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

once. He said it was too queer the way your own house and big barn and

great fields looked like little toy things that weren’t of any account.

It was because you could see so much more than just the …

She heard an imploring whine, and a cold nose was thrust into her hand!

Why, there was old Shep begging for his share of waxed sugar. He loved

it, though it did stick to his teeth so! She poured out another lot and

gave half of it to Shep. It immediately stuck his jaws together tight,

and he began pawing at his mouth and shaking his head till Betsy had to

laugh. Then he managed to pull his jaws apart and chewed loudly and

visibly, tossing his head, opening his mouth wide till Betsy could see

the sticky, brown candy draped in melting festoons all over his big

white teeth and red gullet. Then with a gulp he had swallowed it all

down and was whining for more, striking softly at the little girl’s

skirt with his forepaw. “Oh, you eat it too fast!” cried Betsy, but she

shared her next lot with him too. The sun had gone down over Hemlock

Mountain by this time, and the big slope above her was all deep blue

shadow. The mountain looked much higher now as the dusk began to fall,

and loomed up bigger and bigger as though it reached to the sky. It was

no wonder houses looked small from its top. Betsy ate the last of her

sugar, looking up at the quiet giant there, towering grandly above her.

There was no lump in her throat now. And, although she still thought she

did not know what in the world Cousin Ann meant by saying that about

Hemlock Mountain and her examination, it’s my opinion that she had made

a very good beginning of an understanding.

She was just picking up her cup to take it back to the sap-house when

Shep growled a little and stood with his ears and tail up, looking down

the road. Something was coming down that road in the blue, clear

twilight, something that was making a very queer noise. It sounded

almost like somebody crying. It WAS somebody crying! It was a child

crying. It was a little, little girl. … Betsy could see her

now … stumbling along and crying as though her heart would break. Why,

it was little Molly, her own particular charge at school, whose reading

lesson she heard every day. Betsy and Shep ran to meet her. “What’s the

matter, Molly? What’s the matter?” Betsy knelt down and put her arms

around the weeping child. “Did you fall down? Did you hurt you? What are

you doing ‘way off here? Did you lose your way?”

“I don’t want to go away! I don’t want to go away!” said Molly over and

over, clinging tightly to Betsy. It was a long time before Betsy could

quiet her enough to find out what had happened. Then she made out

between Molly’s sobs that her mother had been taken suddenly sick and

had to go away to a hospital, and that left nobody at home to take care

of Molly, and she was to be sent away to some strange relatives in the

city who didn’t want her at all and who said so right out … .

Oh, Elizabeth Ann knew all about that! and her heart swelled big with

sympathy. For a moment she stood again out on the sidewalk in front of

the Lathrop house with old Mrs. Lathrop’s ungracious white head bobbing

from a window, and knew again that ghastly feeling of being unwanted.

Oh, she knew why little Molly was crying! And she shut her hands

together hard and made up her mind that she WOULD help her out!

[Illustration: “What’s the matter, Molly? What’s the matter?”]

Do you know what she did, right off, without thinking about it? She

didn’t go and look up Aunt Abigail. She didn’t wait till Uncle Henry

came back from his round of emptying sap buckets into the big tub on his

sled. As fast as her feet could carry her she flew back to Cousin Ann in

the sap-house. I can’t tell you (except again that Cousin Ann was Cousin

Ann) why it was that Betsy ran so fast to her and was so sure that

everything would be all right as soon as Cousin Ann knew about it; but

whatever the reason was it was a good one, for, though Cousin Ann did

not stop to kiss Molly or even to look at her more than one sharp first

glance, she said after a moment’s pause, during which she filled a syrup

can and screwed the cover down very tight: “Well, if her folks will let

her stay, how would you like to have Molly come and stay with us till

her mother gets back from the hospital? Now you’ve got a room of your

own, I guess if you wanted to you could have her sleep with you.”

“Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly!” shouted Betsy, jumping up and down, and then

hugging the little girl with all her might. “Oh, it will be like having

a little sister!”

Cousin Ann sounded a dry, warning note: “Don’t be too sure her folks

will let her. We don’t know about them yet.”

Betsy ran to her, and caught her hand, looking up at her with shining

eyes. “Cousin Ann, if YOU go to see them and ask them, they will!”

This made even Cousin Ann give a little abashed smile of pleasure,

although she made her face grave again at once and said: “You’d better

go along back to the house now, Betsy. It’s time for you to help Mother

with the supper.”

The two children trotted back along the darkening wood road, Shep

running before them, little Molly clinging fast to the older child’s

hand. “Aren’t you ever afraid, Betsy, in the woods this way?” she asked

admiringly, looking about her with timid eyes.

“Oh, no!” said Betsy, protectingly; “there’s nothing to be afraid of,

except getting off on the wrong fork of the road, near the Wolf Pit.”

“Oh, OW!” said Molly, cringing. “What’s the Wolf Pit? What an awful

name!”

Betsy laughed. She tried to make her laugh sound brave like Cousin

Ann’s, which always seemed so scornful of being afraid. As a matter of

fact, she was beginning to fear that they HAD made the wrong turn, and

she was not quite sure that she could find the way home. But she put

this out of her mind and walked along very fast, peering ahead into the

dusk. “Oh, it hasn’t anything to do with wolves,” she said in answer to

Molly’s question; “anyhow, not now. It’s just a big, deep hole in the

ground where a brook had dug out a cave. … Uncle Henry told me all

about it when he showed it to me … and then part of the roof caved in;

sometimes there’s ice in the corner of the covered part all the summer,

Aunt Abigail says.”

“Why do you call it the Wolf Pit?” asked Molly, walking very close to

Betsy and holding very tightly to her hand.

“Oh, long, ever so long ago, when the first settlers came up here, they

heard a wolf howling all night, and when it didn’t stop in the morning,

they came up here on the mountain and found a wolf had fallen in and

couldn’t get out.”

“My! I hope they killed him!” said Molly.

“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.

Then Betsy WAS frightened and then she DID begin to scream, at the top

of her voice, “Molly! Molly!” She was beside herself with terror, and

started back hastily to hear Molly’s voice, very faint, apparently

coming from the ground under her feet.

“Ow! Ow! Betsy! Get me out! Get me out!”

“Where ARE you?” shrieked Betsy.

“I don’t know!” came Molly’s sobbing voice. “I just moved the least

little bit out of the road, and slipped on the ice and began to slide

and I couldn’t stop myself and I fell down into a deep hole!”

Betsy’s head felt as though her hair were standing up straight on end

with horror. Molly must have fallen down into the Wolf Pit! Yes, they

were quite near it. She remembered now that big white-birch tree stood

right at the place where the brook tumbled over the edge and fell into

it. Although she was dreadfully afraid of falling in herself, she went

cautiously over to this tree, feeling her way with her foot to make sure

she did not slip, and peered down into the cavernous gloom below. Yes,

there was Molly’s little face, just a white speck. The child was crying,

sobbing, and holding up her arms to Betsy.

“Are you hurt, Molly?”

“No. I fell into a big snow-bank, but I’m all wet and frozen and I want

to get out! I want to get out!”

Betsy held on to the birch-tree. Her head whirled. What SHOULD she do!

“Look here, Molly,” she called down, “I’m going to run back along to the

right road and back to the house and get Uncle Henry. He’ll come with a

rope and get you out!”

At this Molly’s crying rose to a frantic scream. “Oh, Betsy, don’t leave

me here alone! Don’t! Don’t! The wolves will get me! Betsy, DON’T leave

me alone!” The child was wild with terror.

“But I CAN’T get you out myself!” screamed back Betsy, crying herself.

Her teeth were chattering with the cold.

“Don’t go! Don’t go!” came up from the darkness of the pit in a piteous

howl. Betsy made a great effort and stopped crying. She sat down on a

stone and tried to think. And this is what came into her mind as