunt Harriet and Aunt
Frances. But they looked very different from those aunts. The dark-
haired one was very tall and strong-looking, and the white-haired one
was very rosy and fat. They both looked up at the little, thin, white-
faced girl on the high seat, and smiled. "Well, Father, you got her, I
see," said the brown-haired one. She stepped up to the wagon and held up
her arms to the child. "Come on, Betsy, and get some supper," she said,
as though Elizabeth Ann had lived there all her life and had just driven
into town and back.

And that was the arrival of Elizabeth Ann at Putney Farm.

The brown-haired one took a long, strong step or two and swung her up on
the porch. "You take her in, Mother," she said. "I'll help Father
unhitch."

The fat, rosy, white-haired one took Elizabeth Ann's skinny, cold little
hand in her soft warm fat one, and led her along to the open kitchen
door. "I'm your Aunt Abigail," she said. "Your mother's aunt, you know.
And that's your Cousin Ann that lifted you down, and it was your Uncle
Henry that brought you out from town." She shut the door and went on, "I
don't know if your Aunt Harriet ever happened to tell you about us, and
so ..."

Elizabeth Ann interrupted her hastily, the recollection of all Aunt
Harriet's remarks vividly before her. "Oh yes, oh yes!" she said. "She
always talked about you. She talked about you a lot, she ..." The little
girl stopped short and bit her lip.

If Aunt Abigail guessed from the expression on Elizabeth Ann's face what
kind of talking Aunt Harriet's had been, she showed it only by a
deepening of the wrinkles all around her eyes. She said, gravely: "Well,
that's a good thing. You know all about us then." She turned to the
stove and took out of the oven a pan of hot baked beans, very brown and
crispy on top (Elizabeth Ann detested beans), and said, over her
shoulder, "Take your things off, Betsy, and hang 'em on that lowest hook
back of the door. That's YOUR hook."

The little girl fumbled forlornly with the fastenings of her cape and
the buttons of her coat. At home, Aunt Frances or Grace had always taken
off her wraps and put them away for her. When, very sorry for herself,
she turned away from the hook, Aunt Abigail said: "Now you must be cold.
Pull a chair right up here by the stove." She was stepping around
quickly as she put supper on the table. The floor shook under her. She
was one of the fattest people Elizabeth Ann had ever seen. After living
with Aunt Frances and Aunt Harriet and Grace the little girl could
scarcely believe her eyes. She stared and stared.

Aunt Abigail seemed not to notice this. Indeed, she seemed for the
moment to have forgotten all about the newcomer. Elizabeth Ann sat on
the wooden chair, her feet hanging (she had been taught that it was not
manners to put her feet on the rungs), looking about her with miserable,
homesick eyes. What an ugly, low-ceilinged room, with only a couple of
horrid kerosene lamps for light; and they didn't keep any girl,
evidently; and they were going to eat right in the kitchen like poor
people; and nobody spoke to her or looked at her or asked her how she
had "stood the trip"; and here she was, millions of miles away from Aunt
Frances, without anybody to take care of her. She began to feel the
tight place in her throat which, by thinking about hard, she could
always turn into tears, and presently her eyes began to water.

Aunt Abigail was not looking at her at all, but she now stopped short in
one of her rushes to the table, set down the butter-plate she was
carrying, and said "There!" as though she had forgotten something. She
stooped--it was perfectly amazing how spry she was--and pulled out from
under the stove a half-grown kitten, very sleepy, yawning and
stretching, and blinking its eyes. "There, Betsy!" said Aunt Abigail,
putting the little yellow and white ball into the child's lap. "There is
one of old Whitey's kittens that didn't get given away last summer, and
she pesters the life out of me. I've got so much to do. When I heard you
were coming, I thought maybe you would take care of her for me. If you
want to, enough to bother to feed her and all, you can have her for your
own."

Elizabeth Ann bent her thin face over the warm, furry, friendly little
animal. She could not speak. She had always wanted a kitten, but Aunt
Frances and Aunt Harriet and Grace had always been sure that cats
brought diphtheria and tonsilitis and all sorts of dreadful diseases to
delicate little girls. She was afraid to move for fear the little thing
would jump down and run away, but as she bent cautiously toward it the
necktie of her middy blouse fell forward and the kitten in the middle of
a yawn struck swiftly at it with a soft paw. Then, still too sleepy to
play, it turned its head and began to lick Elizabeth Ann's hand with a
rough little tongue. Perhaps you can imagine how thrilled the little
girl was at this!

She held her hand perfectly still until the kitten stopped and began
suddenly washing its own face, and then she put her hands under it and
very awkwardly lifted it up, burying her face in the soft fur. The
kitten yawned again, and from the pink-lined mouth came a fresh, milky
breath. "Oh!" said Elizabeth Ann under her breath. "Oh, you DARLING!"
The kitten looked at her with bored, speculative eyes.

Elizabeth Ann looked up now at Aunt Abigail and said, "What is its name,
please?" But the old woman was busy turning over a griddle full of
pancakes and did not hear. On the train Elizabeth Ann had resolved not
to call these hateful relatives by the same name she had for dear Aunt
Frances, but she now forgot that resolution and said, again, "Oh, Aunt
Abigail, what is its name?"

Aunt Abigail faced her blankly. "Name?" she asked. "Whose ... oh, the
kitten's? Goodness, child, I stopped racking my brain for kitten names
sixty years ago. Name it yourself. It's yours."

Elizabeth Ann had already named it in her own mind, the name she had
always thought she WOULD call a kitten by, if she ever had one. It was
Eleanor, the prettiest name she knew.

Aunt Abigail pushed a pitcher toward her. "There's the cat's saucer
under the sink. Don't you want to give it some milk?"

Elizabeth Ann got down from her chair, poured some milk into the saucer,
and called: "Here, Eleanor! Here, Eleanor!"

Aunt Abigail looked at her sharply out of the corner of her eye and her
lips twitched, but a moment later her face was immovably grave as she
carried the last plate of pancakes to the table.

Elizabeth Ann sat on her heels for a long time, watching the kitten lap
the milk, and she was surprised, when she stood up, to see that Cousin
Ann and Uncle Henry had come in, very red-cheeked from the cold air.

"Well, folks," said Aunt Abigail, "don't you think we've done some
lively stepping around, Betsy and I, to get supper all on the table for
you?"

Elizabeth Ann stared. What did Aunt Abigail mean? She hadn't done a
thing about getting supper! But nobody made any comment, and they all
took their seats and began to eat. Elizabeth Ann was astonishingly
hungry, and she thought she could never get enough of the creamed
potatoes, cold ham, hot cocoa, and pancakes. She was very much relieved
that her refusal of beans caused no comment. Aunt Frances had always
tried very hard to make her eat beans because they have so much protein
in them, and growing children need protein. Elizabeth Ann had heard this
said so many times she could have repeated it backward, but it had never
made her hate beans any the less. However, nobody here seemed to know
this, and Elizabeth Ann kept her knowledge to herself. They had also
evidently never heard how delicate her digestion was, for she never saw
anything like the number of pancakes they let her eat. ALL SHE WANTED!
She had never heard of such a thing!

They still did not ask her how she had "stood the trip." They did not
indeed ask her much of anything or pay very much attention to her beyond
filling her plate as fast as she emptied it. In the middle of the meal
Eleanor came, jumped into her lap, and curled down, purring. After this
Elizabeth Ann kept one hand on the little soft ball, handling her fork
with the other.

After supper--well, Elizabeth Ann never knew what did happen after
supper until she felt somebody lifting her and carrying her upstairs. It
was Cousin Ann, who carried her as lightly as though she were a baby,
and who said, as she sat down on the floor in a slant-ceilinged bedroom,
"You went right to sleep with your head on the table. I guess you're
pretty tired."

Aunt Abigail was sitting on the edge of a great wide bed with four
posts, and a curtain around the top. She was partly undressed, and was
undoing her hair and brushing it out. It was very curly and all fluffed
out in a shining white fuzz around her fat, pink face, full of soft
wrinkles; but in a moment she was braiding it up again and putting on a
tight white nightcap, which she tied under her chin.

"We got the word about your coming so late," said Cousin Ann, "that we
didn't have time to fix you up a bedroom that can be warmed. So you're
going to sleep in here for a while. The bed's big enough for two, I
guess, even if they are as big as you and Mother."

Elizabeth Ann stared again. What queer things they said here. She wasn't
NEARLY as big as Aunt Abigail!

"Mother, did you put Shep out?" asked Cousin Ann; and when Aunt Abigail
said, "No! There! I forgot to!" Cousin Ann went away; and that was the
last of HER. They certainly believed in being saving of their words at
Putney Farm.

Elizabeth Ann began to undress. She was only half-awake; and that made
her feel only about half her age, which wasn't very great, the whole of
it, and she felt like just crooking her arm over her eyes and giving up!
She was too forlorn! She had never slept with anybody before, and she
had heard ever so many times how bad it was for children to sleep with
grown-ups. An icy wind rattled the windows and puffed in around the
loose old casings. On the window-sill lay a little wreath of snow.
Elizabeth Ann shivered and shook on her thin legs, undressed in a hurry,
and slipped into her night-dress. She felt just as cold inside as out,
and never was more utterly miserable than in that strange, ugly little
room, with that strange, queer, fat old woman. She was even too
miserable to cry, and that is saying a great deal for Elizabeth Ann!

She got into bed first, because Aunt Abigail said she was going to keep
the candle lighted for a while and read. "And anyhow," she said, "I'd
better sleep on the outside to keep you from rolling out."

Elizabeth Ann and Aunt Abigail lay very still for a long time, Aunt
Abigail reading out of a small, worn old book. Elizabeth Ann could see
its title, "Essays of Emerson." A book with, that name had always laid
on the center table in Aunt Harriet's house, but that copy was all new
and shiny, and Elizabeth Ann had never seen anybody look inside it. It
was a very dull-looking book, with no pictures and no conversation. The
little girl lay on her back, looking up at the cracks in the plaster
ceiling and watching the shadows sway and dance as the candle flickered
in the gusts of cold air. She herself began to feel a soft, pervasive
warmth. Aunt Abigail's great body was like a stove.

It was very, very quiet, quieter than any place Elizabeth Ann had ever
known, except church, because a trolley-line ran past Aunt Harriet's
house and even at night there were always more or less hangings and
rattlings. Here there was not a single sound except the soft, whispery
noise when Aunt Abigail turned over a page as she read steadily and
silently forward in her book. Elizabeth Ann turned her head so that she
could see the round, rosy old face, full of soft wrinkles, and the calm,
steady old eyes which were fixed on the page. And as she lay there in
the warm bed, watching that quiet face, something very queer began to
happen to Elizabeth Ann. She felt as though a tight knot inside her were
slowly being untied. She felt--what was it she felt? There are no words
for it. From deep within her something rose up softly ... she drew one or
two long, half-sobbing breaths ... .

[Illustration: "Do you know," said Aunt Abigail, "I think it's going to
be real nice, having a little girl in the house again."]

Aunt Abigail laid down her book and looked over at the child. "Do you
know," she said, in a conversational tone, "do you know, I think it's
going to be real nice, having a little girl in the house again."

Oh, then the tight knot in the little unwanted girl's heart was loosened
indeed! It all gave way at once, and Elizabeth Ann burst suddenly into
hot tears--yes, I know I said I would not tell you any more about her
crying; but these tears were very different from any she had ever shed
before. And they were the last, too, for a long, long time.

Aunt Abigail said, "Well, well!" and moving over in bed took the little
weeping girl into her arms. She did not say another word then, but she
put her soft, withered old cheek close against Elizabeth Ann's, till the
sobs began to grow less, and then she said: "I hear your kitty crying
outside the door. Shall I let her in? I expect she'd like to sleep with
you. I guess there's room for three of us."

She got out of bed as she spoke and walked across the room to the door.
The floor shook under her great bulk, and the peak of her nightcap made
a long, grotesque shadow. But as she came back with the kitten in her
arms Elizabeth Ann saw nothing funny in her looks. She gave Eleanor to
the little girl and got into bed again. "There, now, I guess we're ready
for the night," she said. "You put the kitty on the other side of you so
she won't fall out of bed."

She blew the light out and moved over a little closer to Elizabeth. Ann,
who immediately was enveloped in that delicious warmth. The kitten
curled up under the little girl's chin. Between her and the terrors of
the dark room loomed the rampart of Aunt Abigail's great body.

Elizabeth Ann drew a long, long breath ... and when she opened her eyes
the sun was shining in at the window.





CHAPTER III

A SHORT MORNING

Aunt Abigail was gone, Eleanor was gone. The room was quite empty except
for the bright sunshine pouring in through the small-paned windows.
Elizabeth Ann stretched and yawned and looked about her. What funny
wall-paper it was--so old-fashioned looking! The picture was of a blue
river and a brown mill, with green willow-trees over it, and a man with
sacks on his horse's back stood in front of the mill. This picture was
repeated a great many times, all over the paper; and in the corner,
where it hadn't come out even, they had had to cut it right down the
middle of the horse. It was very curious-looking. She stared at it a
long time, waiting for somebody to tell her when to get up. At home Aunt
Frances always told her, and helped her get dressed. But here nobody
came. She discovered that the heat came from a hole in the floor near
the bed, which opened down into the room below. From it came a warm
breath of baking bread and a muffled thump once in a while.

The sun rose higher and higher, and Elizabeth Ann grew hungrier and
hungrier. Finally it occurred to her that it was not absolutely
necessary to have somebody tell her to get up. She reached for her
clothes and began to dress. When she had finished she went out into the
hall, and with a return of her aggrieved, abandoned feeling (you must
remember that her stomach was very empty) she began to try to find her
way downstairs. She soon found the steps, went down them one at a time,
and pushed open the door at the foot. Cousin Ann, the brown-haired one,
was ironing near the stove. She nodded and smiled as the child came into
the room, and said, "Well, you must feel rested!"

"Oh, I haven't been asleep!" explained Elizabeth Ann. "I was waiting for
somebody to tell me to get up."

"Oh," said Cousin Ann, opening her black eyes a little. "WERE you?" She
said no more than this, but Elizabeth Ann decided hastily that she would
not add, as she had been about to, that she was also waiting for
somebody to help her dress and do her hair. As a matter of fact, she had
greatly enjoyed doing her own hair--the first time she had ever tried
it. It had never occurred to Aunt Frances that her little baby-girl had
grown up enough to be her own hairdresser, nor had it occurred to
Elizabeth Ann that this might be possible. But as she struggled with the
snarls she had had a sudden wild idea of doing it a different way from
the pretty fashion Aunt Frances always followed. Elizabeth Ann had
always secretly envied a girl in her class whose hair was all tied back
from her face, with one big knot in her ribbon at the back of her neck.
It looked so grown-up. And this morning she had done hers that way,
turning her neck till it ached, so that she could see the coveted tight
effect at the back. And still--aren't little girls queer?--although she
had enjoyed doing her own hair, she was very much inclined to feel hurt
because Cousin Ann had not come to do it for her.

[Illustration: She had greatly enjoyed doing her own hair.]

Cousin Ann set her iron down with the soft thump which Elizabeth Ann had
heard upstairs. She began folding a napkin, and said: "Now reach
yourself a bowl off the shelf yonder. The oatmeal's in that kettle on
the stove and the milk is in the blue pitcher. If you want a piece of
bread and butter, here's a new loaf just out of the oven, and the
butter's in that brown crock."

Elizabeth Ann followed these instructions and sat down before this
quickly assembled breakfast in a very much surprised silence. At home it
took the girl more than half an hour to get breakfast and set the table,
and then she had to wait on them besides. She began to pour the milk out
of the pitcher and stopped suddenly. "Oh, I'm afraid I've taken more
than my share!" she said apologetically.

Cousin Ann looked up from her rapidly moving iron, and said, in an
astonished voice: "Your share? What do you mean?"

"My share of the quart," explained Elizabeth Ann. At home they bought a
quart of milk and a cup of cream every day, and they were all very
conscientious about not taking more than their due share.

"Good land, child, take all the MILK you want!" said Cousin Ann, as
though she found something shocking in what the little girl had just
said. Elizabeth Ann thought to herself that she spoke as though milk ran
out of a faucet, like water.

She was very fond of milk, and she made a very good breakfast as she sat
looking about the low-ceilinged room. It was unlike any room she had
ever seen.

It was, of course, the kitchen, and yet it didn't seem possible that the
same word could be applied to that room and the small, dark cubby-hole
which had been Grace's asthmatical kingdom. This room was very long and
narrow, and all along one side were windows with white, ruffled curtains
drawn back at the sides, and with small, shining panes of glass, through
which the sun poured a golden flood of light on a long shelf of potted
plants that took the place of a window-sill. The shelf was covered with
shining white oil-cloth, the pots were of clean reddish brown, the
sturdy, stocky plants of bright green with clear red-and-white flowers.
Elizabeth Ann's eyes wandered all over the kitchen from the low, white
ceiling to the clean, bare wooden floor, but they always came back to
those sunny windows. Once, back in the big brick school-building, as she
had sat drooping her thin shoulders over her desk, some sort of a
procession had gone by with a brass band playing a lively air. For some
queer reason, every time she now glanced at that sheet of sunlight and
the bright flowers she had a little of the same thrill which had
straightened her back and gone up and down her spine while the band was
playing. Possibly Aunt Frances was right, after all, and Elizabeth Ann
WAS a very impressionable child. I wonder, by the way, if anybody ever
saw a child who wasn't.

At one end, the end where Cousin Ann was ironing, stood the kitchen
stove, gleaming black, with a tea-kettle humming away on it, a big hot-
water boiler near it, and a large kitchen cabinet with lots of drawers
and shelves and hooks and things. Beyond that, in the middle of the
room, was the table where they had had supper last night, and at which
the little girl now sat eating her very late breakfast; and beyond that,
at the other end of the room, was another table with an old dark-red
cashmere shawl on it for a cover. A large lamp stood in the middle of
this, a bookcase near it, two or three rocking-chairs around it, and
back of it, against the wall, was a wide sofa covered with bright
cretonne, with three bright pillows. Something big and black and woolly
was lying on this sofa, snoring loudly. As Cousin Ann saw the little
girl's fearful glance alight on this she explained: "That's Step, our
old dog. Doesn't he make an awful noise! Mother says, when she happens
to be alone here in the evening, it's real company to hear Shep snore--
as good as having a man in the house."

Although this did not seem at all a sensible remark to Elizabeth Ann,
who thought soberly to herself that she didn't see why snoring made a
dog as good as a man, still she was acute enough (for she was really
quite an intelligent little girl) to feel that it belonged in the same
class of remarks as one or two others she had noted as "queer" in the
talk at Putney Farm last night. This variety of talk was entirely new to
her, nobody in Aunt Harriet's conscientious household ever making
anything but plain statements of fact. It was one of the "queer Putney
ways" which Aunt Harriet had forgotten to mention. It is possible that
Aunt Harriet had never noticed it.

When Elizabeth Ann finished her breakfast, Cousin Ann made three
suggestions, using exactly the same accent for them all. She said:
"Wouldn't you better wash your dishes up now before they get sticky? And
don't you want one of those red apples from the dish on the side table?
And then maybe you'd like to look around the house so's to know where
you are." Elizabeth Ann had never washed a dish in all her life, and she
had always thought that nobody but poor, ignorant people, who couldn't
afford to hire girls, did such things. And yet (it was odd) she did not
feel like saying this to Cousin Ann, who stood there so straight in her
gingham dress and apron, with her clear, bright eyes and red cheeks.
Besides this feeling, Elizabeth Ann was overcome with embarrassment at
the idea of undertaking a new task in that casual way. How in the world
DID you wash dishes? She stood rooted to the spot, irresolute, horribly
shy, and looking, though she did not know it, very clouded and sullen.
Cousin Ann said briskly, holding an iron up to her cheek to see if it
was hot enough: "Just take them over to the sink there and hold them
under the hot-water faucet. They'll be clean in no time. The dish-towels
are those hanging on the rack over the stove."

Elizabeth Ann moved promptly over to the sink, as though Cousin Ann's
words had shoved her there, and before she knew it, her saucer, cup, and
spoon were clean and she was wiping them on a dry checked towel. "The
spoon goes in the side-table drawer with the other silver, and the
saucer and cup in those shelves there behind the glass doors where the
china belongs," continued Cousin Ann, thumping hard with her iron on a
napkin and not looking up at all, "and don't forget your apple as you go
out. Those Northern Spies are just getting to be good about now. When
they first come off the tree in October you could shoot them through an
oak plank."

Now Elizabeth Ann knew that this was a foolish thing to say, since of
course an apple never could go through a board; but something that had
always been sound asleep in her brain woke up a little, little bit and
opened one eye. For it occurred dimly to Elizabeth Ann that this was a
rather funny way of saying that Northern Spies were very hard when you
first pick them in the autumn. She had to figure it out for herself very
slowly, because it was a new idea to her, and she was halfway through
her tour of inspection of the house before there glimmered on her lips,
in a faint smile, the first recognition of humor in all her life. She
felt a momentary impulse to call down to Cousin Ann that she saw the
point, but before she had taken a single step toward the head of the
stairs she had decided not to do this. Cousin Ann, with her bright, dark
eyes, and her straight back, and her long arms, and her way of speaking
as though it never occurred to her that you wouldn't do just as she
said--Elizabeth Ann was not very sure that she liked Cousin Ann, and she
was very sure that she was afraid of her.

So she went on, walking from one room to another, industriously eating
the red apple, the biggest she had ever seen. It was the best, too, with
its crisp, white flesh and the delicious, sour-sweet juice which made
Elizabeth Ann feel with each mouthful like hurrying to take another. She
did not think much more of the other rooms in the house than she had of
the kitchen. There were no draped "throws" over anything; there were no
lace curtains at the windows, just dotted Swiss like the kitchen; all
the ceilings were very low; the furniture was all of dark wood and very
old-looking; what few rugs there were were of bright-colored rags; the
mirrors were queer and old, with funny old pictures at the top; there
wasn't a brass bed in any of the bedrooms, just old wooden ones with
posts, and curtains round the tops; and there was not a single plush
portiere in the parlor, whereas at Aunt Harriet's there had been two
sets for that one room.

She was relieved at the absence of a piano and secretly rejoiced that
she would not need to practice. In her heart she had not liked her music
lessons at all, but she had never dreamed of not accepting them from
Aunt Frances as she accepted everything else. Also she had liked to hear
Aunt Frances boast about how much better she could play than other
children of her age.

She was downstairs by this time, and, opening a door out of the parlor,
found herself back in the kitchen, the long line of sunny windows and
the bright flowers giving her that quick little thrill again. Cousin Ann
looked up from her ironing, nodded, and said: "All through? You'd better
come in and get warmed up. Those rooms get awfully cold these January
days. Winters we mostly use this room so's to get the good of the
kitchen stove." She added after a moment, during which Elizabeth Ann
stood by the stove, warming her hands: "There's one place you haven't
seen yet--the milk-room. Mother's down there now, churning. That's the
door--the middle one."

Elizabeth Ann had been wondering and wondering where in the world Aunt
Abigail was. So she stepped quickly to the door, and went dawn the cold
dark stairs she found there. At the bottom was a door, locked
apparently, for she could find no fastening. She heard steps inside, the
door was briskly cast open, and she almost fell into the arms of Aunt
Abigail, who caught her as she stumbled forward, saying: "Well, I've
been expectin' you down here for a long time. I never saw a little girl
yet who didn't like to watch butter-making. Don't you love to run the
butter-worker over it? I do, myself, for all I'm seventy-two!"

"I don't know anything about it," said Elizabeth Ann. "I don't know what
you make butter out of. We always bought ours."

"Well, FOR GOODNESS' SAKES!" said Aunt Abigail. She turned and called
across the room, "Henry, did you ever! Here's Betsy saying she don't
know what we make butter out of! She actually never saw anybody making
butter!"

Uncle Henry was sitting down, near the window, turning the handle to a
small barrel swung between two uprights. He stopped for a moment and
considered Aunt Abigail's remark with the same serious attention he had
given to Elizabeth Ann's discovery about left and right. Then he began
to turn the churn over and over again and said, peaceably: "Well,
Mother, you never saw anybody laying asphalt pavement, I'll warrant you!
And I suppose Betsy knows all about that."

Elizabeth Ann's spirits rose. She felt very superior indeed. "Oh, yes,"
she assured them, "I know ALL about that! Didn't you ever see anybody
doing that? Why, I've seen them HUNDREDS of times! Every day as we went
to school they were doing over the whole pavement for blocks along
there."

Aunt Abigail and Uncle Henry looked at her with interest, and Aunt
Abigail said: "Well, now, think of that! Tell us all about it!"

"Why, there's a big black sort of wagon," began Elizabeth Ann, "and they
run it up and down and pour out the black stuff on the road. And that's
all there is to it." She stopped, rather abruptly, looking uneasy. Uncle
Henry inquired: "Now there's one thing I've always wanted to know. How
do they keep that stuff from hardening on them? How do they keep it
hot?"

The little girl looked blank. "Why, a fire, I suppose," she faltered,
searching her memory desperately and finding there only a dim
recollection of a red glow somewhere connected with the familiar scene
at which she had so often looked with unseeing eyes.

"Of course a fire," agreed Uncle Henry. "But what do they burn in it,
coke or coal or wood or charcoal? And how do they get any draft to keep
it going?"

Elizabeth Ann shook her head. "I never noticed," she said.

Aunt Abigail asked her now, "What do they do to the road before they
pour it on?"

"Do?" said Elizabeth Ann. "I didn't know they did anything."

"Well, they can't pour it right on a dirt road, can they?" asked Aunt
Abigail. "Don't they put down cracked stone or something?"

Elizabeth Ann looked down at her toes. "I never noticed," she said.

"I wonder how long it takes for it to harden?" said Uncle Henry.

"I never noticed," said Elizabeth Ann, in a small voice.

Uncle Henry said, "Oh!" and stopped asking questions. Aunt Abigail
turned away and put a stick of wood in the stove. Elizabeth Ann did not
feel very superior now, and when Aunt Abigail said, "Now the butter's
beginning to come. Don't you want to watch and see everything I do, so's
you can answer if anybody asks you how butter is made?" Elizabeth Ann
understood perfectly what was in Aunt's Abigail's mind, and gave to the
process of butter-making a more alert and aroused attention than she had
ever before given to anything. It was so interesting, too, that in no
time she forgot why she was watching, and was absorbed in the
fascinations of the dairy for their own sake.

She looked in the churn as Aunt Abigail unscrewed the top, and saw the
thick, sour cream separating into buttermilk and tiny golden particles.
"It's gathering," said Aunt Abigail, screwing the lid back on.
"Father'll churn it a little more till it really comes. And you and I
will scald the wooden butter things and get everything ready. You'd
better take that apron there to keep your dress clean."

Wouldn't Aunt Frances have been astonished if she could have looked in
on Elizabeth Ann that very first morning of her stay at the hateful
Putney Farm and have seen her wrapped in a gingham apron, her face
bright with interest, trotting here and there in the stone-floored milk-
room! She was allowed the excitement of pulling out the plug from the
bottom of the churn, and dodged back hastily to escape the gush of
buttermilk spouting into the pail held by Aunt Abigail. And she poured
the water in to wash the butter, and screwed on the top herself, and,
again all herself (for Uncle Henry had gone off as soon as the butter
had "come"), swung the barrel back and forth six or seven times to swish
the water all through the particles of butter. She even helped Aunt
Abigail scoop out the great yellow lumps--her imagination had never
conceived of so much butter in all the world! Then Aunt Abigail let her
run the curiously shaped wooden butter-worker back and forth over the
butter, squeezing out the water, and then pile it up again with her
wooden paddle into a mound of gold. She weighed out the salt needed on
the scales, and was very much surprised to find that there really is
such a thing as an ounce. She had never met it before outside the pages
of her arithmetic book and she didn't know it lived anywhere else.

After the salt was worked in she watched Aunt Abigail's deft, wrinkled
old hands make pats and rolls. It looked like the greatest fun, and too
easy for anything; and when Aunt Abigail asked her if she wouldn't like
to make up the last half-pound into a pat for dinner, she took up the
wooden paddle confidently. And then she got one of the surprises that
Putney Farm seemed to have for her. She discovered that her hands didn't
seem to belong to her at all, that her fingers were all thumbs, that she
didn't seem to know in the least beforehand how hard a stroke she was
going to give nor which way her fingers were going to go. It was, as a
matter of fact, the first time Elizabeth Ann had tried to do anything
with her hands except to write and figure and play on the piano, and
naturally she wasn't very well acquainted with them. She stopped in
dismay, looking at the shapeless, battered heap of butter before her and
holding out her hands as though they were not part of her.

Aunt Abigail laughed, took up the paddle, and after three or four passes
the butter was a smooth, yellow ball. "Well, that brings it all back to
me!" she said? "when _I_ was a little girl, when my grandmother first
let me try to make a pat. I was about five years old--my! what a mess I
made of it! And I remember? doesn't it seem funny--that SHE laughed and
said her Great-aunt Elmira had taught her how to handle butter right
here in this very milk-room. Let's see, Grandmother was born the year
the Declaration of Independence was signed. That's quite a while ago,
isn't it? But butter hasn't changed much, I guess, nor little girls
either."

Elizabeth Ann listened to this statement with a very queer, startled
expression on her face, as though she hadn't understood the words. Now
for a moment she stood staring up in Aunt Abigail's face, and yet not
seeing her at all, because she was thinking so hard. She was thinking!
"Why! There were real people living when the Declaration of Independence
was signed--real people, not just history people--old women teaching
little girls how to do things--right in this very room, on this very
floor--and the Declaration of Independence just signed!"

To tell the honest truth, although she had passed a very good
examination in the little book on American history they had studied in
school, Elizabeth Ann had never to that moment had any notion that there
ever had been really and truly any Declaration of Independence at all.
It had been like the ounce, living exclusively inside her schoolbooks
for little girls to be examined about. And now here Aunt Abigail,
talking about a butter-pat, had brought it to life!

Of course all this only lasted a moment, because it was such a new idea!
She soon lost track of what she was thinking of; she rubbed her eyes as
though she were coming out of a dream, she thought, confusedly: "What
did butter have to do with the Declaration of Independence? Nothing, of
course! It couldn't!" and the whole impression seemed to pass out of her
mind. But it was an impression which was to come again and again during
the next few months.





CHAPTER IV

BETSY GOES TO SCHOOL

Elizabeth Ann was very much surprised to hear Cousin Ann's voice
calling, "Dinner!" down the stairs. It did not seem possible that the
whole morning had gone by. "Here," said Aunt Abigail, "just put that pat
on a plate, will you, and take it upstairs as you go. I've got all I can
do to haul my own two hundred pounds up, without any half-pound of
butter into the bargain." The little girl smiled at this, though she did
not exactly know why, and skipped up the stairs proudly with her butter.

Dinner was smoking on the table, which was set in the midst of the great
pool of sunlight. A very large black-and-white dog, with a great bushy
tail, was walking around and around the table, sniffing the air. He
looked as big as a bear to Elizabeth Ann; and as he walked his great red
tongue hung out of his mouth and his white teeth gleamed horribly.
Elizabeth Ann shrank back in terror, clutching her plate of butter to
her breast with tense fingers. Cousin. Ann said, over her shoulder: "Oh,
bother! There's old Shep, got up to pester us begging for scraps! Shep!
You go and lie down this minute!" To Elizabeth Ann's astonishment and
immense relief, the great animal turned, drooping his head sadly, walked
back across the floor, got upon the couch again, and laid his head down
on one paw very forlornly, turning up the whites of his eyes meekly at
Cousin Ann.

Aunt Abigail, who had just pulled herself up the stairs, panting, said,
between laughing and puffing: "I'm glad I'm not an animal on this farm.
Ann does boss them around so." "Well, SOMEbody has to!" said Cousin Ann,
advancing on the table with a platter. This proved to have chicken
fricassee on it, and Elizabeth Ann's heart melted in her at the smell.
She loved chicken gravy on hot biscuits beyond anything in the world,
but chickens are so expensive when you buy them in the market that Aunt
Harriet hadn't had them very often for dinner. And there was a plate of
biscuits, golden brown, just coming out of the oven! She sat down very
quickly, her mouth watering, and attacked with extreme haste the big
plateful of food which Cousin Ann passed her.

At Aunt Harriet's she had always been aware that everybody watched her
anxiously as she ate, and she had heard so much about her light appetite
that she felt she must live up to her reputation, and had a very natural
and human hesitation about eating all she wanted when there happened to
be something she liked very much. But nobody here knew that she "only
ate enough to keep a bird alive," and that her "appetite was SO
capricious!" Nor did anybody notice her while she stowed away the
chicken and gravy and hot biscuits and currant jelly and baked potatoes
and apple pie--when did Elizabeth Ann ever eat such a meal before! She
actually felt her belt grow tight.

In the middle of the meal Cousin Ann got up to answer the telephone,
which was in the next room. The instant the door had closed behind her
Uncle Henry leaned forward, tapped Elizabeth Ann on the shoulder, and
nodded toward the sofa. His eyes were twinkling, and as for Aunt Abigail
she began to laugh silently, shaking all over, her napkin at her mouth
to stifle the sound. Elizabeth Ann turned wonderingly and saw the old
dog cautiously and noiselessly letting himself down from the sofa, one
ear cocked rigidly in the direction of Cousin Ann's voice in the next
room. "The old tyke!" said Uncle Henry. "He always sneaks up to the
table to be fed if Ann goes out for a minute. Here, Betsy, you're
nearest, give him this piece of skin from the chicken neck." The big dog
padded forward across the room, evidently in such a state of terror
about Cousin Ann that Elizabeth Ann felt for him. She had a fellow-
feeling about that relative of hers. Also it was impossible to be afraid
of so abjectly meek and guilty an animal. As old Shep came up to her,
poking his nose inquiringly on her lap, she shrinkingly held out the big
piece of skin, and though she jumped back at the sudden snap and
gobbling gulp with which the old dog greeted the tidbit, she could not
but sympathize with his evident enjoyment of it. He waved his bushy tail
gratefully, cocked his head on one side, and, his ears standing up at
attention, his eyes glistening greedily, he gave a little, begging
whine. "Oh, he's asking for more!" cried Elizabeth Ann, surprised to see
how plainly she could understand dog-talk. "Quick, Uncle Henry, give me
another piece!"

Uncle Henry rapidly transferred to her plate a wing-bone from his own,
and Aunt Abigail, with one deft swoop, contributed the neck from the
platter. As fast as she could, Elizabeth Ann fed these to Shep, who
woofed them down at top speed, the bones crunching loudly under his
strong, white teeth. How he did enjoy it! It did your heart good to see
his gusto!

[Illustration: "Oh, he's asking for more'" cried Elizabeth Ann]

There was the sound of the telephone receiver being hung up in the next
room--and everybody acted at once. Aunt Abigail began drinking
innocently out of her coffee-cup, only her laughing old eyes showing
over the rim; Uncle Henry buttered a slice of bread with a grave face,
as though he were deep in conjectures about who would be the next
President; and as for old Shep, he made one plunge across the room, his
toe-nails clicking rapidly on the bare floor, sprang up on the couch,
and when Cousin Ann opened the door and came in he was lying in exactly
the position in which she had left him, his paw stretched out, his head
laid on it, his brown eyes turned up meekly so that the whites showed.

I've told you what these three did, but I haven't told you yet what
Elizabeth Ann did. And it is worth telling. As Cousin Ann stepped in,
glancing suspiciously from her sober-faced and abstracted parents to the
lamb-like innocence of old Shep, little Elizabeth Ann burst into a shout
of laughter. It's worth telling about, because, so far as I know, that
was the first time she had ever laughed out heartily in all her life.
For my part, I'm half surprised to know that she knew how.

Of course, when she laughed, Aunt Abigail had to laugh too, setting down
her coffee-cup and showing all the funny wrinkles in her face screwed up
hard with fun; and that made Uncle Henry laugh, and then Cousin Ann
laughed and said, as she sat down, "You are bad children, the whole four
of you!" And old Shep, seeing the state of things, stopped pretending to
be meek, jumped down, and came lumbering over to the table, wagging his
tail and laughing too; you know that good, wide dog-smile! He put his
head on Elizabeth Ann's lap again and she patted it and lifted up one of
his big black ears. She had quite forgotten that she was terribly afraid
of big dogs.

After dinner Cousin Ann looked up at the clock and said: "My goodness!
Betsy'll be late for school if she doesn't start right off." She
explained to the child, aghast at this sudden thunderclap, "I let you
sleep this morning as long as you wanted to, because you were so tired
from your journey. But of course there's no reason for missing the
afternoon session."

As Elizabeth Ann continued sitting perfectly still, frozen with alarm,
Cousin Ann jumped up briskly, got the little coat and cap, helped her
up, and began inserting the child's arms into the sleeves. She pulled
the cap well down over Elizabeth Ann's ears, felt in the pocket and
pulled out the mittens. "There," she said, holding them out, "you'd
better put them on before you go out, for it's a real cold day." As she
led the stupefied little girl along toward the door Aunt Abigail came
after them and put a big sugar-cookie into the child's hand. "Maybe
you'll like to eat that for your recess time," she said. "I always did
when I went to school."

Elizabeth Ann's hand closed automatically about the cookie, but she
scarcely heard what was said. She felt herself to be in a bad dream.
Aunt Frances had never, no NEVER, let her go to school alone, and on the
first day of the year always took her to the new teacher and introduced
her and told the teacher how sensitive she was and how hard to
understand; and then she stayed there for an hour or two till Elizabeth
Ann got used to things! She could not face a whole new school all alone--
oh, she couldn't, she wouldn't! She couldn't! Horrors! Here she was in
the front hall--she was on the porch! Cousin Ann was saying: "Now run
along, child. Straight down the road till the first turn to the left,
and there in the cross-roads, there you are." And now the front door
closed behind her, the path stretched before her to the road, and the
road led down the hill the way Cousin Ann had pointed. Elizabeth Ann's
feet began to move forward and carried her down the path, although she
was still crying out to herself, "I can't! I won't! I can't!"

Are you wondering why Elizabeth Ann didn't turn right around, open the
front door, walk in, and say, "I can't! I won't! I can't!" to Cousin
Ann?

The answer to that question is that she didn't do it because Cousin Ann
was Cousin Ann. And there's more in that than you think! In fact, there
is a mystery in it that nobody has ever solved, not even the greatest
scientists and philosophers, although, like all scientists and
philosophers, they think they have gone a long way toward explaining
something they don't understand by calling it a long name. The long name
is "personality," and what it means nobody knows, but it is perhaps the
very most important thing in the world for all that. And yet we know
only one or two things about it. We know that anybody's personality is
made up of the sum total of all the actions and thoughts and desires of
his life. And we know that though there aren't any words or any figures
in any language to set down that sum total accurately, still it is one
of the first things that everybody knows about anybody else. And that is
really all we know!

So I can't tell you why Elizabeth Ann did not go back and cry and sob
and say she couldn't and she wouldn't and she couldn't, as she would
certainly have done at Aunt Harriet's. You remember that I could not
even tell you why it was that, as the little fatherless and motherless
girl lay in bed looking at Aunt Abigail's old face, she should feel so
comforted and protected that she must needs break out crying. No, all I
can say is that it was because Aunt Abigail was Aunt Abigail. But
perhaps it may occur to you that it's rather a good idea to keep a sharp
eye on your "personality," whatever that is! It might be very handy, you
know, to have a personality like Cousin Ann's which sent Elizabeth Ann's
feet down the path; or perhaps you would prefer one like Aunt Abigail's.
Well, take your choice.

You must not, of course, think for a moment that Elizabeth Ann had the
slightest INTENTION of obeying Cousin Ann. No indeed! Nothing was
farther from her mind as her feet carried her along the path and into
the road. In her mind was nothing but rebellion and fear and anger and
oh, such hurt feelings! She turned sick at the very thought of facing
all the staring, curious faces in the playground turned on the new
scholar as she had seen them at home! She would never, never do it! She
would walk around all the afternoon, and then go back and tell Cousin
Ann that she couldn't! She would EXPLAIN to her how Aunt Frances never
let her go out of doors without a loving hand to cling to. She would
EXPLAIN to her how Aunt Frances always took care of her! ... it was easier
to think about what she would say and do and explain, away from Cousin
Ann, than it was to say and do it before those black eyes. Aunt
Frances's eyes were soft, light blue.

Oh, how she wanted Aunt Frances to take care of her! Nobody cared a
thing about her! Nobody UNDERSTOOD her but Aunt Frances! She wouldn't go
back at all to Putney Farm. She would just walk on and on till she was
lost, and the night would come and she would lie down and freeze to
death, and then wouldn't Cousin Ann feel ...  Someone called to her,
"Isn't this Betsy?"

She looked up astonished. A young girl in a gingham dress and a white
apron like those at Putney Farm stood in front of a tiny, square
building, like a toy house. "Isn't this Betsy?" asked the young girl
again. "Your Cousin Ann said you were coming to school today and I've
been looking out for you. But I saw you going right by, and I ran out to
stop you."

"Why, where IS the school?" asked Betsy, staring around for a big brick,
four-story building.

The young girl laughed and held out her hand. "This is the school," she
said, "and I am the teacher, and you'd better come right in, for it's
time to begin."

She led Betsy into a low-ceilinged room with geraniums at the windows,
where about a dozen children of different ages sat behind their desks.
At the first sight of them Betsy blushed crimson with fright and
shyness, and hung down her head; but, looking out the corners of her
eyes, she saw that they, too, were all very red-faced and scared-looking
and hung down their heads, looking at her shyly out of the corners of
their eyes. She was so surprised by this that she forgot all about
herself and looked inquiringly at the teacher.

"They don't see many strangers," the teacher explained, "and they feel
very shy and scared when a new scholar comes, especially one from the
city."

"Is this my grade?" asked Elizabeth, thinking it the very smallest grade
she had ever seen.

"This is the whole school," said the teacher. "There are only two or
three in each class. You'll probably have three in yours. Miss Ann said
you were in the third grade. There, that's your seat."

Elizabeth sat down before a very old desk, much battered and hacked up
with knife marks. There was a big H. P. carved just over the inkwell,
and many other initials scattered all over the top.

The teacher stepped back to her desk and took up a violin that lay
there. "Now, children, we'll begin the afternoon session by singing
'America,'" she said. She played the air over a little very sweetly and
stirringly, and then as the children stood up she came down close to
them, standing just in front of Betsy. She drew the bow across the
strings in a big chord, and said, "NOW," and Betsy burst into song with
the others. The sun came in the windows brightly, the teacher, too, sang
as she played, and all the children, even the littlest ones, opened
their mouths wide and sang lustily.





CHAPTER V

WHAT GRADE IS BETSY?

After the singing the teacher gave Elizabeth Ann a pile of schoolbooks,
some paper, some pencils, and a pen, and told her to set her desk in
order. There were more initials carved inside, another big H. P. with a
little A. P. under it. What a lot of children must have sat there,
thought the little girl as she arranged her books and papers. As she
shut down the lid the teacher finished giving some instructions to three
or four little ones and said, "Betsy and Ralph and Ellen, bring your
reading books up here."

Betsy sighed, took out her third-grade reader, and went with the other
two up to the battered old bench near the teacher's desk. She knew all
about reading lessons and she hated them, although she loved to read.
But reading lessons ... ! You sat with your book open at some reading that
you could do with your eyes shut, it was so easy, and you waited and
waited and waited while your classmates slowly stumbled along, reading
aloud a sentence or two apiece, until your turn came to stand up and
read your sentence or two, which by that time sounded just like nonsense
because you'd read it over and over so many times to yourself before
your chance came. And often you didn't even have a chance to do that,
because the teacher didn't have time to get around to you at all, and
you closed your book and put it back in your desk without having opened
your mouth. Reading was one thing Elizabeth Ann had learned to do very
well indeed, but she had learned it all by herself at home from much
reading to herself. Aunt Frances had kept her well supplied with
children's books from the nearest public library. She often read three a
week--very different, that, from a sentence or two once or twice a week.

When she sat down on the battered old bench she almost laughed aloud, it
seemed so funny to be in a class of only three. There had been forty in
her grade in the big brick building. She sat in the middle, the little
girl whom the teacher had called Ellen on one side, and Ralph on the
other. Ellen was very pretty, with fair hair smoothly braided in two
little pig-tails, sweet, blue eyes, and a clean blue-and-white gingham
dress. Ralph had very black eyes, dark hair, a big bruise on his
forehead, a cut on his chin, and a tear in the knee of his short
trousers. He was much bigger than Ellen, and Elizabeth Ann thought he
looked rather fierce. She decided that she would be afraid of him, and
would not like him at all.

"Page thirty-two," said the teacher. "Ralph first."

Ralph stood up and began to read. It sounded very familiar to Elizabeth
Ann, for he did not read at all well. What was not familiar was that the
teacher did not stop him after the first sentence. He read on and on
till he had read a page, the teacher only helping him with the hardest
words.

"Now Betsy," said the teacher.

Elizabeth Ann stood up, read the first sentence, and paused, like a
caged lion pausing when he comes to the end of his cage.

"Go on," said the teacher.

Elizabeth Ann read the next sentence and stopped again, automatically.

"Go ON," said the teacher, looking at her sharply.

The next time the little girl paused the teacher laughed out good-
naturedly. "What is the matter with you, Betsy?" she said. "Go on till I
tell you to stop."

So Elizabeth Ann, very much surprised but very much interested, read on,
sentence after sentence, till she forgot they were sentences and just
thought of what they meant. She read a whole page and then another page,
and that was the end of the selection. She had never read aloud so much
in her life. She was aware that everybody in the room had stopped
working to listen to her. She felt very proud and less afraid than she
had ever thought she could be in a schoolroom. When she finished,

"You read very well!" said the teacher. "Is this very easy for you?"

"Oh, YES!" said Elizabeth Ann.

"I guess, then, that you'd better not stay in this class," said the
teacher. She took a book out of her desk. "See if you can read that."

Elizabeth Ann began in her usual school-reading style, very slow and
monotonous, but this didn't seem like a "reader" at all. It was poetry,
full of hard words that were fun to try to pronounce, and it was all
about an old woman who would hang out an American flag, even though the
town was full of rebel soldiers. She read faster and faster, getting
more and more excited, till she broke out with "Halt!" in such a loud,
spirited voice that the sound of it startled her and made her stop,
fearing that she would be laughed at. But nobody laughed. They were all
listening, very eagerly, even the little ones, with their eyes turned
toward her.

"You might as well go on and let us see how it came out," said the
teacher, and Betsy finished triumphantly.

"WELL," said the teacher, "there's no sense in your reading along in the
third reader. After this you'll recite out of the seventh reader with
Frank and Harry and Stashie."

Elizabeth Ann could not believe her ears. To be "jumped" four grades in
that casual way! It wasn't possible! She at once thought, however, of
something that would prevent it entirely, and while Ellen was reading
her page in a slow, careful little voice, Elizabeth Ann was feeling
miserably that she must explain to the teacher why she couldn't read
with the seventh-grade children. Oh, how she wished she could! When they
stood up to go back to their seats she hesitated, hung her head, and
looked very unhappy. "Did you want to say something to me?" asked the
teacher, pausing with a bit of chalk in her hand.

The little girl went up to her desk and said, what she knew it was her
duty to confess: "I can't be allowed to read in the seventh reader. I
don't write a bit well, and I never get the mental number-work right. I
couldn't do ANYthing with seventh-grade arithmetic!"

The teacher looked a little blank and said: "_I_ didn't say anything
about your number-work! I don't KNOW anything about it! You haven't
recited yet." She turned away and began to write a list of words on the
board. "Betsy, Ralph, and Ellen study their spelling," she said. "You
little ones come up for your reading."

Two little boys and two little girls came forward as Elizabeth Ann began
to con over the words on the board. At first she found she was listening
to the little, chirping voices, as the children straggled with their
reading, instead of studying "doubt, travel, cheese," and the other
words in her lesson. But she put her hands over her ears, and her mind
on her spelling. She wanted to make a good impression with that lesson.
After a while, when she was sure she could spell them all correctly, she
began to listen and look around her. She always "got" her spelling in
less time than was allowed the class, and usually sat idle, looking out
of the window until that study period was over. But now the moment she
stopped staring at the board and moving her lips as she spelled to
herself the teacher said, just as though she had been watching her every
minute instead of conducting a class, "Betsy, have you learned your
spelling?"

"Yes, ma'am, I think so," said Elizabeth Ann, wondering very much why
she was asked.

"That's fine," said the teacher. "I wish you'd take little Molly over in
that corner and help her with her reading. She's getting on so much
better than the rest of the class that I hate to have her lose her time.
Just hear her read the rest of her little story, will you, and don't
help her unless she's really stuck."

Elizabeth Ann was startled by this request, which was unheard of in her
experience. She was very uncertain of herself as she sat down on a low
chair in the corner of the schoolroom away from the desks, with the
little child leaning on her knee. And yet she was not exactly afraid,
either, because Molly was such a shy little roly-poly thing, with her
crop of yellow curls, and her bright blue eyes very serious as she
looked hard at the book and began: "Once there was a rat. It was a fat
rat." No, it was impossible to be frightened of such a funny little
girl, who peered so earnestly into the older child's face to make sure
she was doing her lesson right.

Elizabeth Ann had never had anything to do with children younger than
herself, and she felt very pleased and important to have anybody look up
to HER! She put her arm around Molly's square, warm, fat little body and
gave her a squeeze. Molly snuggled up closer; and the two children put
their heads together over the printed page, Elizabeth Ann correcting
Molly very gently indeed when she made a mistake, and waiting patiently
when she hesitated. She had so fresh in her mind her own suffering from
quick, nervous corrections that she took the greatest pleasure in
speaking quietly and not interrupting the little girl more than was
necessary. It was fun to teach, LOTS of fun! She was surprised when the
teacher said, "Well, Betsy, how did Molly do?"

"Oh, is the time up?" said Elizabeth Ann. "Why, she does beautifully, I
think, for such a little thing."

"Do you suppose," said the teacher thoughtfully, just as though Betsy
were a grown-up person, "do you suppose she could go into the second
reader, with Eliza? There's no use keeping her in the first if she's
ready to go on."

Elizabeth Ann's head whirled with this second light-handed juggling with
the sacred distinction between the grades. In the big brick schoolhouse
nobody EVER went into another grade except at the beginning of a new
year, after you'd passed a lot of examinations. She had not known that
anybody could do anything else. The idea that everybody took a year to a
grade, no MATTER what! was so fixed in her mind that she felt as though
the teacher had said: "How would you like to stop being nine years old
and be twelve instead! And don't you think Molly would better be eight
instead of six?"

However, just then her class in arithmetic was called, so that she had
no more time to be puzzled. She came forward with Ralph and Ellen again,
very low in her mind. She hated arithmetic with all her might, and she
really didn't understand a thing about it! By long experience she had
learned to read her teachers' faces very accurately, and she guessed by
their expression whether the answer she gave was the right one. And that
was the only way she could tell. You never heard of any other child who
did that, did you?

They had mental arithmetic, of course (Elizabeth Ann thought it just her
luck!), and of course it was those hateful eights and sevens, and of
course right away poor Betsy got the one she hated most, 7x8. She never
knew that one! She said dispiritedly that it was 54, remembering vaguely
that it was somewhere in the fifties. Ralph burst out scornfully, "56!"
and the teacher, as if she wanted to take him down for showing off,
pounced on him with 9 x 8. He answered, without drawing breath, 72.
Elizabeth Ann shuddered at his accuracy. Ellen, too, rose to the
occasion when she got 6 x 7, which Elizabeth Ann could sometimes
remember and sometimes not. And then, oh horrors! It was her turn again!
Her turn had never before come more than twice during a mental
arithmetic lesson. She was so startled by the swiftness with which the
question went around that she balked on 6 x 6, which she knew perfectly.
And before she could recover Ralph had answered and had rattled out a
108 in answer to 9 x 12; and then Ellen slapped down an 84 on top of 7 x
12. Good gracious! Who could have guessed, from the way they read, they
could do their tables like this! She herself missed on 7 x 7 and was
ready to cry. After this the teacher didn't call on her at all, but
showered questions down on the other two, who sent the answers back with
sickening speed.

After the lesson the teacher said, smiling, "Well, Betsy, you were right
about your arithmetic. I guess you'd better recite with Eliza for a
while. She's doing second-grade work. I shouldn't be surprised if, after
a good review with her, you'd be able to go on with the third-grade
work."

Elizabeth Ann fell back on the bench with her mouth open. She felt
really dizzy. What crazy things the teacher said! She felt as though she
was being pulled limb from limb.

"What's the matter?" asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered fact.

"Why--why," said Elizabeth Ann, "I don't know what I am at all. If I'm
second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade
spelling, what grade AM I?"

The teacher laughed at the turn of her phrase. "YOU aren't any grade at
all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't
you? What difference does it make what grade you're in! And what's the
use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you
don't know your multiplication table?"

"Well, for goodness' SAKES!" ejaculated Elizabeth Ann, feeling very much
as though somebody had stood her suddenly on her head.

"Why, what's the matter?" asked the teacher again.

This time Elizabeth Ann didn't answer, because she herself didn't know
what the matter was. But I do, and I'll tell you. The matter was that
never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always
thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was
ever so startled to get a little glimpse of the fact that she was there
to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so
she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. Of course,
she didn't really know that till she did come to be grown up, but she
had her first dim notion of it in that moment, and it made her feel the
way you do when you're learning to skate and somebody pulls away the
chair you've been leaning on and says, "Now, go it alone!"

The teacher waited a minute, and then, when Elizabeth Ann didn't say
anything more, she rang a little bell. "Recess time," she said, and as
the children marched out and began putting on their wraps she followed
them into the cloak-room, pulled on a warm, red cap and a red sweater,
and ran outdoors herself. "Who's on my side!" she called, and the
children came darting out after her. Elizabeth Ann had dreaded the first
recess time with the strange children, but she had no time to feel shy,
for in a twinkling she was on one end of a long rope with a lot of her
schoolmates, pulling with all her might against the teacher and two of
the big boys. Nobody had looked at her curiously, nobody had said
anything to her beyond a loud, "Come on, Betsy!" from Ralph, who was at
the head on their side.

They pulled and they pulled, digging their feet into the ground and
bracing themselves against the rocks which stuck up out of the
playground. Sometimes the teacher's side yanked them along by quick
jerks, and then they'd all set their feet hard when Ralph shouted out,
"Now, ALL TOGETHER!" and they'd slowly drag the other side back. And all
the time everybody was shouting and yelling together with the
excitement. Betsy was screaming too, and when a wagon passing by stopped
and a big, broad-shouldered farmer jumped down laughing, put the end of
the rope over his shoulder, and just walked off with the whole lot of
them till he had pulled them clear off their feet, Elizabeth Ann found
herself rolling over and over with a breathless, squirming mass of
children, her shrill laughter rising even above the shouts of merriment
of the others. She laughed so she could hardly get up on her feet again,
it was such an unexpected ending to the con test.

The big farmer was laughing too. "You ain't so smart as you THINK you
are, are you!" he jeered at them good-naturedly. Then he started,
yelling "WHOA there!" to his horses, which had begun to walk on. He had
to run after them with all his might, and just climbed into the back of
the wagon and grabbed the reins the very moment they broke into a trot.
The children laughed, and Ralph shouted after him, "Hi, there, Uncle
Nate! Who's not so smart as he thinks he is, NOW!" He turned to the
little girls near him. "They 'most got away from him THAT time!" he
said. "He's awful foolish about leaving them standing while he's funning
or something. He thinks he's awful funny, anyhow. Some day they'll run
away on him and THEN where'll he be?"

Elizabeth Ann was thinking to herself that this was one of the queerest
things that had happened to her even in this queer place. Never, why
never once, had any grown-up, passing the playground of the big brick
building, DREAMED of such a thing as stopping for a minute to play. They
never even looked at the children, any more than if they were in another
world. In fact she had felt the school was in another world.

"Ralph, it's your turn to get the water," said the teacher, handing him
a pail. "Want to go along?" said Ralph gruffly to Ellen and Betsy. He
led the way and the little girls walked after him. Now that she was out
of a crowd Elizabeth Ann felt all her shyness come down on her like a
black cloud, drying up her mouth and turning her hands and feet cold as
ice. Into one of these cold hands she felt small, warm fingers slide.
She looked down and there was little Molly trotting by her side, turning
her blue eyes up trustfully. "Teacher says I can go with you if you'll
take care of me," she said. "She never lets us first-graders go without
somebody bigger to help us over the log."

As she spoke they came to a small, clear, swift brook, crossed by a big
white-birch log. Elizabeth Ann was horribly afraid to set foot on it,
but with little Molly's hand holding tightly to hers she was ashamed to
say she was afraid. Ralph skipped across, swinging the pail to show how
easy it was for him. Ellen followed more slowly, and then--oh, don't you
wish Aunt Frances could have been there!--Betsy shut her teeth together
hard, put Molly ahead of her, took her hand, and started across. As a
matter of fact Molly went along as sure-footed as a little goat, having
done it a hundred times, and it was she who steadied Elizabeth Ann. But
nobody knew this, Molly least of all.

Ralph took a drink out of a tin cup standing on a stump near by, dipped
the pail into a deep, clear pool, and started back to the school. Ellen
took a drink and offered the cup to Betsy, very shyly, without looking
up. After they had all three had a drink they stood there for a moment,
much embarrassed. Then Ellen said, in a very small voice, "Do you like
dolls with yellow hair the best?"

Now it happened that Elizabeth Ann had very positive convictions on this
point which she had never spoken of, because Aunt Frances didn't REALLY
care about dolls. She only pretended to, to be company for her little
niece.

"No, I DON'T!" answered the little girl emphatically. "I get just sick
and tired of always seeing them with that old, bright-yellow hair! I
like them to have brown hair, just the way most little girls really do!"

Ellen lifted her eyes and smiled radiantly. "Oh, so do I!" she said.
"And that lovely old doll your folks have has got brown hair. Will you
let me play with her some time?"

"My folks?" said Elizabeth Ann blankly.

"Why yes, your Aunt Abigail and your Uncle Henry."

"Have they got a DOLL?" said Betsy, thinking this was the very climax of
Putney queerness.

"Oh my, yes!" said Molly, eagerly. "She's the one Mrs. Putney had when
she was a little girl. And she's got the loveliest clothes! She's in the
hair-trunk under the eaves in the attic. They let me take her down once
when I was there with Mother. And Mother said she guessed, now a little
girl had come there to live, they'd let her have her down all the time.
I'll bring mine over next Saturday, if you want me to. Mine's got yellow
hair, but she's real pretty anyhow. If Father's going to mill that day,
he can leave me there for the morning."

[Illustration with caption: Betsy shut her teeth together hard, and
started across.]

Elizabeth Ann had not understood more than one word in five of this, but
just then the school-bell rang and they went back, little Molly helping
Elizabeth Ann over the log and thinking she was being helped, as before.

They ran along to the little building, and there I'm going to leave
them, because I think I've told enough about their school for ONE while.
It was only a poor, rough, little district school anyway, that no
Superintendent of Schools would have looked at for a minute, except to
sniff.





CHAPTER VI

IF YOU DON'T LIKE CONVERSATION IN A BOOK SKIP THIS CHAPTER!

Betsy opened the door and was greeted by her kitten, who ran to her,
purring and arching her back to be stroked.

"Well," said Aunt Abigail, looking up from the pan of apples in her lap,
"I suppose you're starved, aren't you? Get yourself a piece of bread and
butter, why don't you? and have one of these apples."

As the little girl sat down by her, munching fast on this provender, she
asked: "What desk did you get?"

Elizabeth Ann thought for a moment, cuddling Eleanor up to her face. "I
think it is the third from the front in the second row." She wondered
why Aunt Abigail cared. "Oh, I guess that's your Uncle Henry's desk.
It's the one his father had, too. Are there a couple of H. P.'s carved
on it?"

Betsy nodded.

"His father carved the H. P. on the lid, so Henry had to put his inside.
I remember the winter he put it there. It was the first season Mother
let me wear real hoop skirts. I sat in the first seat on the third row."

Betsy ate her apple more and more slowly, trying to take in what Aunt
Abigail had said. Uncle Henry and HIS FATHER--why Moses or Alexander the
Great didn't seem any further back in the mists of time to Elizabeth Ann
than did Uncle Henry's FATHER! And to think he had been a little boy,
right there at that desk! She stopped chewing altogether for a moment
and stared into space. Although she was only nine years old, she was
feeling a little of the same rapt wonder, the same astonished sense of
the reality of the people who have gone before, which make a first visit
to the Roman Forum such a thrilling event for grown-ups. That very desk!

After a moment she came to herself, and finding some apple still in her
mouth, went on chewing meditatively. "Aunt Abigail," she said, "how long
ago was that?"

"Let's see," said the old woman, peeling apples with wonderful rapidity.
"I was born in 1844. And I was six when I first went to school. That's
sixty-six years ago."

Elizabeth Ann, like all little girls of nine, had very little notion how
long sixty-six years might be. "Was George Washington alive then?" she
asked.

The wrinkles around Aunt Abigail's eyes deepened mirthfully, but she did
not laugh as she answered, "No, that was long after he died, but the
schoolhouse was there when he was alive."

"It WAS!" said Betsy, staring, with her teeth set deep in an apple.

"Yes, indeed. It was the first house in the valley built of sawed
lumber. You know, when our folks came up here, they had to build all
their houses of logs to begin with."

"They DID!" cried Betsy, with her mouth full of apple.

"Why yes, child, what else did you suppose they had to make houses out
of? They had to have something to live in, right off. The sawmills came
later."

"I didn't know anything about it," said Betsy. "Tell me about it."

"Why you knew, didn't you--your Aunt Harriet must have told you--about
how our folks came up here from Connecticut in 1763, on horseback!
Connecticut was an old settled place then, compared to Vermont. There
wasn't anything here but trees and bears and wood-pigeons. I've heard
'em say that the wood-pigeons were so thick you could go out after dark
and club 'em out of the trees, just like hens roosting in a hen-house.
There always was cold pigeon-pie in the pantry, just the way we have
doughnuts. And they used bear-grease to grease their boots and their
hair, bears were so plenty. It sounds like good eating, don't it! But of
course that was just at first. It got quite settled up before long, and
by the time of the Revolution, bears were getting pretty scarce, and
soon the wood-pigeons were all gone."

"And the schoolhouse--that schoolhouse where I went today--was that
built THEN?" Elizabeth Ann found it hard to believe.

"Yes, it used to have a great big chimney and fireplace in it. It was
built long before stoves were invented, you know."

"Why, I thought stoves were ALWAYS invented!" cried Elizabeth Ann. This
was the most startling and interesting conversation she had ever taken
part in.

Aunt Abigail laughed. "Mercy, no, child! Why, _I_ can remember when only
folks that were pretty well off had stoves and real poor people still
cooked over a hearth fire. I always thought it a pity they tore down the
big chimney and fireplace out of the schoolhouse and put in that big,
ugly stove. But folks are so daft over new-fangled things. Well, anyhow,
they couldn't take away the sun-dial on the window-sill. You want to be
sure to look at that. It's on the sill of the middle window on the right
hand as you face the teacher's desk."

"Sun-dial," repeated Betsy. "What's that?"

"Why to tell the time by, when--"

"Why didn't they have a clock?" asked the child.

Aunt Abigail laughed. "Good gracious, there was only one clock in the
valley for years and years, and that belonged to the Wardons, the rich
people in the village. Everybody had sun-dials cut in their window-
sills. There's one on the window-sill of our pantry this minute. Come
on, I'll show it to you." She got up heavily with her pan of apples, and
trotted briskly, shaking the floor as she went, over to the stove. "But
first just watch me put these on to cook so you'll know how." She set
the pan on the stove, poured some water from the tea-kettle over the
apples, and put on a cover. "Now come on into the pantry."

They entered a sweet-smelling, spicy little room, all white paint, and
shelves which were loaded with dishes and boxes and bags and pans of
milk and jars of preserves.

"There!" said Aunt Abigail, opening the window. "That's not so good as
the one at school. This only tells when noon is."

Elizabeth Ann stared stupidly at the deep scratch on the window-sill.

"Don't you see?" said Aunt Abigail. "When the shadow got to that mark it
was noon. And the rest of the time you guessed by how far it was from
the mark. Let's see if I can come anywhere near it now." She looked at it
hard and said: "I guess it's half-past four." She glanced back into the
kitchen at the clock and said: "Oh pshaw! It's ten minutes past five!
Now my grandmother could have told that within five minutes, just by the
place of the shadow. I declare! Sometimes it seems to me that every time
a new piece of machinery comes into the door some of our wits fly out at
the window! Now I couldn't any more live without matches than I could
fly! And yet they all used to get along all right before they had
matches. Makes me feel foolish to think I'm not smart enough to get
along, if I WANTED to, without those little snips of pine and brimstone.
Here, Betsy, take a cooky. It's against my principles to let a child
leave the pantry without having a cooky. My! it does seem like living
again to have a young one around to stuff!"

Betsy took the cooky, but went on with the conversation by exclaiming,
"HOW could ANY-body get along without matches? You HAVE to have
matches."

Aunt Abigail didn't answer at first. They were back in the kitchen now.
She was looking at the clock again. "See here," she said; "it's time I
began getting supper ready. We divide up on the work. Ann gets the
dinner and I get the supper. And everybody gets his own breakfast. Which
would you rather do, help Ann with the dinner, or me with the supper?"

Elizabeth Ann had not had the slightest idea of helping anybody with any
meal, but, confronted unexpectedly with the alternative offered, she
made up her mind so quickly that she didn't want to help Cousin Ann, and
declared so loudly, "Oh, help YOU with the supper!" that her promptness
made her sound quite hearty and willing. "Well, that's fine," said Aunt
Abigail. "We'll set the table now. But first you would better look at
that apple sauce. I hear it walloping away as though it was boiling too
fast. Maybe you'd better push it back where it won't cook so fast. There
are the holders, on that hook."

Elizabeth Ann approached the stove with the holder in her hand and
horror in her heart. Nobody had ever dreamed of asking her to handle hot
things. She looked around dismally at Aunt Abigail, but the old woman
was standing with her back turned, doing something at the kitchen table.
Very gingerly the little girl took hold of the handle of the saucepan,
and very gingerly she shoved it to the back of the stove. And then she
stood still a moment to admire herself. She could do that as well as
anybody!

"Why," said Aunt Abigail, as if remembering that Betsy had asked her a
question. "Any man could strike a spark from his flint and steel that he
had for his gun. And he'd keep striking it till it happened to fly out
in the right direction, and you'd catch it in some fluff where it would
start a smoulder, and you'd blow on it till you got a little flame, and
drop tiny bits of shaved-up dry pine in it, and so, little by little,
you'd build your fire up."

"But it must have taken forEVER to do that!"

"Oh, you didn't have to do that more than once in ever so long," said
Aunt Abigail, briskly. She interrupted her story to say: "Now you put
the silver around, while I cream the potatoes. It's in that drawer--a
knife, a fork, and two spoons for each place--and the plates and cups
are up there behind the glass doors. We're going to have hot cocoa again
tonight." And as the little girl, hypnotized by the other's casual,
offhand way of issuing instructions, began to fumble with the knives and
forks she went on: "Why, you'd start your fire that way, and then you'd
never let it go out. Everybody that amounted to anything knew how to
bank the hearth fire with ashes at night so it would be sure to last.
And the first thing in the morning, you got down on your knees and poked
the ashes away very carefully till you got to the hot coals. Then you'd
blow with the bellows and drop in pieces of dry pine--don't forget the
water-glasses--and you'd blow gently till they flared up and the
shavings caught, and there your fire would be kindled again. The napkins
are in the second drawer."

Betsy went on setting the table, deep in thought, reconstructing the old
life. As she put the napkins around she said, "But SOMETIMES it must
have gone out ..."

"Yes," said Aunt Abigail, "sometimes it went out, and then one of the
children was sent over to the nearest neighbor to borrow some fire. He'd
take a covered iron pan fastened on to a long hickory stick, and go
through the woods--everything was woods then--to the next house and wait
till they had their fire going and could spare him a pan full of coals;
and then--don't forget the salt and pepper--he would leg it home as fast
as he could streak it, to get there before the coals went out. Say,
Betsy, I think that apple sauce is ready to be sweetened. You do it,
will you? I've got my hands in the biscuit dough. The sugar's in the
left-hand drawer in the kitchen cabinet."

"Oh, MY!" cried Betsy, dismayed. "_I_ don't know how to cook!"

Aunt Abigail laughed and put back a strand of curly white hair with the
back of her floury hand. "You know how to stir sugar into your cup of
cocoa, don't you?"

"But how MUCH shall I put in?" asked Elizabeth Ann, clamoring for exact
instruction so she wouldn't need to do any thinking for herself.

"Oh, till it tastes right," said Aunt Abigail, carelessly. "Fix it to
suit yourself, and I guess the rest of us will like it. Take that big
spoon to stir it with."

Elizabeth Ann took off the lid and began stirring in sugar, a
teaspoonful at a time, but she soon saw that that made no impression.
She poured in a cupful, stirred it vigorously, and tasted it. Better,
but not quite enough. She put in a tablespoonful more and tasted it,
staring off into space under bended brows as she concentrated her
attention on the taste. It was quite a responsibility to prepare the
apple sauce for a family. It was ever so good, too. But maybe a LITTLE
more sugar. She put in a teaspoonful and decided it was just exactly
right!

"Done?" asked Aunt Abigail. "Take it off, then, and pour it out in that
big yellow bowl, and put it on the table in front of your place. You've
made it; you ought to serve it."

"It isn't done, is it?" asked Betsy. "That isn't all you do to make
apple sauce!"

"What else could you do?" asked Aunt Abigail.

"Well ... !" said Elizabeth Ann, very much surprised. "I didn't know it
was so easy to cook!"

"Easiest thing in the world," said Aunt Abigail gravely, with the merry
wrinkles around her merry old eyes all creased up with silent fun.

When Uncle Henry came in from the barn, with old Shep at his heels, and
Cousin Ann came down from upstairs, where her sewing-machine had been
humming like a big bee, they were both duly impressed when told that
Betsy had set the table and made the apple sauce. They pronounced it
very good apple sauce indeed, and each sent his saucer back to the
little girl for a second helping. She herself ate three saucerfuls. Her
own private opinion was that it was the very best apple sauce ever made.

After supper was over and the dishes washed and wiped, Betsy helping
with the putting-away, the four gathered around the big lamp on the
table with the red cover. Cousin Ann was making some buttonholes in the
shirt-waist she had constructed that afternoon, Aunt Abigail was darning
socks, and Uncle Henry was mending a piece of harness. Shep lay on the
couch and snored until he got so noisy they couldn't stand it, and
Cousin Ann poked him in the ribs and he woke up snorting and gurgling
and looking around very sheepishly. Every time this happened it made
Betsy laugh. She held Eleanor, who didn't snore at all, but made the
prettiest little tea-kettle-singing purr deep in her throat, and opened
and sheathed her needle-like claws in Betsy's dress.

"Well, how'd you get on at school?" asked Uncle Henry.

"I've got your desk," said Elizabeth Ann, looking at him curiously, at
his gray hair and wrinkled, weather-beaten face, and trying to think
what he must have looked like when he was a little boy like Ralph.

"So?" said Uncle Henry. "Well, let me tell you that's a mighty good
desk! Did you notice the deep groove in the top of it?"

Betsy nodded. She had wondered what that was used for.

"Well, that was the lead-pencil desk in the old days. When they couldn't
run down to the store to buy things, because there wasn't any store to
run to, how do you suppose they got their lead-pencils!" Elizabeth Ann
shook her head, incapable even of a guess. She had never thought before
but that lead-pencils grew in glass show-cases in stores.

"Well, sir," said Uncle Henry, "I'll tell you. They took a piece off the
lump of lead they made their bullets of, melted it over the fire in the
hearth down at the schoolhouse till it would run like water, and poured
it in that groove. When it cooled off, there was a long streak of solid
lead, about as big as one of our lead-pencils nowadays. They'd break
that up in shorter lengths, and there you'd have your lead-pencils, made
while you wait. Oh, I tell you in the old days folks knew how to take
care of themselves more than now."

"Why, weren't there any stores?" asked Elizabeth Ann. She could not
imagine living without buying things at stores.

"Where'd they get the things to put in a store in those days?" asked
Uncle Henry, argumentatively. "Every single thing had to be lugged clear
from Albany or from Connecticut on horseback."

"Why didn't they use wagons?" asked Elizabeth Ann.

"You can't run a wagon unless you've got a road to run it on, can you?"
asked Uncle Henry. "It was a long, long time before they had any roads.
It's an awful chore to make roads in a new country all woods and hills
and swamps and rocks. You were lucky if there was a good path from your
house to the next settlement."

"Now, Henry," said Aunt Abigail, "do stop going on about old times long
enough to let Betsy answer the question you asked her. You haven't given
her a chance to say how she got on at school."

"Well, I'm AWFULLY mixed up!" said Betsy, complainingly. "I don't know
what I am! I'm second-grade arithmetic and third-grade spelling and
seventh-grade reading and I don't know what in writing or composition.
We didn't have those."

Nobody seemed to think this very remarkable, or even very interesting.
Uncle Henry, indeed, noted it only to say, "Seventh-grade reading!" He
turned to Aunt Abigail. "Oh, Mother, don't you suppose she could read
aloud to us evenings?"

Aunt Abigail and Cousin Ann both laid down their sewing to laugh! "Yes,
yes, Father, and play checkers with you too, like as not!" They
explained to Betsy: "Your Uncle Henry is just daft on being read aloud
to when he's got something to do in the evening, and when he hasn't he's
as fidgety as a broody hen if he can't play checkers. Ann hates checkers
and I haven't got the time, often."

"Oh, I LOVE to play checkers!" said Betsy.

"Well, NOW ..." said Uncle Henry, rising instantly and dropping his half-
mended harness on the table. "Let's have a game."

"Oh, Father!" said Cousin Ann, in the tone she used for Shep. "How about
that piece of breeching! You know that's not safe. Why don't you finish
that up first?"

Uncle Henry sat down again, looking as Shep did when Cousin Ann told him
to get up on the couch, and took up his needle and awl.

"But I could read something aloud," said Betsy, feeling very sorry for
him. "At least I think I could. I never did, except at school."

"What shall we have, Mother?" asked Uncle Henry eagerly.

"Oh, I don't know. What have we got in this bookcase?" said Aunt
Abigail. "It's pretty cold to go into the parlor to the other one." She
leaned forward, ran her fat fore-finger over the worn old volumes, and
took out a battered, blue-covered book. "Scott?"

"Gosh, yes!" said Uncle Henry, his eyes shining. "The staggit eve!"

At least that was the way it sounded to Betsy, but when she took the
book and looked where Aunt Abigail pointed she read it correctly, though
in a timid, uncertain voice. She was very proud to think she could
please a grown-up so much as she was evidently pleasing Uncle Henry, but
the idea of reading aloud for people to hear, not for a teacher to
correct, was unheard-of.

   The Stag at eve had drunk his fill
   Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,

she began, and it was as though she had stepped into a boat and was
swept off by a strong current. She did not know what all the words
meant, and she could not pronounce a good many of the names, but nobody
interrupted to correct her, and she read on and on, steadied by the
strongly-marked rhythm, drawn forward swiftly from one clanging,
sonorous rhyme to another. Uncle Henry nodded his head in time to the
rise and fall of her voice and now and then stopped his work to look at
her with bright, eager, old eyes. He knew some of the places by heart
evidently, for once in a while his voice would join the little girl's
for a couplet or two. They chanted together thus:

   A moment listened to the cry
   That thickened as the chase drew nigh,
   Then, as the headmost foes appeared,
   With one brave bound, the copse he cleared.

At the last line Uncle Henry flung his arm out wide, and the child felt
as though the deer had made his great leap there, before her eyes.

"I've seen 'em jump just like that," broke in Uncle Henry. "A two-three-
hundred-pound stag go up over a four-foot fence just like a piece of
thistledown in the wind."

"Uncle Henry," asked Elizabeth Ann, "what is a copse?"

"I don't know," said Uncle Henry indifferently. "Something in the woods,
must be. Underbrush most likely. You can always tell words you don't
know by the sense of the whole thing. Go on."

   And stretching forward, free and far,

The child's voi