Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (recommended ebook reader TXT) 📕

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,