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

“Well, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKES!” said Aunt Abigail. She turned and called

across the room, “Henry, did you ever! Here’s Betsy saying she don’t

know what we make butter out of! She actually never saw anybody making

butter!”

Uncle Henry was sitting down, near the window, turning the handle to a

small barrel swung between two uprights. He stopped for a moment and

considered Aunt Abigail’s remark with the same serious attention he had

given to Elizabeth Ann’s discovery about left and right. Then he began

to turn the churn over and over again and said, peaceably: “Well,

Mother, you never saw anybody laying asphalt pavement, I’ll warrant you!

And I suppose Betsy knows all about that.”

Elizabeth Ann’s spirits rose. She felt very superior indeed. “Oh, yes,”

she assured them, “I know ALL about that! Didn’t you ever see anybody

doing that? Why, I’ve seen them HUNDREDS of times! Every day as we went

to school they were doing over the whole pavement for blocks along

there.”

Aunt Abigail and Uncle Henry looked at her with interest, and Aunt

Abigail said: “Well, now, think of that! Tell us all about it!”

“Why, there’s a big black sort of wagon,” began Elizabeth Ann, “and they

run it up and down and pour out the black stuff on the road. And that’s

all there is to it.” She stopped, rather abruptly, looking uneasy. Uncle

Henry inquired: “Now there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to know. How

do they keep that stuff from hardening on them? How do they keep it

hot?”

The little girl looked blank. “Why, a fire, I suppose,” she faltered,

searching her memory desperately and finding there only a dim

recollection of a red glow somewhere connected with the familiar scene

at which she had so often looked with unseeing eyes.

“Of course a fire,” agreed Uncle Henry. “But what do they burn in it,

coke or coal or wood or charcoal? And how do they get any draft to keep

it going?”

Elizabeth Ann shook her head. “I never noticed,” she said.

Aunt Abigail asked her now, “What do they do to the road before they

pour it on?”

“Do?” said Elizabeth Ann. “I didn’t know they did anything.”

“Well, they can’t pour it right on a dirt road, can they?” asked Aunt

Abigail. “Don’t they put down cracked stone or something?”

Elizabeth Ann looked down at her toes. “I never noticed,” she said.

“I wonder how long it takes for it to harden?” said Uncle Henry.

“I never noticed,” said Elizabeth Ann, in a small voice.

Uncle Henry said, “Oh!” and stopped asking questions. Aunt Abigail

turned away and put a stick of wood in the stove. Elizabeth Ann did not

feel very superior now, and when Aunt Abigail said, “Now the butter’s

beginning to come. Don’t you want to watch and see everything I do, so’s

you can answer if anybody asks you how butter is made?” Elizabeth Ann

understood perfectly what was in Aunt’s Abigail’s mind, and gave to the

process of butter-making a more alert and aroused attention than she had

ever before given to anything. It was so interesting, too, that in no

time she forgot why she was watching, and was absorbed in the

fascinations of the dairy for their own sake.

She looked in the churn as Aunt Abigail unscrewed the top, and saw the

thick, sour cream separating into buttermilk and tiny golden particles.

“It’s gathering,” said Aunt Abigail, screwing the lid back on.

“Father’ll churn it a little more till it really comes. And you and I

will scald the wooden butter things and get everything ready. You’d

better take that apron there to keep your dress clean.”

Wouldn’t Aunt Frances have been astonished if she could have looked in

on Elizabeth Ann that very first morning of her stay at the hateful

Putney Farm and have seen her wrapped in a gingham apron, her face

bright with interest, trotting here and there in the stone-floored milk-room! She was allowed the excitement of pulling out the plug from the

bottom of the churn, and dodged back hastily to escape the gush of

buttermilk spouting into the pail held by Aunt Abigail. And she poured

the water in to wash the butter, and screwed on the top herself, and,

again all herself (for Uncle Henry had gone off as soon as the butter

had “come”), swung the barrel back and forth six or seven times to swish

the water all through the particles of butter. She even helped Aunt

Abigail scoop out the great yellow lumps—her imagination had never

conceived of so much butter in all the world! Then Aunt Abigail let her

run the curiously shaped wooden butter-worker back and forth over the

butter, squeezing out the water, and then pile it up again with her

wooden paddle into a mound of gold. She weighed out the salt needed on

the scales, and was very much surprised to find that there really is

such a thing as an ounce. She had never met it before outside the pages

of her arithmetic book and she didn’t know it lived anywhere else.

After the salt was worked in she watched Aunt Abigail’s deft, wrinkled

old hands make pats and rolls. It looked like the greatest fun, and too

easy for anything; and when Aunt Abigail asked her if she wouldn’t like

to make up the last half-pound into a pat for dinner, she took up the

wooden paddle confidently. And then she got one of the surprises that

Putney Farm seemed to have for her. She discovered that her hands didn’t

seem to belong to her at all, that her fingers were all thumbs, that she

didn’t seem to know in the least beforehand how hard a stroke she was

going to give nor which way her fingers were going to go. It was, as a

matter of fact, the first time Elizabeth Ann had tried to do anything

with her hands except to write and figure and play on the piano, and

naturally she wasn’t very well acquainted with them. She stopped in

dismay, looking at the shapeless, battered heap of butter before her and

holding out her hands as though they were not part of her.

Aunt Abigail laughed, took up the paddle, and after three or four passes

the butter was a smooth, yellow ball. “Well, that brings it all back to

me!” she said? “when I was a little girl, when my grandmother first

let me try to make a pat. I was about five years old—my! what a mess I

made of it! And I remember? doesn’t it seem funny—that SHE laughed and

said her Great-aunt Elmira had taught her how to handle butter right

here in this very milk-room. Let’s see, Grandmother was born the year

the Declaration of Independence was signed. That’s quite a while ago,

isn’t it? But butter hasn’t changed much, I guess, nor little girls

either.”

Elizabeth Ann listened to this statement with a very queer, startled

expression on her face, as though she hadn’t understood the words. Now

for a moment she stood staring up in Aunt Abigail’s face, and yet not

seeing her at all, because she was thinking so hard. She was thinking!

“Why! There were real people living when the Declaration of Independence

was signed—real people, not just history people—old women teaching

little girls how to do things—right in this very room, on this very

floor—and the Declaration of Independence just signed!”

To tell the honest truth, although she had passed a very good

examination in the little book on American history they had studied in

school, Elizabeth Ann had never to that moment had any notion that there

ever had been really and truly any Declaration of Independence at all.

It had been like the ounce, living exclusively inside her schoolbooks

for little girls to be examined about. And now here Aunt Abigail,

talking about a butter-pat, had brought it to life!

Of course all this only lasted a moment, because it was such a new idea!

She soon lost track of what she was thinking of; she rubbed her eyes as

though she were coming out of a dream, she thought, confusedly: “What

did butter have to do with the Declaration of Independence? Nothing, of

course! It couldn’t!” and the whole impression seemed to pass out of her

mind. But it was an impression which was to come again and again during

the next few months.