Understood Betsy

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 tenderhearted, 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.

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.

“Oh, gracious! that was more than a hundred years ago,” said Betsy. She was not thinking of what she was saying. She was thinking that if they were on the right road they ought to be home by this time. She was thinking that the right road ran down hill to the house all the way, and that this certainly seemed to be going up a little. She was wondering what had become of Shep. “Stand here just a minute, Molly,” she said. “I want⁠ ⁠… I just want to go ahead a little bit and see⁠ ⁠… and see⁠ ⁠…” She darted on around a curve of the road and stood still, her heart sinking. The road turned there and led straight up the mountain!

For just a moment the little girl felt a wild impulse to burst out in a shriek for Aunt Frances, and to run crazily away, anywhere so long as she was running. But the thought of Molly standing back there, trustfully waiting to be taken care of, shut Betsy’s lips together hard before her scream of fright got out. She stood still, thinking. Now she mustn’t get frightened. All they had to do was to walk back along the road till they came to the fork and then make the right turn. But what if they didn’t get back to the turn till it was so dark they couldn’t see it⁠ ⁠… ? Well, she mustn’t think of that. She ran back, calling, “Come on, Molly,” in a tone she tried to make as firm as Cousin Ann’s. “I guess we have made the wrong turn after all. We’d better⁠ ⁠…”

But there was no Molly there. In the brief moment Betsy had stood thinking, Molly had disappeared. The long, shadowy wood road held not a trace of her.

The little girls wandered on, Molly calm and expectant, confident in Betsy; Betsy with a very dry mouth and a very gone feeling. They were passing by a big shed-like building now, where a large sign proclaimed that the Woodford Ladies’ Aid Society would serve a hot chicken dinner for thirty-five cents. Of course the sign was not accurate, for at half-past three, almost four, the chicken dinner had long ago been all eaten and in place of the diners was a group of weary women moving languidly about or standing saggingly by a great table piled with dirty dishes. Betsy paused here, meditated a moment, and went in rapidly so that her courage would not evaporate.

The woman with gray hair looked down at her a little impatiently and said, “Dinner’s all over.”

“I didn’t come for dinner,” said Betsy, swallowing hard. “I came to see if you wouldn’t hire me to wash your dishes. I’ll do them for twenty-five cents.”

The woman laughed, looked from little Betsy to the great pile of dishes, and said, turning away, “Mercy, child, if you washed from now till morning, you wouldn’t make a hole in what we’ve got to do.”

Betsy heard her say to the other women, “Some young one wanting more money for the sideshows.”

Now, now was the moment to remember what Cousin Ann would have done. She would certainly not have shaken all over with hurt feelings nor have allowed the tears to come stingingly to her eyes.