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

jump from a third-story window and was all broken to bits—once in a

while Elizabeth Ann got so interested in all this that she went on and

made up more awful things even than she had dreamed, and told long

stories which showed her to be a child of great imagination. But all

these dreams and continuations of dreams Aunt Frances wrote down the

first thing the next morning, and, with frequent references to a thick

book full of hard words, she tried her best to puzzle out from them

exactly what kind of little girl Elizabeth Ann really was.

There was one dream, however, that even conscientious Aunt Frances never

tried to analyze, because it was too sad. Elizabeth Ann dreamed

sometimes that she was dead and lay in a little white coffin with white

roses over her. Oh, that made Aunt Frances cry, and so did Elizabeth

Ann. It was very touching. Then, after a long, long time of talk and

tears and sobs and hugs, the little girl would begin to get drowsy, and

Aunt Frances would rock her to sleep in her arms, and lay her down ever

so quietly, and slip away to try to get a little nap herself before it

was time to get up.

At a quarter of nine every weekday morning Aunt Frances dropped whatever

else she was doing, took Elizabeth Ann’s little, thin, white hand

protectingly in hers, and led her through the busy streets to the big

brick school-building where the little girl had always gone to school.

It was four stories high, and when all the classes were in session there

were six hundred children under that one roof. You can imagine, perhaps,

the noise there was on the playground just before school! Elizabeth Ann

shrank from it with all her soul, and clung more tightly than ever to

Aunt Frances’s hand as she was led along through the crowded, shrieking

masses of children. Oh, how glad she was that she had Aunt Frances there

to take care of her, though as a matter of fact nobody noticed the

little thin girl at all, and her very own classmates would hardly have

known whether she came to school or not. Aunt Frances took her safely

through the ordeal of the playground, then up the long, broad stairs,

and pigeonholed her carefully in her own schoolroom. She was in the

third grade,—3A, you understand, which is almost the fourth.

Then at noon Aunt Frances was waiting there, a patient, never-failing

figure, to walk home with her little charge; and in the afternoon the

same thing happened over again. On the way to and from school they

talked about what had happened in the class. Aunt Frances believed in

sympathizing with a child’s life, so she always asked about every little

thing, and remembered to inquire about the continuation of every

episode, and sympathized with all her heart over the failure in mental

arithmetic, and triumphed over Elizabeth Ann’s beating the Schmidt girl

in spelling, and was indignant over the teacher’s having pets. Sometimes

in telling over some very dreadful failure or disappointment Elizabeth

Ann would get so wrought up that she would cry. This always brought the

ready tears to Aunt Frances’s kind eyes, and with many soothing words

and nervous, tremulous caresses she tried to make life easier for poor

little Elizabeth Ann. The days when they had cried they could neither of

them eat much luncheon.

After school and on Saturdays there was always the daily walk, and there

were lessons, all kinds of lessons—piano-lessons of course, and nature-study lessons out of an excellent book Aunt Frances had bought, and

painting lessons, and sewing lessons, and even a little French, although

Aunt Frances was not very sure about her own pronunciation. She wanted

to give the little girl every possible advantage, you see. They were

really inseparable. Elizabeth Ann once said to some ladies calling on

her aunts that whenever anything happened in school, the first thing she

thought of was what Aunt Frances would think of it.

“Why is that?” they asked, looking at Aunt Frances, who was blushing

with pleasure.

“Oh, she is so interested in my school work! And she UNDERSTANDS me!”

said Elizabeth Ann, repeating the phrases she had heard so often.

Aunt Frances’s eyes filled with happy tears. She called Elizabeth Ann to

her and kissed her and gave her as big a hug as her thin arms could

manage. Elizabeth Ann was growing tall very fast. One of the visiting

ladies said that before long she would be as big as her auntie, and a

troublesome young lady. Aunt Frances said: “I have had her from the time

she was a little baby and there has scarcely been an hour she has been

out of my sight. I’ll always have her confidence. You’ll always tell

Aunt Frances EVERYTHING, won’t you, darling?” Elizabeth Ann resolved to

do this always, even if, as now, she often had to invent things to tell.

Aunt Frances went on, to the callers: “But I do wish she weren’t so thin

and pale and nervous. I suppose it is the exciting modern life that is

so bad for children. I try to see that she has plenty of fresh air. I go

out with her for a walk every single day. But we have taken all the

walks around here so often that we’re rather tired of them. It’s often

hard to know how to get her out enough. I think I’ll have to get the

doctor to come and see her and perhaps give her a tonic.” To Elizabeth

Ann she added, hastily: “Now don’t go getting notions in your head,

darling. Aunt Frances doesn’t think there’s anything VERY much the

matter with you. You’ll be all right again soon if you just take the

doctor’s medicine nicely. Aunt Frances will take care of her precious

little girl. SHE’ll make the bad sickness go away.” Elizabeth Ann, who

had not known before that she was sick, had a picture of herself lying

in the little white coffin, all covered over with white. … In a few

minutes Aunt Frances was obliged to excuse herself from her callers and

devote herself entirely to taking care of Elizabeth Ann.

So one day, after this had happened several times, Aunt Frances really

did send for the doctor, who came briskly in, just as Elizabeth Ann had

always seen him, with his little square black bag smelling of leather,

his sharp eyes, and the air of bored impatience which he always wore in

that house. Elizabeth Ann was terribly afraid to see him, for she felt

in her bones he would say she had galloping consumption and would die

before the leaves cast a shadow. This was a phrase she had picked up

from Grace, whose conversation, perhaps on account of her asthma, was

full of references to early graves and quick declines.

And yet—did you ever hear of such a case before?—although Elizabeth

Ann when she first stood up before the doctor had been quaking with fear

lest he discover some deadly disease in her, she was very much hurt

indeed when, after thumping her and looking at her lower eyelid inside

out, and listening to her breathing, he pushed her away with a little

jerk and said: “There’s nothing in the world the matter with that child.

She’s as sound as a nut! What she needs is …”—he looked for a moment

at Aunt Frances’s thin, anxious face, with the eyebrows drawn together

in a knot of conscientiousness, and then he looked at Aunt Harriet’s

thin, anxious face with the eyebrows drawn up that very same way, and

then he glanced at Grace’s thin, anxious face peering from the door

waiting for his verdict—and then he drew a long breath, shut his lips

and his little black case very tightly, and did not go on to say what it

was that Elizabeth Ann needed.

Of course Aunt Frances didn’t let him off as easily as that, you may be

sure. She fluttered around him as he tried to go, and she said all sorts

of fluttery things to him, like “But, Doctor, she hasn’t gained a pound

in three months … and her sleep … and her appetite … and her

nerves …”

[Illustration: Elizabeth Ann stood up before the doctor.]

The doctor said back to her, as he put on his hat, all the things

doctors always say under such conditions: “More beefsteak … plenty of

fresh air … more sleep … SHE’ll be all right …” but his voice did not

sound as though he thought what he was saying amounted to much. Nor did

Elizabeth Ann. She had hoped for some spectacular red pills to be taken

every half-hour, like those Grace’s doctor gave her whenever she felt

low in her mind.

And just then something happened which changed Elizabeth Ann’s life

forever and ever. It was a very small thing, too. Aunt Harriet coughed.

Elizabeth Ann did not think it at all a bad-sounding cough in comparison

with Grace’s hollow whoop; Aunt Harriet had been coughing like that ever

since the cold weather set in, for three or four months now, and nobody

had thought anything of it, because they were all so much occupied in

taking care of the sensitive, nervous little girl who needed so much

care.

And yet, at the sound of that little discreet cough behind Aunt

Harriet’s hand, the doctor whirled around and fixed his sharp eyes on

her, with all the bored, impatient look gone, the first time Elizabeth

Ann had ever seen him look interested. “What’s that? What’s that?” he

said, going over quickly to Aunt Harriet. He snatched out of his little

bag a shiny thing with two rubber tubes attached, and he put the ends of

the tubes in his ears and the shiny thing up against Aunt Harriet, who

was saying, “It’s nothing, Doctor … a little teasing cough I’ve had this

winter. And I meant to tell you, too, but I forgot it, that that sore

spot on my lungs doesn’t go away as it ought to.”

The doctor motioned her very impolitely to stop talking, and listened

very hard through his little tubes. Then he turned around and looked at

Aunt Frances as though he were angry at her. He said, “Take the child

away and then come back here yourself.”

And that was almost all that Elizabeth Ann ever knew of the forces which

swept her away from the life which had always gone on, revolving about

her small person, exactly the same ever since she could remember.

You have heard so much about tears in the account of Elizabeth Ann’s

life so far that I won’t tell you much about the few days which

followed, as the family talked over and hurriedly prepared to obey the

doctor’s verdict, which was that Aunt Harriet was very, very sick and

must go away at once to a warm climate, and Aunt Frances must go, too,

but not Elizabeth Ann, for Aunt Frances would need to give all her time

to taking care of Aunt Harriet. And anyhow the doctor didn’t think it

best, either for Aunt Harriet or for Elizabeth Ann, to have them in the

same house.

Grace couldn’t go of course, but to everybody’s surprise she said she

didn’t mind, because she had a bachelor brother, who kept a grocery

store, who had been wanting her for years to go and keep house for him.

She said she had stayed on just out of conscientiousness because she

knew Aunt Harriet couldn’t get along without her! And if you notice,

that’s the way things often happen to very,