Understood Betsy, Dorothy Canfield Fisher [top 10 most read books in the world .TXT] 📗
- Author: Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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the long embrace which followed. Then Aunt Abigail straightened up
hastily, took her candle very quickly and softly, and heavily padded out
of the room.
Betsy turned over and flung one arm over Molly—no Molly, either, after
tomorrow!
She gulped hard and stared up at the ceiling, dimly white in the
starlight. A gleam of light shone under the door. It widened, and Uncle
Henry stood there, a candle in his hand, peering into the room. “You
awake, Betsy?” he said cautiously.
“Yes. I’m awake, Uncle Henry.”
The old man shuffled into the room. “I just got to thinking,” he said,
hesitating, “that maybe you’d like to take my watch with you. It’s kind
of handy to have a watch on the train. And I’d like real well for you to
have it.”
He laid it down on the stand, his own cherished gold watch, that had
been given him when he was twenty-one.
Betsy reached out and took his hard, gnarled old fist in a tight grip.
“Oh, Uncle Henry!” she began, and could not go on.
“We’ll miss you, Betsy,” he said in an uncertain voice. “It’s
been … it’s been real nice to have you here …”
And then he too snatched up his candle very quickly and almost ran out
of the room.
Betsy turned over on her back. “No crying, now!” she told herself
fiercely. “No crying, now!” She clenched her hands together tightly and
set her teeth.
Something moved in the room. Somebody leaned over her. It was Cousin
Ann, who didn’t make a sound, not one, but who took Betsy in her strong
arms and held her close and closer, till Betsy could feel the quick
pulse of the other’s heart beating all through her own body. Then she
was gone—as silently as she came.
But somehow that great embrace had taken away all the burning tightness
from Betsy’s eyes and heart. She was very, very tired, and soon after
this she fell sound asleep, snuggled up close to Molly.
In the morning, nobody spoke of last night at all. Breakfast was
prepared and eaten, and the team hitched up directly afterward. Betsy
and Uncle Henry were to drive to the station together to meet Aunt
Frances’s train. Betsy put on her new wine-colored cashmere that Cousin
Ann had made her, with the soft white collar of delicate old embroidery
that Aunt Abigail had given her out of one of the trunks in the attic.
She and Uncle Henry said very little as they drove to the village, and
even less as they stood waiting together on the platform. Betsy slipped
her hand into his and he held it tight as the train whistled in the
distance and came slowly and laboriously puffing up to the station.
Just one person got off at the little station, and that was Aunt
Frances, looking ever so dressed up and citified, with a fluffy ostrich-feather boa and kid gloves and a white veil over her face and a big blue
one floating from her gay-flowered velvet hat. How pretty she was! And
how young—under the veil which hid so kindly all the little lines in
her sweet, thin face. And how excited and fluttery! Betsy had forgotten
how fluttery Aunt Frances was! She clasped Betsy to her, and then
started back crying—she must see to her suitcase—and then she clasped
Betsy to her again and shook hands with Uncle Henry, whose grim old face
looked about as cordial and welcoming as the sourest kind of sour
pickle, and she fluttered back and said she must have left her umbrella
on the train. “Oh, Conductor! Conductor! My umbrella—right in my seat—
a blue one with a crooked-over—oh, here it is in my hand! What am I
thinking of!”
The conductor evidently thought he’d better get the train away as soon
as possible, for he now shouted, “All aboard!” to nobody at all, and
sprang back on the steps. The train went off, groaning over the steep
grade, and screaming out its usual echoing warning about the next road
crossing.
Uncle Henry took Aunt Frances’s suitcase and plodded back to the surrey.
He got into the front seat and Aunt Frances and Betsy in the back; and
they started off.
And now I want you to listen to every single word that was said on the
back seat, for it was a very, very important conversation, when Betsy’s
fate hung on the curl of an eyelash and the flicker of a voice, as fates
often do.
Aunt Frances hugged Betsy again and again and exclaimed about her having
grown so big and tall and fat—she didn’t say brown too, although you
could see that she was thinking that, as she looked through her veil at
Betsy’s tanned face and down at the contrast between her own pretty,
white fingers and Betsy’s leather-colored, muscular little hands. She
exclaimed and exclaimed and kept on exclaiming! Betsy wondered if she
really always had been as fluttery as this. And then, all of a sudden it
came out, the great news, the reason for the extra flutteriness.
Aunt Frances was going to be married!
Yes! Think of it! Betsy fell back open-mouthed with astonishment.
“Did Betsy think her Aunt Frances a silly old thing?”
“Oh, Aunt Frances, NO!” cried Betsy fervently. “You look just as YOUNG,
and pretty! Lots younger than I remembered you!”
Aunt Frances flushed with pleasure and went on, “You’ll love your old
Aunt Frances just as much, won’t you, when she’s Mrs. Plimpton!”
Betsy put her arms around her and gave her a great hug. “I’ll always
love you, Aunt Frances!” she said.
“You’ll love Mr. Plimpton, too. He’s so big and strong, and he just
loves to take care of people. He says that’s why he’s marrying me. Don’t
you wonder where we are going to live?” she asked, answering her own
question quickly. “We’re not going to live anywhere. Isn’t that a joke?
Mr. Plimpton’s business keeps him always moving around from one place to
another, never more than a month anywhere.”
“What’ll Aunt Harriet do?” asked Betsy wonderingly.
“Why, she’s ever and ever so much better,” said Aunt Frances happily.
“And her own sister, my Aunt Rachel, has come back from China, where
she’s been a missionary for ever so long, and the two old ladies are
going to keep house together out in California, in the dearest little
bungalow, all roses and honeysuckle. But YOU’RE going to be with me.
Won’t it be jolly fun, darling, to go traveling all about everywhere,
and see new places all the time!”
Now those are the words Aunt Frances said, but something in her voice
and her face suggested a faint possibility to Betsy that maybe Aunt
Frances didn’t really think it would be such awfully jolly fun as her
words said. Her heart gave a big jump up, and she had to hold tight to
the arm of the surrey before she could ask, in a quiet voice, “But, Aunt
Frances, won’t I be awfully in your way, traveling around so?”
Now, Aunt Frances had ears of her own, and though that was what Betsy’s
words said, what Aunt Frances heard was a suggestion that possibly Betsy
wasn’t as crazy to leave Putney Farm as she had supposed of course she
would be.
They both stopped talking for a moment and peered at each other through
the thicket of words that held them apart. I told you this was a very
momentous conversation. One sure thing is that the people on the back
seat saw the inside of the surrey as they traveled along, and nothing
else. Red sumac and bronzed beech-trees waved their flags at them in
vain. They kept their eyes fixed on each other intently, each in an
agony of fear lest she hurt the other’s feelings.
After a pause Aunt Frances came to herself with a start, and said,
affectionately putting her arm around Betsy, “Why, you darling, what
does Aunt Frances care about trouble if her own dear baby-girl is
happy?”
And Betsy said, resolutely, “Oh, you know, Aunt Frances, I’d LOVE to be
with you!” She ventured one more step through the thicket. “But
honestly, Aunt Frances, WON’T it be a bother … ?”
Aunt Frances ventured another step to meet her, “But dear little girls
must be SOMEWHERE …”
And Betsy almost forgot her caution and burst out, “But I could stay
here! I know they would keep me!”
Even Aunt Frances’s two veils could not hide the gleam of relief and
hope that came into her pretty, thin, sweet face. She summoned all her
courage and stepped out into the clearing in the middle of the thicket,
asking right out, boldly, “Why, do you like it here, Betsy? Would you
like to stay?”
And Betsy—she never could remember afterward if she had been careful
enough not to shout too loudly and joyfully—Betsy cried out, “Oh, I
LOVE it here!” There they stood, face to face, looking at each other
with honest and very happy eyes. Aunt Prances threw her arm around Betsy
and asked again, “Are you SURE, dear?” and didn’t try to hide her
relief. And neither did Betsy.
“I could visit you once in a while, when you are somewhere near here,”
suggested Betsy, beaming.
“Oh, YES, I must have SOME of the time with my darling!” said Aunt
Frances. And this time there was nothing in their hearts that
contradicted their lips.
They clung to each other in speechless satisfaction as Uncle Henry
guided the surrey up to the marble stepping-stone. Betsy jumped out
first, and while Uncle Henry was helping Aunt Frances out, she was
dashing up the walk like a crazy thing. She flung open the front door
and catapulted into Aunt Abigail just coming out. It was like flinging
herself into a feather-bed … .
“Oh! Oh!” she gasped out. “Aunt Frances is going to be married. And
travel around all the time! And she doesn’t REALLY want me at all! Can’t
I stay here? Can’t I stay here?”
Cousin Ann was right behind Aunt Abigail, and she heard this. She looked
over their shoulders toward Aunt Frances, who was approaching from
behind, and said, in her usual calm and collected voice: “How do you do,
Frances? Glad to see you, Frances. How well you’re looking! I hear you
are in for congratulations. Who’s the happy man?”
Betsy was overcome with admiration for her coolness in being able to
talk so in such an exciting moment. She knew Aunt Abigail couldn’t have
done it, for she had sat down in a rocking-chair, and was holding Betsy
on her lap. The little girl could see her wrinkled old hand trembling on
the arm of the chair.
“I hope that means,” continued Cousin Ann, going as usual straight to
the point, “that we can keep Betsy here with us.”
“Oh, would you like to?” asked Aunt Frances, fluttering, as though the
idea had never occurred to her before that minute. “Would Elizabeth Ann
really LIKE to stay?”
“Oh, I’d LIKE to, all right!” said Betsy, looking confidently up into
Aunt Abigail’s face.
Aunt Abigail spoke now. She cleared her throat twice before she could
bring out a word. Then she said, “Why, yes, we’d kind of like to keep
her. We’ve sort of got used to having her around.”
That’s what she SAID, but, as you have noticed before on this exciting
day, what people said didn’t matter as much as what they looked; and as
her old lips pronounced these words so quietly the corners of Aunt
Abigail’s mouth were twitching, and she
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