Understood Betsy Read online

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

  UNDERSTOOD BETSY

  BY

  DOROTHY CANFIELDAuthor of "The Bent Twig," etc.

  ILLUSTRATIONS BYADA C. WILLIAMSON

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

  Elizabeth Ann stood up before the doctor."Do you know," said Aunt Abigail, "I thinkit's going to be real nice, having a little girlin 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 herlips and winking her eyes

  CHAPTER I

  AUNT HARRIET HAS A COUGH

  When this story begins, Elizabeth Ann, who is the heroine of it, was alittle girl of nine, who lived with her Great-aunt Harriet in amedium-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 theimportant thing in the story; and anyhow you know all about it becauseit 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 orvery poor, and she had one daughter, Frances, who gave piano lessons tolittle girls. They kept a "girl" whose name was Grace and who had asthmadreadfully and wasn't very much of a "girl" at all, being nearer fiftythan forty. Aunt Harriet, who was very tender-hearted, kept her chieflybecause she couldn't get any other place on account of her coughing soyou could hear her all over the house.

  So now you know the names of all the household. And this is how theylooked: Aunt Harriet was very small and thin and old, Grace was verysmall and thin and middle-aged, Aunt Frances (for Elizabeth Ann calledher "Aunt," although she was really, of course, afirst-cousin-once-removed) was small and thin and if the light wasn'ttoo strong might be called young, and Elizabeth Ann was very small andthin and little. And yet they all had plenty to eat. I wonder what wasthe matter with them?

  It was certainly not because they were not good, for no womenkind in allthe world had kinder hearts than they. You have heard how Aunt Harrietkept 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 motherboth died when she was a baby, although there were many other cousinsand uncles and aunts in the family, these two women fairly rushed uponthe little baby-orphan, taking her home and surrounding her henceforthwith the most loving devotion.

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

  But they thought that they chiefly desired to save dear Edward's childfrom the other kin, especially from the Putney cousins, who had writtendown from their Vermont farm that they would be glad to take the littlegirl into their family. But "ANYTHING but the Putneys!" said AuntHarriet, 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 themone summer when you were a baby, Frances, and I shall never forget theway they were treating some children visiting there! ... Oh, no, I don'tmean they abused them or beat them ... but such lack of sympathy, suchperfect indifference to the sacred sensitiveness of child-life, such astarving of the child-heart ... No, I shall never forget it! They hadchores to do ... as though they had been hired men!"

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

  There was certainly neither coldness nor hardness in the way AuntHarriet and Aunt Frances treated Elizabeth Ann. They had really giventhemselves up to the new responsibility, especially Aunt Frances, whowas very conscientious about everything. As soon as the baby came thereto live, Aunt Frances stopped reading novels and magazines, and re-readone book after another which told her how to bring up children. And shejoined a Mothers' Club which met once a week. And she took acorrespondence course in mothercraft from a school in Chicago whichteaches that business by mail. So you can see that by the time ElizabethAnn was nine years old Aunt Frances must have known all that anybody canknow about how to bring up children. And Elizabeth Ann got the benefitof it all.

  She and her Aunt Frances were simply inseparable. Aunt Frances shared inall Elizabeth Ann's doings and even in all her thoughts. She wasespecially anxious to share all the little girl's thoughts, because shefelt that the trouble with most children is that they are notunderstood, and she was determined that she would thoroughly understandElizabeth Ann down to the bottom of her little mind. Aunt Frances (downin the bottom of her own mind) thought that her mother had never REALLYunderstood her, and she meant to do better by Elizabeth Ann. She alsoloved the little girl with all her heart, and longed, above everythingin the world, to protect her from all harm and to keep her happy andstrong and well.

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

  Aunt Frances was afraid of a great many things herself, and she knew howto sympathize with timidity. She was always quick to reassure the littlegirl 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 oneblock and down another every single day, no matter how tired the musiclessons had made her), the aunt's eyes were always on the alert to avoidanything which might frighten Elizabeth Ann. If a big dog trotted by,Aunt Frances always said, hastily: "There, there, dear! That's a NICEdoggie, 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 theother side of Aunt Frances if he scares you so" (by that time ElizabethAnn was always pretty well scared), "and perhaps we'd better just turnthis corner and walk in the other direction." If by any chance the dogwent in that direction too, Aunt Frances became a prodigy of valiantprotection, putting the shivering little girl behind her, threateningthe 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 everythingshe might be doing a
nd held Elizabeth Ann tightly in her arms until itwas all over. And at night--Elizabeth Ann did not sleep very well--whenthe little girl woke up screaming with a bad dream, it was always dearAunt Frances who came to her bedside, a warm wrapper over her nightgownso that she need not hurry back to her own room, a candle lighting upher tired, kind face. She always took the little girl into her thin armsand held her close against her thin breast. "TELL Aunt Frances all aboutyour naughty dream, darling," she would murmur, "so's to get it off yourmind!"

  She had read in her books that you can tell a great deal aboutchildren's inner lives by analyzing their dreams, and besides, if shedid not urge Elizabeth Ann to tell it, she was afraid the sensitive,nervous little thing would "lie awake and brood over it." This was thephrase she always used the next day to her mother when Aunt Harrietexclaimed about her paleness and the dark rings under her eyes. So shelistened patiently while the little girl told her all about the fearfuldreams 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 tojump from a third-story window and was all broken to bits--once in awhile Elizabeth Ann got so interested in all this that she went on andmade up more awful things even than she had dreamed, and told longstories which showed her to be a child of great imagination. But allthese dreams and continuations of dreams Aunt Frances wrote down thefirst thing the next morning, and, with frequent references to a thickbook full of hard words, she tried her best to puzzle out from themexactly what kind of little girl Elizabeth Ann really was.

  There was one dream, however, that even conscientious Aunt Frances nevertried to analyze, because it was too sad. Elizabeth Ann dreamedsometimes that she was dead and lay in a little white coffin with whiteroses over her. Oh, that made Aunt Frances cry, and so did ElizabethAnn. It was very touching. Then, after a long, long time of talk andtears and sobs and hugs, the little girl would begin to get drowsy, andAunt Frances would rock her to sleep in her arms, and lay her down everso quietly, and slip away to try to get a little nap herself before itwas time to get up.

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

  Then at noon Aunt Frances was waiting there, a patient, never-failingfigure, to walk home with her little charge; and in the afternoon thesame thing happened over again. On the way to and from school theytalked about what had happened in the class. Aunt Frances believed insympathizing with a child's life, so she always asked about every littlething, and remembered to inquire about the continuation of everyepisode, and sympathized with all her heart over the failure in mentalarithmetic, and triumphed over Elizabeth Ann's beating the Schmidt girlin spelling, and was indignant over the teacher's having pets. Sometimesin telling over some very dreadful failure or disappointment ElizabethAnn would get so wrought up that she would cry. This always brought theready tears to Aunt Frances's kind eyes, and with many soothing wordsand nervous, tremulous caresses she tried to make life easier for poorlittle Elizabeth Ann. The days when they had cried they could neither ofthem eat much luncheon.

  After school and on Saturdays there was always the daily walk, and therewere lessons, all kinds of lessons--piano-lessons of course, andnature-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. Shewanted to give the little girl every possible advantage, you see. Theywere really inseparable. Elizabeth Ann once said to some ladies callingon her aunts that whenever anything happened in school, the first thingshe thought of was what Aunt Frances would think of it.

  "Why is that?" they asked, looking at Aunt Frances, who was blushingwith 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 toher and kissed her and gave her as big a hug as her thin arms couldmanage. Elizabeth Ann was growing tall very fast. One of the visitingladies said that before long she would be as big as her auntie, and atroublesome young lady. Aunt Frances said: "I have had her from the timeshe was a little baby and there has scarcely been an hour she has beenout of my sight. I'll always have her confidence. You'll always tellAunt Frances EVERYTHING, won't you, darling?" Elizabeth Ann resolved todo 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 thinand pale and nervous. I suppose it is the exciting modern life that isso bad for children. I try to see that she has plenty of fresh air. I goout with her for a walk every single day. But we have taken all thewalks around here so often that we're rather tired of them. It's oftenhard to know how to get her out enough. I think I'll have to get thedoctor to come and see her and perhaps give her a tonic." To ElizabethAnn she added, hastily: "Now don't go getting notions in your head,darling. Aunt Frances doesn't think there's anything VERY much thematter with you. You'll be all right again soon if you just take thedoctor's medicine nicely. Aunt Frances will take care of her preciouslittle girl. SHE'll make the bad sickness go away." Elizabeth Ann, whohad not known before that she was sick, had a picture of herself lyingin the little white coffin, all covered over with white. ... In a fewminutes Aunt Frances was obliged to excuse herself from her callers anddevote herself entirely to taking care of Elizabeth Ann.

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

  And yet--did you ever hear of such a case before?--although ElizabethAnn when she first stood up before the doctor had been quaking with fearlest he discover some deadly disease in her, she was very much hurtindeed when, after thumping her and looking at her lower eyelid insideout, and listening to her breathing, he pushed her away with a littlejerk 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 momentat Aunt Frances's thin, anxious face, with the eyebrows drawn togetherin a knot of conscientiousness, and then he looked at Aunt Harriet'sthin, anxious face with the eyebrows drawn up that very same way, andthen he glanced at Grace's thin, anxious face peering from the doorwaiting for his verdict--and then he drew a long breath, shut his lipsand his little black case very tightly, and did not go on to say what itwas that Elizabeth Ann needed.

  Of course Aunt Frances didn't let him off as easily as that, you may besure. She fluttered around him as he tried to go, and she said all sortsof fluttery things to him, like "But, Doctor, she hasn't gained a poundin three months ... and her sleep ... and her appetite ... and
hernerves ..."

  Elizabeth Ann stood up before the doctor.]

  The doctor said back to her, as he put on his hat, all the thingsdoctors always say under such conditions: "More beefsteak ... plenty offresh air ... more sleep ... SHE'll be all right ..." but his voice did notsound as though he thought what he was saying amounted to much. Nor didElizabeth Ann. She had hoped for some spectacular red pills to be takenevery half-hour, like those Grace's doctor gave her whenever she feltlow in her mind.

  And just then something happened which changed Elizabeth Ann's lifeforever 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 comparisonwith Grace's hollow whoop; Aunt Harriet had been coughing like that eversince the cold weather set in, for three or four months now, and nobodyhad thought anything of it, because they were all so much occupied intaking care of the sensitive, nervous little girl who needed so muchcare.

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

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

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

  You have heard so much about tears in the account of Elizabeth Ann'slife so far that I won't tell you much about the few days whichfollowed, as the family talked over and hurriedly prepared to obey thedoctor's verdict, which was that Aunt Harriet was very, very sick andmust 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 timeto taking care of Aunt Harriet. And anyhow the doctor didn't think itbest, either for Aunt Harriet or for Elizabeth Ann, to have them in thesame house.

  Grace couldn't go of course, but to everybody's surprise she said shedidn't mind, because she had a bachelor brother, who kept a grocerystore, 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 sheknew 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, agreat many relatives, and of course it was settled she should go to someof them till Aunt Frances could take her back. For the time being, justnow, while everything was so distracted and confused, she was to go tostay with the Lathrop cousins, who lived in the same city, although itwas very evident that the Lathrops were not perfectly crazy with delightover the prospect.

  Still, something had to be done at once, and Aunt Frances was so franticwith the packing up, and the moving men coming to take the furniture tostorage, and her anxiety over her mother--she had switched to AuntHarriet, you see, all the conscientiousness she had lavished onElizabeth Ann--nothing much could be extracted from her about ElizabethAnn. "Just keep her for the present, Molly!" she said to Cousin MollyLathrop. "I'll do something soon. I'll write you. I'll make anotherarrangement ... 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 thepresent ..." and went away, thinking that she didn't see why she shouldhave ALL the disagreeable things to do. When she had her husband'styrannical old mother to take care of, wasn't that enough, withoutadding to the household such a nervous, spoiled, morbid young one asElizabeth Ann!

  Elizabeth Ann did not of course for a moment dream that Cousin Molly wasthinking any such things about her, but she could not help seeing thatCousin Molly was not any too enthusiastic about taking her in; and shewas already feeling terribly forlorn about the sudden, unexpected changein Aunt Frances, who had been SO wrapped up in her and now was just asmuch wrapped up in Aunt Harriet. Do you know, I am sorry for ElizabethAnn, 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 moretears, I won't say a single word about the day when the two aunts wentaway 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 thelittle girl's feelings dreadfully.

  And then Cousin Molly took the hand of the sobbing little girl and ledher back to the Lathrop house. But if you think you are now going tohear about the Lathrops, you are quite mistaken, for just at this momentold Mrs. Lathrop took a hand in the matter. She was Cousin Molly'shusband's mother, and, of course, no relation at all to Elizabeth Ann,and so was less enthusiastic than anybody else. All that Elizabeth Annever 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 thatyou need to know about her, either. It was a very much agitated oldhead, and it bobbed and shook with the intensity with which theimperative old voice called upon Cousin Molly and Elizabeth Ann to stopright 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 bringingthat child in to be sick and have it, and be nursed, and make thequarantine twice as long!"

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

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

  "You don't HAVE to!" shouted old Mrs. Lathrop out of her second-storywindow. Although she did not add "You gump!" aloud, you could feel shewas meaning just that. "You don't have to! You can just send her to thePutney cousins. All nonsense about her not going there in the firstplace. 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 ownaunt, and Ann is her own first-cousin-once-removed ... just as close asHarriet and Frances are, and MUCH closer than you! And on a farm andall ... just the place for her!"

  "But how under the sun, Mother!" shouted Cousin Molly back, "can I GETher to the Putneys'? You can't send a child of nine a thousand mileswithout ..."

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

  And that was just what happened. Perhaps you may have guessed by thistime 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 thanyou. I take it, from the name, she was the cook. Unless, indeed, oldMrs. Lathrop made her up for the occasion, which I think she would havebeen quite capable of doing, don't you?

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