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

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 ANYbody 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