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

It looked so grown-up. And this morning she had done hers that way,

turning her neck till it ached, so that she could see the coveted tight

effect at the back. And still—aren’t little girls queer?—although she

had enjoyed doing her own hair, she was very much inclined to feel hurt

because Cousin Ann had not come to do it for her.

[Illustration: She had greatly enjoyed doing her own hair.]

Cousin Ann set her iron down with the soft thump which Elizabeth Ann had

heard upstairs. She began folding a napkin, and said: “Now reach

yourself a bowl off the shelf yonder. The oatmeal’s in that kettle on

the stove and the milk is in the blue pitcher. If you want a piece of

bread and butter, here’s a new loaf just out of the oven, and the

butter’s in that brown crock.”

Elizabeth Ann followed these instructions and sat down before this

quickly assembled breakfast in a very much surprised silence. At home it

took the girl more than half an hour to get breakfast and set the table,

and then she had to wait on them besides. She began to pour the milk out

of the pitcher and stopped suddenly. “Oh, I’m afraid I’ve taken more

than my share!” she said apologetically.

Cousin Ann looked up from her rapidly moving iron, and said, in an

astonished voice: “Your share? What do you mean?”

“My share of the quart,” explained Elizabeth Ann. At home they bought a

quart of milk and a cup of cream every day, and they were all very

conscientious about not taking more than their due share.

“Good land, child, take all the MILK you want!” said Cousin Ann, as

though she found something shocking in what the little girl had just

said. Elizabeth Ann thought to herself that she spoke as though milk ran

out of a faucet, like water.

She was very fond of milk, and she made a very good breakfast as she sat

looking about the low-ceilinged room. It was unlike any room she had

ever seen.

It was, of course, the kitchen, and yet it didn’t seem possible that the

same word could be applied to that room and the small, dark cubby-hole

which had been Grace’s asthmatical kingdom. This room was very long and

narrow, and all along one side were windows with white, ruffled curtains

drawn back at the sides, and with small, shining panes of glass, through

which the sun poured a golden flood of light on a long shelf of potted

plants that took the place of a window-sill. The shelf was covered with

shining white oil-cloth, the pots were of clean reddish brown, the

sturdy, stocky plants of bright green with clear red-and-white flowers.

Elizabeth Ann’s eyes wandered all over the kitchen from the low, white

ceiling to the clean, bare wooden floor, but they always came back to

those sunny windows. Once, back in the big brick school-building, as she

had sat drooping her thin shoulders over her desk, some sort of a

procession had gone by with a brass band playing a lively air. For some

queer reason, every time she now glanced at that sheet of sunlight and

the bright flowers she had a little of the same thrill which had

straightened her back and gone up and down her spine while the band was

playing. Possibly Aunt Frances was right, after all, and Elizabeth Ann

WAS a very impressionable child. I wonder, by the way, if anybody ever

saw a child who wasn’t.

At one end, the end where Cousin Ann was ironing, stood the kitchen

stove, gleaming black, with a tea-kettle humming away on it, a big hot-water boiler near it, and a large kitchen cabinet with lots of drawers

and shelves and hooks and things. Beyond that, in the middle of the

room, was the table where they had had supper last night, and at which

the little girl now sat eating her very late breakfast; and beyond that,

at the other end of the room, was another table with an old dark-red

cashmere shawl on it for a cover. A large lamp stood in the middle of

this, a bookcase near it, two or three rocking-chairs around it, and

back of it, against the wall, was a wide sofa covered with bright

cretonne, with three bright pillows. Something big and black and woolly

was lying on this sofa, snoring loudly. As Cousin Ann saw the little

girl’s fearful glance alight on this she explained: “That’s Step, our

old dog. Doesn’t he make an awful noise! Mother says, when she happens

to be alone here in the evening, it’s real company to hear Shep snore—

as good as having a man in the house.”

Although this did not seem at all a sensible remark to Elizabeth Ann,

who thought soberly to herself that she didn’t see why snoring made a

dog as good as a man, still she was acute enough (for she was really

quite an intelligent little girl) to feel that it belonged in the same

class of remarks as one or two others she had noted as “queer” in the

talk at Putney Farm last night. This variety of talk was entirely new to

her, nobody in Aunt Harriet’s conscientious household ever making

anything but plain statements of fact. It was one of the “queer Putney

ways” which Aunt Harriet had forgotten to mention. It is possible that

Aunt Harriet had never noticed it.

When Elizabeth Ann finished her breakfast, Cousin Ann made three

suggestions, using exactly the same accent for them all. She said:

“Wouldn’t you better wash your dishes up now before they get sticky? And

don’t you want one of those red apples from the dish on the side table?

And then maybe you’d like to look around the house so’s to know where

you are.” Elizabeth Ann had never washed a dish in all her life, and she

had always thought that nobody but poor, ignorant people, who couldn’t

afford to hire girls, did such things. And yet (it was odd) she did not

feel like saying this to Cousin Ann, who stood there so straight in her

gingham dress and apron, with her clear, bright eyes and red cheeks.

Besides this feeling, Elizabeth Ann was overcome with embarrassment at

the idea of undertaking a new task in that casual way. How in the world

DID you wash dishes? She stood rooted to the spot, irresolute, horribly

shy, and looking, though she did not know it, very clouded and sullen.

Cousin Ann said briskly, holding an iron up to her cheek to see if it

was hot enough: “Just take them over to the sink there and hold them

under the hot-water faucet. They’ll be clean in no time. The dish-towels

are those hanging on the rack over the stove.”

Elizabeth Ann moved promptly over to the sink, as though Cousin Ann’s

words had shoved her there, and before she knew it, her saucer, cup, and

spoon were clean and she was wiping them on a dry checked towel. “The

spoon goes in the side-table drawer with the other silver, and the

saucer and cup in those shelves there behind the glass doors where the

china belongs,” continued Cousin Ann, thumping hard with her iron on a

napkin and not looking up at all, “and don’t forget your apple as you go

out. Those Northern Spies are just getting to be good about now. When

they first come off the tree in October you could shoot them through an

oak plank.”

Now Elizabeth Ann knew that this was a foolish thing to say, since of

course an apple never could go through a board; but something that had

always been sound asleep in her brain woke up a little, little bit and

opened one eye. For it occurred dimly to Elizabeth Ann that this was a

rather funny way of saying that Northern Spies were very hard when you

first pick them in the autumn. She had to figure it out for herself very

slowly, because it was a new idea to her, and she was halfway through

her tour of inspection of the house before there glimmered on her lips,

in a faint smile, the first recognition of humor in all her life. She

felt a momentary impulse to call down to Cousin Ann that she saw the

point, but before she had taken a single step toward the head of the

stairs she had decided not to do this. Cousin Ann, with her bright, dark

eyes, and her straight back, and her long arms, and her way of speaking

as though it never occurred to her that you wouldn’t do just as she

said—Elizabeth Ann was not very sure that she liked Cousin Ann, and she

was very sure that she was afraid of her.

So she went on, walking from one room to another, industriously eating

the red apple, the biggest she had ever seen. It was the best, too, with

its crisp, white flesh and the delicious, sour-sweet juice which made

Elizabeth Ann feel with each mouthful like hurrying to take another. She

did not think much more of the other rooms in the house than she had of

the kitchen. There were no draped “throws” over anything; there were no

lace curtains at the windows, just dotted Swiss like the kitchen; all

the ceilings were very low; the furniture was all of dark wood and very

old-looking; what few rugs there were were of bright-colored rags; the

mirrors were queer and old, with funny old pictures at the top; there

wasn’t a brass bed in any of the bedrooms, just old wooden ones with

posts, and curtains round the tops; and there was not a single plush

portiere in the parlor, whereas at Aunt Harriet’s there had been two

sets for that one room.

She was relieved at the absence of a piano and secretly rejoiced that

she would not need to practice. In her heart she had not liked her music

lessons at all, but she had never dreamed of not accepting them from

Aunt Frances as she accepted everything else. Also she had liked to hear

Aunt Frances boast about how much better she could play than other

children of her age.

She was downstairs by this time, and, opening a door out of the parlor,

found herself back in the kitchen, the long line of sunny windows and

the bright flowers giving her that quick little thrill again. Cousin Ann

looked up from her ironing, nodded, and said: “All through? You’d better

come in and get warmed up. Those rooms get awfully cold these January

days. Winters we mostly use this room so’s to get the good of the

kitchen stove.” She added after a moment, during which Elizabeth Ann

stood by the stove, warming her hands: “There’s one place you haven’t

seen yet—the milk-room. Mother’s down there now, churning. That’s the

door—the middle one.”

Elizabeth Ann had been wondering and wondering where in the world Aunt

Abigail was. So she stepped quickly to the door, and went dawn the cold

dark stairs she found there. At the bottom was a door, locked

apparently, for she could find no fastening. She heard steps inside, the

door was briskly cast open, and she almost fell into the arms of Aunt

Abigail, who caught her as she stumbled forward, saying: “Well, I’ve

been expectin’ you down here for a long time. I never saw a little girl

yet who didn’t like to watch butter-making. Don’t you love to run the

butter-worker over it? I do, myself, for all I’m seventy-two!”

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Elizabeth Ann. “I don’t know what

you make butter out