Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (recommended ebook reader TXT) 📕
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 sh
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Elizabeth Ann, however, had no grocer brother. She had, it is true, a
great many relatives, and of course it was settled she should go to some
of them till Aunt Frances could take her back. For the time being, just
now, while everything was so distracted and confused, she was to go to
stay with the Lathrop cousins, who lived in the same city, although it
was very evident that the Lathrops were not perfectly crazy with delight
over the prospect.
Still, something had to be done at once, and Aunt Frances was so frantic
with the packing up, and the moving men coming to take the furniture to
storage, and her anxiety over her mother—she had switched to Aunt
Harriet, you see, all the conscientiousness she had lavished on
Elizabeth Ann—nothing much could be extracted from her about Elizabeth
Ann. “Just keep her for the present, Molly!” she said to Cousin Molly
Lathrop. “I’ll do something soon. I’ll write you. I’ll make another
arrangement … but just NOW … .”
Her voice was quavering on the edge of tears, and Cousin Molly Lathrop,
who hated scenes, said hastily, “Yes, oh, yes, of course. For the
present …” and went away, thinking that she didn’t see why she should
have ALL the disagreeable things to do. When she had her husband’s
tyrannical old mother to take care of, wasn’t that enough, without
adding to the household such a nervous, spoiled, morbid young one as
Elizabeth Ann!
Elizabeth Ann did not of course for a moment dream that Cousin Molly was
thinking any such things about her, but she could not help seeing that
Cousin Molly was not any too enthusiastic about taking her in; and she
was already feeling terribly forlorn about the sudden, unexpected change
in Aunt Frances, who had been SO wrapped up in her and now was just as
much wrapped up in Aunt Harriet. Do you know, I am sorry for Elizabeth
Ann, and, what’s more, I have been ever since this story began.
Well, since I promised you that I was not going to tell about more
tears, I won’t say a single word about the day when the two aunts went
away on the train, for there is nothing much but tears to tell about,
except perhaps an absent look in Aunt Frances’s eyes which hurt the
little girl’s feelings dreadfully.
And then Cousin Molly took the hand of the sobbing little girl and led
her back to the Lathrop house. But if you think you are now going to
hear about the Lathrops, you are quite mistaken, for just at this moment
old Mrs. Lathrop took a hand in the matter. She was Cousin Molly’s
husband’s mother, and, of course, no relation at all to Elizabeth Ann,
and so was less enthusiastic than anybody else. All that Elizabeth Ann
ever saw of this old lady, who now turned the current of her life again,
was her head, sticking out of a second-story window; and that’s all that
you need to know about her, either. It was a very much agitated old
head, and it bobbed and shook with the intensity with which the
imperative old voice called upon Cousin Molly and Elizabeth Ann to stop
right there where they were on the front walk.
“The doctor says that what’s the matter with Bridget is scarlet fever,
and we’ve all got to be quarantined. There’s no earthly sense bringing
that child in to be sick and have it, and be nursed, and make the
quarantine twice as long!”
“But, Mother!” called Cousin Molly, “I can’t leave the child in the
middle of the street!”
Elizabeth Ann was actually glad to hear her say that, because she was
feeling so awfully unwanted, which is, if you think of it, not a very
cheerful feeling for a little girl who has been the hub round which a
whole household was revolving.
“You don’t HAVE to!” shouted old Mrs. Lathrop out of her second-story
window. Although she did not add “You gump!” aloud, you could feel she
was meaning just that. “You don’t have to! You can just send her to the
Putney cousins. All nonsense about her not going there in the first
place. They invited her the minute they heard of Harriet’s being so bad.
They’re the natural ones to take her in. Abigail is her mother’s own
aunt, and Ann is her own first-cousin-once-removed … just as close as
Harriet and Frances are, and MUCH closer than you! And on a farm and
all … just the place for her!”
“But how under the sun, Mother!” shouted Cousin Molly back, “can I GET
her to the Putneys’? You can’t send a child of nine a thousand miles
without …”
Old Mrs. Lathrop looked again as though she were saying “You gump!” and
said aloud, “Why, there’s James, going to New York on business in a few
days anyhow. He can just go now, and take her along and put her on the
right train at Albany. If he wires from here, they’ll meet her in
Hillsboro.”
And that was just what happened. Perhaps you may have guessed by this
time that when old Mrs. Lathrop issued orders they were usually obeyed.
As to who the Bridget was who had the scarlet fever, I know no more than
you. I take it, from the name, she was the cook. Unless, indeed, old
Mrs. Lathrop made her up for the occasion, which I think she would have
been quite capable of doing, don’t you?
At any rate, with no more ifs or ands, Elizabeth Ann’s satchel was
packed, and Cousin James Lathrop’s satchel was packed, and the two set
off together, the big, portly, middle-aged man quite as much afraid of
his mother as Elizabeth Ann was. But he was going to New York, and it is
conceivable that he thought once or twice on the trip that there were
good times in New York as well as business engagements, whereas poor
Elizabeth Ann was being sent straight to the one place in the world
where there were no good times at all. Aunt Harriet had said so, ever so
many times. Poor Elizabeth Ann!
BETSY HOLDS THE REINS
You can imagine, perhaps, the dreadful terror of Elizabeth Ann as the
train carried her along toward Vermont and the horrible Putney Farm! It
had happened so quickly—her satchel packed, the telegram sent, the
train caught—that she had not had time to get her wits together, assert
herself, and say that she would NOT go there! Besides, she had a sinking
notion that perhaps they wouldn’t pay any attention to her if she did.
The world had come to an end now that Aunt Frances wasn’t there to take
care of her! Even in the most familiar air she could only half breathe
without Aunt Frances! And now she was not even being taken to the Putney
Farm! She was being sent!
She shrank together in her seat, more and more frightened as the end of
her journey came nearer, and looked out dismally at the winter
landscape, thinking it hideous with its brown bare fields, its brown
bare trees, and the quick-running little streams hurrying along, swollen
with the January thaw which had taken all the snow from the hills. She
had heard her elders say about her so many times that she could not
stand the cold, that she shivered at the very thought of cold weather,
and certainly nothing could look colder than that bleak country into
which the train was now slowly making its way.
The engine puffed and puffed with great laboring breaths that shook
Elizabeth Ann’s diaphragm up and down, but the train moved more and more
slowly. Elizabeth Ann could feel under her feet how the floor of the car
was tipped up as it crept along the steep incline. “Pretty stiff grade
here?” said a passenger to the conductor.
“You bet!” he assented. “But Hillsboro is the next station and that’s at
the top of the hill. We go down after that to Rutland.” He turned to
Elizabeth Ann—“Say, little girl, didn’t your uncle say you were to get
off at Hillsboro? You’d better be getting your things together.”
Poor Elizabeth Ann’s knees knocked against each other with fear of the
strange faces she was to encounter, and when the conductor came to help
her get off, he had to carry the white, trembling child as well as her
satchel. But there was only one strange face there,—not another soul in
sight at the little wooden station. A grim-faced old man in a fur cap
and heavy coat stood by a lumber wagon.
“This is her, Mr. Putney,” said the conductor, touching his cap, and
went back to the train, which went away shrieking for a nearby crossing
and setting the echoes ringing from one mountain to another.
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. You pull on the left-hand rein to make ‘em go to
the left and t’other way for t’other way, though ‘tain’t likely we’ll
meet any teams.”
Elizabeth Ann had been so near one of her wild screams of terror that
now, in spite of her instant absorbed interest in the reins, she gave a
queer little yelp. She was all ready with the explanation, her
conversations with Aunt Frances having made her very fluent in
explanations of her own emotions. She would tell Uncle Henry about how
scared she had been, and how she had just been about to scream and
couldn’t keep back that one little … But Uncle Henry seemed not to have
heard her little howl, or, if he had, didn’t think it worth
conversation, for he … oh, the horses were CERTAINLY going to one side!
She hastily decided which was her right hand (she had never been forced
to know it so quickly before) and pulled furiously on that rein. The
horses turned their hanging heads a little, and, miraculously, there
they were in the middle of the road again.
Elizabeth Ann drew a long breath of relief and pride, and looked to
Uncle Henry for praise. But he was busily setting down figures as though
he
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