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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Betty Leicester, by Sarah Orne Jewett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Betty Leicester
+       A Story For Girls
+
+Author: Sarah Orne Jewett
+
+Release Date: January 28, 2009 [EBook #27923]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETTY LEICESTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BETTY LEICESTER
+
+
+
+
+Books by Sarah Orne Jewett
+
+
+  STORIES AND TALES. 7 vols. Illustrated.
+
+  THE LETTERS OF SARAH ORNE JEWETT. Illustrated.
+
+  THE TORY LOVER. Illustrated.
+
+  THE QUEEN'S TWIN AND OTHER STORIES.
+
+  THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS.
+
+  DEEPHAVEN.
+  _Holiday Edition._ With 52 illustrations. Attractively bound.
+
+  OLD FRIENDS AND NEW.
+
+  COUNTRY BY-WAYS.
+
+  THE MATE OF THE DAYLIGHT, AND FRIENDS ASHORE.
+
+  A COUNTRY DOCTOR. A Novel.
+
+  A MARSH ISLAND. A Novel.
+
+  A WHITE HERON AND OTHER STORIES.
+
+  THE KING OF FOLLY ISLAND, AND OTHER PEOPLE.
+
+  STRANGERS AND WAYFARERS.
+
+  A NATIVE OF WINBY, AND OTHER TALES.
+
+  THE LIFE OF NANCY.
+
+  TALES OF NEW ENGLAND.
+    THE SAME. In Riverside Aldine Series. In Riverside School Library.
+
+  PLAY-DAYS. Stories for Girls.
+
+  BETTY LEICESTER. A Story for Girls.
+
+  BETTY LEICESTER'S CHRISTMAS. Illustrated.
+
+          HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+          BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+BETTY LEICESTER
+
+_A STORY FOR GIRLS_
+
+BY
+
+SARAH ORNE JEWETT
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+
+The Riverside Press Cambridge
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY MARY R. JEWETT
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+The Riverside Press
+
+CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
+
+PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+WITH LOVE TO
+
+M. G. L.
+
+ONE OF THE FIRST OF BETTY'S FRIENDS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                    PAGE
+     I. AS FAR AS RIVERPORT           1
+    II. THE PACKET BOAT              17
+   III. A BIT OF COLOR               28
+    IV. TIDESHEAD                    40
+     V. AT BECKY'S HOUSE             50
+    VI. THE GARDEN TEA               60
+   VII. THE SIN BOOKS                72
+  VIII. A CHAPTER OF LETTERS         93
+    IX. BETTY'S REFLECTIONS         108
+     X. UP-COUNTRY                  137
+    XI. THE TWO FRIENDS             158
+   XII. BETTY AT HOME               171
+  XIII. A GREAT EXCITEMENT          185
+   XIV. THE OUT-OF-DOOR CLUB        209
+    XV. THE STARLIGHT COMES IN      221
+   XVI. DOWN THE RIVER              239
+  XVII. GOING AWAY                  276
+
+
+
+
+BETTY LEICESTER.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+AS FAR AS RIVERPORT.
+
+
+TWO persons sat at a small breakfast-table near an open window, high up
+in Young's Hotel in Boston. It was a pleasant June morning, just after
+eight o'clock, and they could see the white clouds blowing over; but the
+gray walls of the Court House were just opposite, so that one cannot say
+much of their view of the world. The room was pleasanter than most hotel
+rooms, and the persons at breakfast were a girl of fifteen, named Betty
+Leicester, and her father. Their friends thought them both good-looking,
+but it ought to be revealed in this story just what sort of good looks
+they had, since character makes the expression of people's faces. But
+this we can say, to begin with: they had eyes very much alike, very
+kind and frank and pleasant, and they had a good fresh color, as if they
+spent much time out-of-doors. In fact, they were just off the sea,
+having come in only two days before on the Catalonia from Liverpool; and
+the Catalonia, though very comfortable, had made a slower voyage than
+some steamers do in coming across.
+
+They had nearly finished breakfast, but Betty was buttering one more
+nice bit of toast to finish her marmalade, while Mr. Leicester helped
+himself to more strawberries. They both looked a little grave, as if
+something important were to be done when breakfast was over; and if you
+had sat in the third place by the table, and, instead of looking out of
+the window, had looked to right and left into the bedrooms that opened
+at either hand, you would guess the reason. In Betty's room, on her
+table, were ulster and her umbrella and her traveling-bag beside a
+basket, these last being labeled "Miss E. Leicester, Tideshead;" and in
+the room opposite was a corresponding array, excepting that the labels
+read, "T. Leicester, Windsor Hotel, Montreal." So for once the girl and
+her father were going in different directions.
+
+"Papa, dear," said Betty, "how long will it be before you can tell about
+coming back from Alaska?"
+
+"Perhaps I shall know in a month," said Mr. Leicester; "but you
+understand that it will not be like a journey through civilized
+countries, and there are likely to be many hindrances and delays.
+Beside, you must count upon our finding everything enormously
+interesting. I shall try hard not to forget how interesting a waiting
+young somebody called Betty is!"
+
+Betty made an attempt to smile, but she began to feel very dismal. "The
+aunts will ask me, you know, papa dear," she said. "I am sure that Aunt
+Barbara felt a little grumpy about your not coming now."
+
+"Dear Aunt Barbara!" said Mr. Leicester seriously; "I wish that I could
+have managed it, but I will stay long enough to make up, when I get back
+from the North."
+
+"Your birthday is the first of September; thirty-nine this year, you
+poor old thing! Oh if we could only have the day in Tideshead, it would
+be such fun!" Betty looked more cheerful again with this hope taking
+possession of her mind.
+
+"You are always insisting upon my having a new birthday!" said Mr.
+Leicester, determined upon being cheerful too. "You will soon be calling
+me your grandfather. I mean to expect a gold-headed cane for my present
+this year. Now we must be getting ready for the station, dear child. I
+am sure that we shall miss each other, but I will do things for you and
+you will do things for me, won't you, Betsey?" and he kissed her
+affectionately, while Betty clung fast to him with both arms tight round
+his neck. Somehow she never had felt so badly at saying good-by.
+
+"And you will be very good to the old aunts? Remember how fond they have
+always been of your dear mamma and of me, and how ready they are to give
+you all their love. I think you can grow to be a very great comfort to
+them and a new pleasure. They must really need you to play with."
+
+There was a loud knock at the door; the porter came in and carried away
+a high-heaped armful from Betty's room. "Carriage is ready at the door,
+sir," he said. "Plenty of time, sir;" and then went hurrying away again
+to summon somebody else. Betty's eyes were full of tears when she came
+out of her room and met papa, who was just looking at his watch in the
+little parlor.
+
+"Say 'God bless you, Betty,'" she managed to ask.
+
+"God bless you, Betty, my dear Betty!" Mr. Leicester said gravely. "God
+bless you, dear, and make you a blessing."
+
+"Papa dear, I wasn't really crying. You know that you're coming back
+within three months, and we shall be writing letters all the time, and
+Tideshead isn't like a strange place."
+
+"Dear me, no! you'll never wish to come away from Tideshead; give it my
+love, and 'call every bush my cousin,'" answered Mr. Leicester gayly as
+they went down in the elevator. The trying moment of the real good-by
+was over, and the excitement and interest of Betty's journey had begun.
+She liked the elevator boy and had time to find a bit of money for him,
+that being the best way to recognize his politeness and patience. "Thank
+you; good-by," she said pleasantly as she put it into his hand. She was
+hoarding the minutes that were left, and tried to remember the things
+that she wished to say to papa as they drove to the Eastern Station; but
+the minutes flew by, and presently Mr. Leicester was left on the
+platform alone, while the cars moved away with his girl. She waved her
+hand and papa lifted his hat once more, though he had already lost sight
+of her, and so they parted. The girl thought it was very hard. She
+wondered all over again if she couldn't possibly have gone on the long
+journey to the far North which she had heard discussed so often and with
+such enthusiasm. It seemed wrong and unnatural that she and her father
+should not always be together everywhere.
+
+It was very comfortable in the train, and the tide was high among the
+great marshes. The car was not very full at first, but at one or two
+stations there were crowds of people, and Betty soon had a seat-mate, a
+good-natured looking, stout woman, who was inclined to be very sociable.
+She was a little out of breath and much excited.
+
+"Would you like to sit next the window?" inquired Betty.
+
+"No, lem me set where I be," replied the anxious traveler. "'Tis as well
+one place as another. I feel terrible unsartin' on the cars. I don't
+expect you do?"
+
+"Not very," said Betty. "I have never had anything happen."
+
+"You b'en on 'em before, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed," said Betty.
+
+"Ever b'en in Boston?--perhaps you come from that way?"
+
+"I came from there this morning, but I am on my way from London to
+Tideshead." Somehow this announcement sounded ostentatious, and Betty,
+being modest, regretted it.
+
+"What London do you refer to?" asked the woman, and, having been
+answered, said, "Oh, bless ye! when it comes to seafarin' I'm right to
+home, I tell you. I didn't know but you'd had to come from some o' them
+Londons out West; all the way by cars. I've got a sister that lives to
+London, Iowy; she comes East every three or four year; passes two days
+an' two nights, I believe 't is, on the cars; makes nothin' of it. I
+ain't been no great of a traveler. Creation's real queer, _ain't_ it!"
+
+Betty's fellow-traveler was looking earnestly at the green fields, and
+seemed to express everything she felt of wonder and interest by her last
+remark, to which Betty answered "yes," with a great shake of
+laughter--and hoped that there would be still more to say.
+
+"Have you been to sea a good deal?" she asked.
+
+"Lor' yes, dear. Father owned two thirds o' the ship I was born on, and
+bought into another when she got old, an' I was married off o' her; the
+Sea Queen, Dexter, master, _she_ was. Then I sailed 'long o' my husband
+till the child'n begun to come an' I found there was some advantages in
+bringin' up a family on shore, so I settled down for a spell; but just
+as I got round to leavin' and goin' back, my husband got tired o' the
+sea and shippin' all run down, so home he come, and you wouldn't know us
+now from shorefolks. Pretty good sailor, be ye?" (looking at Betty
+sharply).
+
+"Yes, I love the sea," said Betty.
+
+"I want to know," said her new friend admiringly, and then took a long
+breath and got out of her gloves.
+
+"Your father a shipmaster?" she continued.
+
+"No," said Betty humbly.
+
+"What trade does he follow?"
+
+"He has written some books; he is a naturalist; but papa can do almost
+anything," replied Betty proudly.
+
+"I want to know," said the traveler again. "Well, I don't realize just
+what naturalists hold to; there's too many sects a-goin' nowadays for
+me. I was brought up good old-fashioned Methodist, but this very mornin'
+in the depot I was speakin' with a stranger that said she was a
+Calvin-Advent, and they was increasin' fast. She did 'pear as well as
+anybody; a nice appearin' woman. Well, there's room for all."
+
+Betty was forced to smile, and tried to hide her face by looking out of
+the window. Just then the conductor kindly appeared, and so she pulled
+her face straight again.
+
+"Ain't got no brothers an' sisters?" asked the funny old soul.
+
+"No," said Betty. "Papa and I are all alone."
+
+"Mother ain't livin'?" and the kind homely face turned quickly toward
+her.
+
+"She died when I was a baby."
+
+"My sakes, how you talk! You don't feel to miss her, but she would have
+set everything by you." (There was something truly affectionate in the
+way this was said.) "All my child'n are married off," she continued.
+"The house seems too big now. I do' know but what, if you don't like
+where you're goin', I will take ye in, long's you feel to stop."
+
+"Oh, thank you," said Betty gratefully. "I'm sure I should have a good
+time. I'm going to stay with my grandaunts this summer. My father has
+gone to Alaska."
+
+"Oh, I do feel to hope it's by sea!" exclaimed the listener.
+
+The cars rattled along and the country grew greener and greener. Betty
+remembered it very well, although she had not seen it for four years, so
+long it was since she had been in Tideshead before. After seeing the
+stonewalled and thatched or tiled roofs of foreign countries, the wooden
+buildings of New England had a fragile look as if the wind and rain
+would soon spoil and scatter them. The villages and everything but some
+of the very oldest farms looked so new and so temporary that Betty
+Leicester was much surprised, knowing well that she was going through
+some of the very oldest New England towns. She had a delightful sense of
+getting home again, which would have pleased her loyal father, and
+indeed Betty herself believed that she could not be proud enough of her
+native land. Papa always said the faults of a young country were so much
+better than the faults of an old one. However, when the train crossed a
+bridge near a certain harbor on the way and the young traveler saw an
+English flag flying on a ship, it looked very pleasant and familiar.
+
+The morning was growing hot, and the good seafarer in the seat beside
+our friend seemed to grow very uncomfortable. Her dress was too thick,
+and she was trying to hold on her bonnet with her chin, though it
+slipped back farther and farther. Somehow a great many women in the car
+looked very warm and wretched in thick woolen gowns and unsteady
+bonnets. Nobody looked as if she were out on a pleasant holiday except
+one neighbor, a brisk little person with a canary bird and an Indian
+basket, out of which she now and then let a kitten's head appear, long
+enough to be patted and then tucked back again.
+
+Betty's companion caught sight of this smiling neighbor after a time and
+expressed herself as surprised that anybody should take the trouble to
+cart a kitten from town to town, when there were two to every empty
+saucer already. Betty laughed and supposed that she didn't like cats,
+and was answered gruffly that they were well enough in their place. It
+was one of our friend's griefs that she never was sure of being long
+enough in one place to keep a kitten of her own, but the pleasant
+thought came that she was almost sure to find some at Aunt Barbara's
+where she was going.
+
+It was not time to feel hungry, but Betty caught sight of a paper box
+which the waiter had brought to the carriage just as she was leaving the
+hotel. She was having a hot and dusty search under the car-seat for the
+sailor woman's purse, which had suddenly gone overboard from the upper
+deck of her wide lap, but it was found at last, and Betty produced the
+luncheon-box too and opened it. Her new friend looked on with deep
+interest. "I'm only goin's far as Newburyport," she explained eagerly,
+"so I'm not provided."
+
+"Papa knew that I should be hungry by noon," said Betty. "We always try
+not to get too hungry when we are traveling because one gets so much
+more tired. I always carry some chocolate in my bag."
+
+"I expect you've had sights of experience. You ain't be'n kep' short,
+that's plain. They ain't many young gals looks so rugged. Enjoy good
+health, dear, don't ye?" which Betty answered with enthusiasm.
+
+The luncheon looked very inviting and Betty offered a share most
+hospitably, and in spite of its only being a quarter before eleven when
+the feast began, the chicken sandwiches entirely disappeared. There were
+only four, and half a dozen small sponge-cakes which proved to be
+somewhat dry and unattractive.
+
+"I only laid in a light breakfast," apologized Betty's guest. "I'm
+obliged to you, I'm sure, but then I wa' n't nigh so hungry as when I
+got adrift once, in an open boat, for two days and a night, and they
+give me up"--
+
+But at this moment the train man shouted "Newburyport," as if there were
+not a minute to be lost, and the good soul gathered her possessions in
+a great hurry, dropping her purse again twice, and letting fall bits of
+broken sentences with it from which Betty could gather only "The fog
+come in," and "coast o' France," and then, as they said good-by, "'t was
+so divertin' ridin' along that I took no note of stoppin'." After they
+had parted affectionately, she stood for a minute or two at the door of
+the still moving train, nodding and bobbing her kind old head at her
+young fellow-passenger whenever they caught each other's eye. Betty was
+sorry to lose this new friend so soon, and felt more lonely than ever.
+She wished that they had known each other's names, and especially that
+there had been time to hear the whole of the boat story.
+
+Now that there was no one else in the car seat it seemed to be a good
+time to look over some things in the pretty London traveling bag, which
+had been pushed under its owner's feet until then. Betty found a small
+bit of chocolate for herself by way of dessert to the early luncheon,
+and made an entry in a tidy little account book which she meant to keep
+carefully until she should be with papa again. It was a very
+interesting bag, with a dressing-case fitted into it and a writing case,
+all furnished with glass and ivory and silver fittings and yet very
+plain, and nice, and convenient. Betty's dear friend, Mrs. Duncan, had
+given it to her that very spring, before she thought of coming to
+America, and on the voyage it had been worth its weight in gold. Out of
+long experience the young traveler had learned not to burden herself
+with too many things, but all her belongings had some pleasant
+associations: her button-hook was bought in Amsterdam, and a queer
+little silver box for buttons came from a village very far north in
+Norway, while a useful jackknife had been found in Spain, although it
+bore J. Crookes of Sheffield's name on the haft. Somehow the traveling
+bag itself brought up Mrs. Duncan's dear face, and Betty's eyes
+glistened with tears for one moment. The Duncan girls were her best
+friends, and she had had lessons with them for many months at a time in
+the last few years, so they had the strong bond in friendship of having
+worked as well as played together. But Mrs. Duncan had been very
+motherly and dear to our friend, and just now seemed nearer and more
+helpful than ever. The train whistled along and the homesick feeling
+soon passed, though Betty remembered that Mrs. Duncan had said once that
+wherever you may put two persons one is always hostess and the other
+always guest, either from circumstances alone or from their different
+natures, and they must be careful about their duties to each other.
+Betty had not quite understood this when she heard it said, though the
+words had stayed in her mind. Now the meaning flashed clearly into her
+thought, and she was pleased to think that she had just now been the one
+who knew most about traveling. She wished so much that she could have
+been of more use to the old lady, but after all she seemed to have a
+good little journey, and Betty hoped that she could remember all about
+this droll companion when she was writing, at her own journey's end, to
+papa.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE PACKET BOAT.
+
+
+THE day was one of the best days in June, with warm sunshine and a cool
+breeze from the east, for when Betty Leicester stepped from a hot car to
+the station platform in Riverport the air had a delicious sea-flavor.
+She wondered for a moment what this flavor was like, and then thought of
+a salt oyster. She was hungry and tired, the journey had been longer
+than she expected, and, as she made her way slowly through the crowded
+station and was pushed about by people who were hurrying out of or into
+the train, she felt unusually disturbed and lonely. Betty had traveled
+far and wide for a girl of fifteen, but she had seldom been alone, and
+was used to taking care of other people. Papa himself was very apt to
+forget important minor details, and she had learned out of her loving
+young heart to remember them, and was not without high ambitions to
+make their journeys as comfortable as possible. Still, she and her
+father had almost always been together, and Betty wondered if it had not
+after all been foolish to make a certain decision which involved not
+seeing him again until a great many weeks had gone by.
+
+The cars moved away and the young traveler went to the ticket-office to
+ask about the Tideshead train. The ticket-agent looked at her with a
+smile.
+
+"Train's gone half an hour ago!" he said, as if he were telling Betty
+some good news. "There'll be another one at eight o'clock to-morrow
+morning, and the express goes, same as to-day, at half past one. I
+suppose you want to go to Tideshead town; this road only goes to the
+junction and then there's a stage, you know." He looked at Betty
+doubtfully and as if he expected an instant decision on her part as to
+what she meant to do next.
+
+"I knew that there was a stage," she answered, feeling a little alarmed,
+but hoping that she did not show it. "The time-table said there was a
+train to meet this"--
+
+"Oh, that train is an express now and doesn't stop. Everything's got to
+be sacrificed to speed."
+
+The ticket-agent had turned his back and was looking over some papers
+and grumbling to himself, so that Betty could no longer hear what he was
+pleased to say. As she left the window an elderly man, whose face was
+very familiar, was standing in the doorway.
+
+"Well, ma'am, you an' I 'pear to have got left. Tideshead, you said, if
+I rightly understood?"
+
+"Perhaps there is somebody who would drive us there," said Betty. She
+never had been called ma'am before, and it was most surprising. "It
+isn't a great many miles, is it?"
+
+"No, no!" said the new acquaintance. "I was in considerable of a hurry
+to get home, but 't isn't so bad as you think. We can go right up on the
+packet, up river, you know; get there by supper-time; the wind's hauling
+round into the east a little. I understood you to speak about getting to
+Tideshead?"
+
+"Yes," said Betty, gratefully.
+
+"Got a trunk, I expect. Well, I'll go out and look round for Asa Chick
+and his han'cart, and we'll make for the wharf as quick as we can. You
+may step this way."
+
+Betty "stepped" gladly, and Asa Chick and the handcart soon led the way
+riverward through the pleasant old-fashioned streets of Riverport. Her
+new friend pointed out one or two landmarks as they hurried along, for,
+strange to say, although a sea-captain, he was not sure whether the tide
+turned at half past two or at half past three. When they came to the
+river-side, however, the packet-boat was still made fast to the pier,
+and nothing showed signs of her immediate departure.
+
+"It is always a good thing to be in time," said the captain, who found
+himself much too warm and nearly out of breath. "Now, we've got a good
+hour to wait. Like to go right aboard, my dear?"
+
+Betty paid Asa Chick, and then turned to see the packet. It was a queer,
+heavy-looking craft, with a short, thick mast and high, pointed
+lateen-sail, half unfurled and dropping in heavy pocket-like loops.
+There was a dark low cabin and a long deck; a very old man and a fat,
+yellow dog seemed to be the whole ship's company. The old man was
+smoking a pipe and took no notice of anything, but the dog rose slowly
+to his feet and came wagging his tail and looking up at the new
+passenger.
+
+"I do' know but I'll coast round up into the town a little," said the
+captain. "'T ain't no use asking old Mr. Plunkett there any questions,
+he's deef as a ha'dick."
+
+"Will my trunk be safe?" asked Betty; to which the captain answered that
+he would put it right aboard for her. It was not a very heavy trunk, but
+the captain managed it beautifully, and put Betty's hand-bag and wrap
+into the dark cabin. Old Plunkett nodded as he saw this done, and the
+captain said again that Betty might feel perfectly safe about
+everything; but, for all that, she refused to take a walk in order to
+see what was going on in the town, as she was kindly invited to do. She
+went a short distance by herself, however, and came first to a bakery,
+where she bought some buns, not so good as the English ones, but still
+very good buns indeed, and two apples, which the baker's wife told her
+had grown in her own garden. You could see the tree out of the back
+window, by which the hospitable woman had left her sewing, and they
+were, indeed, well-kept and delicious apples for that late season of
+the year. Betty lingered for some minutes in the pleasant shop. She was
+very hungry, and the buns were all the better for that. She looked
+through a door and saw the oven, but the baking was all done for the
+day. The baker himself was out in his cart; he had just gone up to
+Tideshead. Here was another way in which one might have gone to
+Tideshead by land; it would have been good fun to go on the baker's cart
+and stop in the farm-house yards and see everybody; but on the whole
+there was more adventure in going by water. Papa had always told Betty
+that the river was beautiful. She did not remember much about it
+herself, but this would be a fine way of getting a first look at so
+large a part of the great stream.
+
+It was slack water now, and the wharf seemed high, and the landing-stage
+altogether too steep and slippery. When Betty reached the packet's deck,
+old Mr. Plunkett was sound asleep; but while she was eating her buns the
+dog came most good-naturedly and stood before her, cocking his head
+sideways, and putting on a most engaging expression, so that they
+lunched together, and Betty left off nearly as hungry as she began. The
+old dog knew an apple when he saw it, and was disappointed after the
+last one was brought out from Betty's pocket, and lay down at her feet
+and went to sleep again. Betty got into the shade of the wharf and sat
+there looking down at the flounders and sculpins in the clear water, and
+at the dripping green sea-weeds on the piles of the wharf. She was
+almost startled when a heavy wagon was driven on the planks above, and a
+man shouted suddenly to the horses. Presently some barrels of flour were
+rolled down and put on deck--twelve of them in all--by a man and boy who
+gave her, the young stranger, a careful glance every time they turned to
+go back. Then a mowing-machine arrived, and was carefully put on board
+with a great deal of bustle and loud talking. There was somebody on
+deck, now, whom Betty believed to be the packet's skipper, and after a
+while the old captain returned. He seated himself by Mr. Plunkett and
+shook hands with him warmly, and asked him for the news; but there did
+not seem to be any.
+
+"I've been up to see my wife's cousin Jake Hallet's folks," he
+explained, "and I thought sure I'd get left," and old Plunkett nodded
+soberly. They did not sail for at least half an hour after this, and
+Betty sat discreetly on the low cabin roof next the wharf all the time.
+When they were out in the stream at last she could get a pretty view of
+the town. There was some shipping farther down the shore, and some tall
+steeples and beautiful trees and quaintly built warehouses; it was very
+pleasant, looking back at it from the water.
+
+A little past the middle of the afternoon they moved steadily up the
+river. The men all sat together in a group at the stern, and appeared to
+find a great deal to talk about. Old Mr. Plunkett may have thought that
+Betty looked lonely, for after he waked for the second time he came over
+to where she sat and nodded to her; so Betty nodded back, and then the
+old man reached for her umbrella, which was very pretty, with a round
+piece of agate in the handle, and looked at it and rubbed it with his
+thumb, and gave it back to her. "Present to ye?" he asked, and Betty
+nodded assent. Then old Plunkett went away again, but she felt a sense
+of his kind companionship. She wondered whom she must pay for her
+passage and how much it would be, but it was no use to ask so deaf a
+fellow-passenger. He had put on a great pair of spectacles and was
+walking round her trunk, apparently much puzzled by the battered labels
+of foreign hotels and railway stations.
+
+Betty thought that she had seldom seen half so pleasant a place as this
+New England river. She kept longing that her father could see it, too.
+As they went up from the town the shores grew greener and greener, and
+there were some belated apple-trees still in bloom, and the farm-houses
+were so old and stood so pleasantly toward the southern sunshine that
+they looked as if they might have grown like the apple-trees and willows
+and elms. There were great white clouds in the blue sky; the air was
+delicious. Betty could make out at last that old Mr. Plunkett was the
+skipper's father, that Captain Beck was an old shipmaster and a former
+acquaintance of her own, and that the flour and some heavy boxes
+belonged to one store-keeping passenger with a long sandy beard, and the
+mowing-machine to the other, who was called Jim Foss, and that he was a
+farmer. He was a great joker and kept making everybody laugh. Old Mr.
+Plunkett laughed too, now that he was wide awake, but it was only
+through sympathy; he seemed to be a very kind old man. One by one all
+the men came and looked at the trunk labels, and they all asked whether
+Betty hadn't been considerable of a traveler, or some question very much
+like it. At last the captain came with Captain Beck to collect the
+passage money, which proved to be thirty-seven cents.
+
+"Where did you say you was goin' to stop in Tideshead?" asked Captain
+Beck.
+
+"I'm going to Miss Leicester's. Don't you remember me? Aren't you Mary
+Beck's grandfather? I'm Betty Leicester."
+
+"Toe be sure, toe be sure," said the old gentleman, much pleased. "I
+wonder that I had not thought of you at first, but you have grown as
+much as little Mary has. You're getting to be quite a young woman.
+Command me," said the shipmaster, making a handsome bow. "I am glad that
+I fell in with you. I see your father's looks, now. The ladies had a
+hard fight some years ago to keep him from running off to sea with me.
+He's been a great traveler since then, hasn't he?" to which Betty
+responded heartily, again feeling as if she were among friends. The
+storekeeper offered to take her trunk right up the hill in his wagon,
+when they got to the Tideshead landing, and on the whole it was
+delightful that the trains had been changed just in time for her to take
+this pleasant voyage.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A BIT OF COLOR.
+
+
+BETTY had seen strange countries since her last visit to Tideshead. Then
+she was only a child, but now she was so tall that strangers treated her
+as if she were already a young lady. At fifteen one does not always know
+just where to find one's self. A year before it was hard to leave
+childish things alone, but there soon came a time when they seemed to
+have left Betty, while one by one the graver interests of life were
+pushing themselves forward. It was reasonable enough that she should be
+taking care of herself; and, as we have seen, she knew how better than
+most girls of her age. Her father's rough journey to the far North had
+been decided upon suddenly; Mr. Leicester and Betty had been comfortably
+settled at Lynton in Devonshire for the summer, with a comfortable
+prospect of some charming excursions and a good bit of work on papa's
+new scientific book. Betty was used to sudden changes of their plans,
+but it was a hard trial when he had come back from London one day,
+filled with enthusiasm about the Alaska business.
+
+"The only thing against it is that I don't know what to do with you,
+Betty dear," said papa, with a most wistful but affectionate glance.
+"Perhaps you would like to go to Switzerland with the Duncans? You know
+they were very anxious that I should lend you for a while."
+
+"I will think about it," said Betty, trying to smile, but she could not
+talk any more just then. She didn't believe that the hardships of this
+new journey were too great; it was papa who minded dust and hated the
+care of railway rugs and car-tickets, not she. But she gave him a kiss
+and hurried out through the garden and went as fast as she could along
+the lonely long cliff-walk above the sea, to think the sad matter over.
+
+That evening Betty came down to dinner with a serene face. She looked
+more like a young lady than she ever had before. "I have quite decided
+what I should like to do," she said. "Please let me go home with you
+and stay in Tideshead with Aunt Barbara and Aunt Mary. They speak about
+seeing us in their letters, and I should be nearer where you are going."
+Betty's brave voice failed her for a moment just there.
+
+"Why, Betty, what a wise little woman you are!" said Mr. Leicester,
+looking very much pleased. "That's exactly right. I was thinking about
+the dear souls as I came from town, and promised myself that I would run
+down for a few days before I go North. That is, if you say I may go!"
+and he looked seriously at Betty.
+
+"Yes," answered Betty slowly; "yes, I am sure you may, papa dear, if you
+will be very, very careful."
+
+They had a beloved old custom of papa's asking his girl's leave to do
+anything that was particularly important. In Betty's baby-days she had
+reproved him for going out one morning. "Who said you might go, Master
+Papa?" demanded the little thing severely; and it had been a dear bit of
+fun to remember the old story from time to time ever since. Betty's
+mother had died before she could remember; the two who were left were
+most dependent upon each other.
+
+You will see how Betty came to have care-taking ways and how she had
+learned to think more than most girls about what it was best to do. You
+will understand how lonely she felt in this day or two when the story
+begins. Mr. Leicester was too much hurried after all when he reached
+America, and could not go down to Tideshead for a few days' visit, as
+they had both hoped and promised. And here, at last, was Betty going up
+the long village street with Captain Beck for company. She had not seen
+Tideshead for four years, but it looked exactly the same. There was the
+great, square, white house, with the poplars and lilac bushes. There
+were Aunt Barbara and Aunt Mary sitting in the wide hall doorway as if
+they had never left their high-backed chairs since she saw them last.
+
+"Who is this coming up the walk?" said Aunt Barbara, rising and turning
+toward her placid younger sister in sudden excitement. "It can't
+be--why, yes, it is Betty, after all!" and she hurried down the steps.
+
+"Grown out of all reason, of course!" she said sharply, as she kissed
+the surprising grandniece, and then held her at arm's-length to look at
+her again most fondly. "Where did you find her, Captain Beck? We sent
+over to the train; in fact, I went myself with Jonathan, but we were
+disappointed. Your father always telegraphs two or three times before he
+really gets here, Betty; but you have not brought him, after all."
+
+"We had to come up river by the packet," said Captain Beck; "the young
+lady's had quite a voyage; her sea-chest'll be here directly."
+
+The captain left Betty's traveling-bag on the great stone doorstep, and
+turned to go away, but Betty thanked him prettily for his kindness, and
+said that she had spent a delightful afternoon. She was now warmly
+kissed and hugged by Aunt Mary, who looked much younger than Aunt
+Barbara, and she saw two heads appear at the end of the long hall.
+
+"There are Serena and Letty; you must run and speak to them. They have
+been looking forward to seeing you," suggested Aunt Barbara, who seemed
+to see everything at once; but when Betty went that way nobody was to
+be found until she came to the kitchen, where Serena and Letty were, or
+pretended to be, much surprised at her arrival. They were now bustling
+about to get Betty some supper, and she frankly confessed that she was
+very hungry, which seemed to vastly please the good women.
+
+"What in the world shall we do with her?" worried Aunt Mary, while Betty
+was gone. "I had no idea she would seem so well grown. She used to be
+small for her age, you know, sister."
+
+"Do? do?" answered Miss Barbara Leicester sternly. "If she can't take
+care of herself by this time, she never will know how. Tom Leicester
+should have let her stay here altogether, instead of roaming about the
+world with him, or else have settled himself down in respectable
+fashion. I can't get on with teasing children at my age. I'm sure I'm
+glad she's well grown. She mustn't expect us to turn out of our ways,"
+grumbled Aunt Barbara, who had the kindest heart in the world, and was
+listening anxiously every minute for Betty's footsteps.
+
+It was very pleasant to be safe in the old house at last. The young
+guest did not feel any sense of strangeness. She used to be afraid of
+Aunt Barbara when she was a child, but she was not a bit afraid now; and
+Aunt Mary, who seemed a very lovely person then, was now a little bit
+tiresome,--or else Betty herself was tired and did not find it easy to
+listen.
+
+After supper; and it was such a too-good supper, with pound-cakes, and
+peach jam, and crisp shortcakes, and four tall silver candlesticks, and
+Betty being asked to her great astonishment if she would take tea and
+meekly preferring some milk instead; they came back to the doorway. The
+moon had come up, and the wide lawn in front of the house (which the
+ladies always called the yard) was almost as light as day. The syringa
+bushes were in full bloom and fragrance, and other sweet odors filled
+the air beside. There were two irreverent little dogs playing and
+chasing each other on the wide front walk and bustling among the box and
+borders. Betty could hear the voices of people who drove by, or walked
+along the sidewalk, but Tideshead village was almost as still as the
+fields outside the town. She answered all the questions that the aunts
+kindly asked her for conversation's sake, and she tried to think of ways
+of seeming interested in return.
+
+"Can I climb the cherry-tree this summer, Aunt Barbara?" she asked once.
+"Don't you remember the day when there was a tea company of ladies here,
+and Mary Beck and I got some of the company's bonnets and shawls off the
+best bed and dressed up in them and climbed up in the trees?"
+
+"You looked like two fat black crows," laughed Aunt Barbara, though she
+had been very angry at the time. "All the fringes of those thin best
+shawls were catching and snapping as you came down. Oh, dear me, I
+couldn't think what the old ladies would say. None of your mischief now,
+Miss Betty!" and she held up a warning forefinger. "Mary Beck is coming
+to see you to-morrow; you will find some pleasant girls here."
+
+"Tideshead has always been celebrated for its cultivated society, you
+know, dear," added Aunt Mary.
+
+Just now a sad feeling of loneliness began to assail Betty. The summer
+might be very long in passing, and anything might happen to papa. She
+put her hand into her pocket to have the comfort of feeling a crumpled
+note, a very dear short note, which papa had written her only the day
+before, when he had suddenly decided to go out to Cambridge and not come
+back to the hotel for luncheon.
+
+They talked a little longer, Betty and the grandaunts, until sensible
+Aunt Barbara said, "Now run up-stairs to bed, my dear; I am sure that
+you must be tired," and Betty, who usually begged to stay up as long as
+the grown folks, was glad for once to be sent away like a small child.
+Aunt Barbara marched up the stairway and led the way to the east
+bedroom. It was an astonishing tribute of respect to Betty, the young
+guest, and she admired such large-minded hospitality; but after all she
+had expected a comfortable snug little room next Aunt Mary's, where she
+had always slept years before. Aunt Barbara assured her that this one
+was much cooler and pleasanter, and she must remember what a young lady
+she had grown to be. "But you may change to some other room if you like,
+my dear child," said the old lady kindly. "I wouldn't unpack to-night,
+but just go to bed and get rested. I have my breakfast at half past
+seven, but your Aunt Mary doesn't come down. I hope that you will be
+ready as early as that, for I like company;" and then, after seeing that
+everything was in order and comfortable, she kissed Betty twice most
+kindly and told her that she was thankful to have her come to them, and
+went away downstairs.
+
+It was a solemn, big, best bedroom, with dark India-silk curtains to the
+bed and windows, and dull coverings on the furniture. This all looked as
+if there were pretty figures and touches of gay color by daylight, but
+now by the light of the two candles on the dressing-table it seemed a
+dim and dismal place that night. Betty was not a bit afraid; she only
+felt lonely. She was but fifteen years old, and she did not know how to
+get on by herself after all. But Betty was no coward. She had been
+taught to show energy and to make light of difficulties. What could she
+do? Why, unpack a little, and then go to bed and go to sleep; that would
+be the best thing.
+
+She knelt down before her trunk, and had an affectionate feeling toward
+it as she turned the key and saw her familiar properties inside. She
+took out her pictures of her father and mother and Mrs. Duncan, and
+shook out a crumpled dress or two and left them to lie on the old couch
+until morning. Deep down in the sea-chest, as Captain Beck had called
+it, she felt the soft folds of a gay piece of Indian silk made like a
+little shawl, which papa had pleased himself with buying for her one day
+at Liberty's shop in London. Mrs. Duncan had laughed when she saw it,
+and told Betty not to dare to wear it for at least ten years; but the
+color of it was marvelous in the shadowy old room. Betty threw the
+shining red thing over the back of a great easy-chair and it seemed to
+light the whole place. She could not help feeling more cheerful for the
+sight of that gay bit of color. Then a great wish filled her heart, dear
+little Betty; perhaps she could really bring some new pleasure to
+Tideshead that summer! The old aunties' lives looked very gray and dull
+to her young eyes; it was a dull place, perhaps, for Betty, who had
+lived a long time where the brightest and busiest people were. The last
+thing she thought of before she fell asleep was the little silk shawl.
+She had often heard artistic people say "a bit of color;" now she had a
+new idea, though a dim one, of what a bit of color might be expected to
+do in every-day life. Good-night, Betty. Good-night, dear Betty, in your
+best bedroom, sound asleep all the summer night and dreaming of those
+you love!
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+TIDESHEAD.
+
+
+HOWEVER old and responsible Betty Leicester felt overnight, she seemed
+to return to early childhood in spite of herself next day. She must see
+the old house again and chatter with Aunt Barbara about the things and
+people she remembered best. She looked all about the garden, and spent
+an hour in the kitchen talking to Serena and Letty while they worked
+there, and then she went out to see Jonathan and a new acquaintance
+called Seth Pond, an awkward young man, who took occasion to tell Betty
+that he had come from way up-country where there was plenty greener'n he
+was. There were a great many interesting things to see and hear in
+Jonathan's and Seth's domains, and Betty found the remains of one of her
+own old cubby-holes in the shed-chamber, and was touched to the heart
+when she found that it had never been cleared away. She had known so
+many places and so many people that it was almost startling to find
+Tideshead looking and behaving exactly the same, while she had changed
+so much. The garden was a most lovely place, with its long, vine-covered
+summer-house, and just now all the roses were in bloom. Here was that
+cherry-tree into which she and Mary Beck had climbed, decked in the
+proper black shawls and bonnets and black lace veils. But where could
+dear Becky be all the morning? They had been famous cronies in that last
+visit, when they were eleven years old. Betty hurried into the house to
+find her hat and tell Aunt Barbara where she was going.
+
+Aunt Barbara took the matter into serious consideration. "Why, Mary will
+come to see you this afternoon, I don't doubt, my dear, and perhaps you
+had better wait until after dinner. They dine earlier than we, and are
+apt to be busy."
+
+Betty turned away disappointed. She wished that she had thought to find
+Mary just after breakfast in their friendly old fashion, but it was too
+late now. She would sit down at the old secretary in the library and
+begin a letter to papa.
+
+"Dear Papa," she wrote, "Here I am at Tideshead, and I feel just as I
+used when I was a little girl, but people treat me, even Mary Beck, as
+if I were grown up, and it is a little lonely just at first. Everything
+looks just the same, and Serena made me some hearts and rounds for
+supper; wasn't she kind to remember? And they put on the old silver mug
+that you used to have, for me to drink out of. And I like Aunt Barbara
+best of the two aunts, after all, which is sure to make you laugh,
+though Aunt Mary is very kind and seems ill, so that I mean to be as
+nice to her as I possibly can. They seemed to think that you were going
+off just as far as you possibly could without going to a star, and it
+made me miss you more than ever. Jonathan talked about politics, whether
+I listened or not, and didn't like it when I said that you believed in
+tariff reform. He really scolded and said the country would go to the
+dogs, and I was sorry that I knew so little about politics. People
+expect you to know so many new things with every inch you grow. Dear
+papa, I wish that I were with you. Remember not to smoke too often, even
+if you wish to very much; and please, dear papa, think very often that
+I am your only dear child,
+
+                                                  BETTY.
+
+"P. S.--I miss you more because they are all so much older than we are,
+papa dear. Perhaps you will tell me about the tariff reform for a lesson
+letter when you can't think of anything else to write about. I have not
+seen Mary Beck yet, or any of the girls I used to know. Mary always came
+right over before. I must tell you next time about such a funny, nice
+old woman who came most of the way with me in the cars, and what will
+you think when I tell you the most important thing,--I had to come up
+river on the packet! I wished and wished for you.
+
+                                                    BETTY."
+
+
+Dinner-time was very pleasant, and Aunt Mary, who first appeared then,
+was most kind and cheerful; but both the ladies took naps, after dinner
+was over and they had read their letters, so Betty went to her own room,
+meaning to put away her belongings; but Letty had done this beforehand,
+and the large room looked very comfortable and orderly. Aunt Barbara had
+smiled when another protest was timidly offered about the best bedroom,
+and told Betty that it was pleasant to have her just across the hall. "I
+am well used to my housekeeping cares," added Aunt Barbara, with a funny
+look across the table at her young niece; and Betty thought again, how
+much she liked this grandaunt.
+
+The house was very quiet and she did not know exactly what to do, so she
+looked about the guest-chamber.
+
+There were some quaint-looking silhouettes on the walls of the room, and
+in a deep oval frame a fine sort of ornament which seemed to be made of
+beautiful grasses and leaves, all covered with glistening crystals. The
+dust had crept in a little at one side. Betty remembered it well, and
+always thought it very interesting. Then there were two old engravings
+of Angelica Kauffmann and Madame Le Brun. Nothing pleased her so much,
+however, as papa's bright little shawl. It looked brighter than ever,
+and Letty had folded it and left it on the old chair.
+
+Just then there came a timid rap or two with the old knocker on the
+hall-door. It was early for visitors, and the aunts were both in their
+rooms. Betty went out to see what could be done about so exciting a
+thing, and met quick-footed Letty, who had been close at hand in the
+dining-room.
+
+"'Tis Miss Mary Beck come to call upon you, Miss Betty," said Letty,
+with an air of high festivity, and Betty went quickly downstairs. She
+was brimful of gladness to see Mary Beck, and went straight toward her
+in the shaded parlor to kiss her and tell her so.
+
+Mary Beck was sitting on the edge of a chair, and was dressed as if she
+were going to church, with a pair of tight shiny best gloves on and
+shiny new boots, which hurt her feet if Betty had only known it. She
+wore a hat that looked too small for her head, and had a queer, long,
+waving bird-of-paradise feather in it, and a dress that was much too old
+for her, and of a cold, smooth, gray color, trimmed with a shade of
+satin that neither matched it nor made a contrast. She had grown to be
+even taller than Betty, and she looked uncomfortable, and as if she had
+been forced to come. That was a silly, limp shake of the hand with which
+she returned Betty's warm grasp. Oh dear, it was evidently a dreadful
+thing to go to make a call! It had been an anxious, discouraged
+getting-ready, and Betty thought of the short, red-cheeked, friendly
+little Becky whom she used to play with, and was grieved to the heart.
+But she bravely pushed a chair close to the guest and sat down. She
+could not get over the old feeling of affection.
+
+"I thought you would be over here long ago. I ought to have gone to see
+you. Why, you're more grown up than I am; isn't it too bad?" said Betty,
+feeling afraid that one or the other of them might cry, they were both
+blushing so deeply and the occasion was so solemn.
+
+"Oh, do let's play in the shed-chamber all day to-morrow!"
+
+And then they both laughed as hard as they could, and there was the dear
+old Mary Beck after all, and a tough bit of ice was forever broken.
+
+Betty threw open the parlor blinds, regardless of Serena's feelings
+about flies, and the two friends spent a delightful hour together. The
+call ended in Mary's being urged to go home to take off her best gown
+and put on an every-day one, and away they went afterward for a long
+walk.
+
+"What are the girls doing?" asked Betty, as if she considered herself a
+member already of this branch of the great secret society of girls.
+
+"Oh, nothing; we hardly ever do anything," answered Mary Beck, with a
+surprised and uneasy glance. "It is so slow in Tideshead, everybody
+says."
+
+"I suppose it is slow anywhere if we don't do anything about it,"
+laughed Betty, so good-naturedly that Mary laughed too. "I like to play
+out-of-doors just as well as ever I did, don't you?"
+
+Mary Beck gave a somewhat doubtful answer. She had dreaded this
+ceremonious call. She could not quite understand why Betty Leicester,
+who had traveled abroad and done so many things and had, as people say,
+such unusual advantages, should seem the same as ever, and only wear
+that plain, comfortable-looking little gingham dress.
+
+"When my other big trunk comes there are some presents I brought over
+for you," confessed Betty shyly. "I have had to keep one of them a long
+time because papa has always been saying every year that we were sure to
+come to Tideshead, and then we haven't after all."
+
+"He has been here two or three times," said Mary. "I saw him go by and I
+wanted to run out and ask him about you, but I was afraid to"--
+
+"Afraid of papa? What a funny thing! You never would be if you really
+knew him," exclaimed Betty, with delighted assurance. She laughed
+heartily and stopped to lean against a stone wall, and gave Mary Beck a
+little push which was meant to express a great deal of affection and
+amusement. Then she forgot everything in looking at the beautiful view
+across the farms and the river and toward the great hills and mountains
+beyond.
+
+"I knew you would think it was pretty here," said Mary. "I have always
+thought that when you came back I would bring you here first. I liked to
+call this our tree," she said shyly, looking up into the great oak
+branches. "It seems so strange to be here with you, at last, after all
+the times I have thought about it"--
+
+Betty was touched by this bit of real sentiment. She was thankful from
+that moment that she was going to spend most of the summer in Tideshead.
+Here was the best of good things,--a real friend, who had been waiting
+for her all the time.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+AT BECKY'S HOUSE.
+
+
+WHEN the happy Becky flew in to free herself from her Sunday clothes she
+did not meet either member of her family, but on her return from the
+walk she found her mother grimly getting the supper ready.
+
+"Oh, I have had such a lovely time," cried Becky, brimful of the
+pleasure of Betty's return. "She is just the same as she used to be,
+exactly; only grown like everything. And I saw Miss Barbara Leicester,
+and she was lovely and asked me to stay to tea, and Betty did too, but I
+didn't know whether you would like it."
+
+"I am going to have her come and take tea with us as soon as I can, but
+I don't see how to manage it this week," said Mrs. Beck complainingly.
+"I have so much to do every day that I dread having company. What made
+you put on that spotted old dress? I don't know what she could have
+thought, I'm sure. If you wanted to take off your best one, why didn't
+you put on your satine?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know, mother!" answered Becky fretfully. "Betty had on a
+gingham dress, and she said I couldn't get over the fences in my best
+one, and I didn't think it made any difference."
+
+"Well, no matter," said Mrs. Beck sighing, "they saw you dressed up
+decently at first. I think you girls are too old to climb fences and be
+tomboys, for my part. When I was growing up, young ladies were expected
+to interest themselves in things at home."
+
+The good cheer of the afternoon served Becky in good stead. She was
+already helping her mother with the table, and was sorry in a more
+understanding way than ever before for the sad-looking little woman in
+black, who got so few real pleasures out of life. "Betty Leicester says
+that we can have this one summer more any way before we are really grown
+up," she suggested, and Mrs. Beck smiled and hoped they would enjoy it,
+but they couldn't keep time back do what they might.
+
+"Did she show you anything she brought home, Mary?"
+
+"No, not a single thing; we were out-doors almost all the time after I
+made the call, but she says she has brought me some presents."
+
+"I wonder what they are?" said Mrs. Beck, much pleased. "There's one
+thing about the Leicesters, they are all generous where they take a
+liking. But then, they have got plenty to do with; everybody hasn't. You
+might have stayed to tea, I suppose, if they wanted you, but I wouldn't
+run after them."
+
+"Why mother!" exclaimed honest Becky. "Betty Leicester and I always
+played together; it isn't running after her to expect to be friends just
+the same now. Betty always comes here oftenest; she said she was coming
+right over."
+
+"I want you to show proper pride," said the mistaken mother. It would
+have been so much better to let the two girls go their own unsuspecting
+ways. But poor little Mrs. Beck had suffered many sorrows and
+disappointments, and had not learned yet that such lessons ought to make
+one's life larger instead of smaller.
+
+Mary's eyes were shining with delight in spite of her mother's plaintive
+discouragements, and now as they both turned away from the plain little
+supper-table, she took hold of her hand and held it fast as they went
+out to the kitchen together. They very seldom indulged in any signs of
+affection, but there was a very happy feeling roused by Betty
+Leicester's coming. "Oh good! drop-cakes for tea!" and Mary capered a
+little to show how pleased she was. "I wish I had asked her to come home
+with me, she always used to eat so many of our drop-cakes when she was a
+little girl; don't you remember, mother?"
+
+"Yes; but you mustn't expect her to be the same now," answered Mrs.
+Beck. "She is used to having things very different, and we can't do as
+we could if father had lived."
+
+"Grandpa says nobody has things as nice as you do," said Mary, trying to
+make the sun shine again. "I know Betty will eat more drop-cakes than
+ever, just because she can hold so many more. She'll be glad of that,
+now you see, mother!" and Mrs. Beck gave a faint smile.
+
+That very evening there were quick steps up the yard toward the side
+door, and Betty opened the door and came in to the Becks' sitting-room.
+She stopped a moment on the threshold, it all looked so familiar. Becky
+had grown, as we know; that was the only change, and the old captain sat
+reading his newspaper as usual, with a small lamp held close against it
+in his right hand; Mrs. Beck was sewing, and on the wall hung the
+picture of Daniel Webster and the portraits in watercolors of two of the
+captain's former ships. Betty spoke to Captain Beck with an air of
+intimacy and then went over to Becky's mother, who stood there with a
+pale apprehensive look as if she thought there was no chance of
+anybody's being glad to see _her_. However, Betty kissed her warmly and
+said she was so glad to get back to Tideshead, and then displayed a
+white paper bundle which she had held under her wrap. It looked like
+presents!
+
+"Aunt Barbara had to write some letters for the early mail and Aunt Mary
+was resting, so I thought I would run over for a few minutes," said the
+eager girl. "My big trunk came this afternoon, Becky."
+
+"How is your Aunt Mary to-day?" asked Mrs. Beck ceremoniously, though a
+light crept into her face which may have been a reflection from her
+daughter's broad smile.
+
+"Oh, she is just the same as ever," replied Betty sadly. "I believe she
+isn't sleeping so well lately, but she looks a great deal better than
+when I was a little girl. Aunt Barbara is always so anxious."
+
+"They were surprised, I observed, when you and I came up the street
+together last night; quite a voyage we had," said the captain.
+
+"Some day I mean to go down and come back again in the old packet; can't
+you go too, Becky?" said our friend. "Captain Beck'll be going again,
+won't you, Captain Beck? I didn't look at the river half enough because
+I was in such a hurry to get here."
+
+"You're sunburnt, aren't you?" said Mrs. Beck, looking very friendly.
+
+"I'm always brown in summer," acknowledged Betty frankly. "Hasn't Mary
+grown like everything? I didn't known how tall I must look until I saw
+her. I'm so glad that school is done; I was afraid it wouldn't be."
+
+"She goes to the academy now, you know," said Mrs. Beck. "The term ended
+abruptly because the principal's wife met with affliction and they had
+to go out of town to her old home."
+
+Betty, it must be confessed, had at this point an instinctive
+remembrance of Mrs. Beck's love for dismal tales, so she hastened to
+change the subject of conversation. Mrs. Beck was very kind-hearted when
+any one was ill or in trouble. Betty herself had a grateful memory of
+such devotion when she had a long childish illness once at Aunt
+Barbara's, but Mary Beck's mother never seemed to take half the pleasure
+in cheerful things and in well people who went about their every-day
+affairs. It seemed a good chance now to open the little package of
+presents. There were two pretty Roman cravats, and a carved Swiss box
+with a quantity of French chocolate in it, and a nice cake of violet
+soap, and a pretty ivory pin carved like an edelweiss, like one that
+Betty herself wore; for the captain there was a photograph of Bergen
+harbor in Norway, with all manner of strange vessels at the wharves.
+Then for Mrs. Beck Betty had brought a pretty handkerchief with some
+fine embroidery round the edge. It was a charming little heap of things.
+"I have been getting them at different times and keeping them until I
+came," said Betty.
+
+Mary Beck was delighted, as well she might be, and yet it was very hard
+to express any such feeling. Somehow the awkward feeling with which she
+went to make the call that afternoon was again making her dreadfully
+uncomfortable.
+
+The old captain was friendly and smiling, and Mary and her mother said
+"Thank you," a good many times, but Mrs. Beck took half the pleasure
+away by a sigh and lament that her girl couldn't make any return.
+
+"It's the best return to be so glad to see each other, Becky!" said
+Betty Leicester, suddenly turning to her friend and blushing a good deal
+as they kissed one another, while the old captain gave a satisfied
+_humph_ and turned to his newspaper again.
+
+Mrs. Beck was really much pleased, and yet was overwhelmed with a
+suspicion that Betty thought her ungrateful. She was sorry that if there
+were going to be a handkerchief it had not been one with a black border,
+but after all this was a pretty one and very fine; it would be just
+right for Mary by and by.
+
+The old cat seemed to know the young visitor, and came presently purring
+very loud and rubbing against Betty's gown, and was promptly lifted
+into her lap for a little patting and cuddling before she must run back
+again to the aunts. This cat had been known to Betty as a young kitten,
+and she and Becky had sometimes dressed her with a neat white ruffle
+about her neck to which they added a doll's dress. She was one of the
+limp obliging kittens which make such capital playmates, and the two
+girls laughed a great deal now as they reminded each other of certain
+frolics that had taken place. Once Mrs. Beck had entertained the
+Maternal Meeting in her staid best parlor, and the Busy B's, as the
+captain sometimes called them, had dressed the kitten and encouraged her
+to enter the room at a most serious moment in the proceedings. Even Mrs.
+Beck laughed about it now, though she was very angry at the time. Her
+heart seemed to warm more and more, and by the time our friend had gone
+she was in really good spirits. Becky must keep the cake of soap in her
+upper drawer, she said; nothing gave such a nice clean smell to things.
+It seemed to her it was a strange present, but it was nice to have it,
+and all the things were pretty; it wasn't likely that any of them were
+very expensive.
+
+"Oh mother!" pleaded Becky affectionately; "and then, just think! you
+said last night perhaps she hadn't brought me anything, and it had been
+out of sight out of mind with her!" Mary was truly fond of her friend,
+but she could not help looking at life sometimes from her mother's
+carping point of view. It was good for her to be so pleased and happy as
+she was that evening, and she looked at her new treasures again and
+prudently counted the seventeen little chocolates in their gay papers
+twice over before she treated herself to any. She could keep their
+little cases even after the chocolates were gone.
+
+Mrs. Beck mended and sewed on buttons long after the captain and Mary
+had gone to bed. She could not help feeling happier for Betty
+Leicester's coming. She knew that she had been a little grumpy to the
+child; but Betty had luckily not been discomforted by it, and had even
+thought, as she ran across the street in the dark evening and up the
+long front walk, that Becky's mother was not half so disapproving as she
+used to be.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE GARDEN TEA.
+
+
+THERE was a gnarled old pear-tree of great age and size that grew near
+Betty Leicester's east window. By leaning out a little she could touch
+the nearest bough. Aunt Barbara and Aunt Mary said that it was a most
+beautiful thing to see it in bloom in the spring; and the family cats
+were fond of climbing up and leaping across to the window-sill, while
+there were usually some birds perching in it when the coast was clear of
+pussies.
+
+One day Betty was looking over from Mary Beck's and saw that the east
+window and the pear-tree branch were in plain sight; so the two girls
+invented a system of signals: one white handkerchief meant _come over_,
+and two meant _no_, but a single one in answer was for _yes_. A yellow
+handkerchief on the bough proposed a walk; and so the code went on, and
+was found capable of imparting much secret information. Sometimes the
+exchange of these signals took a far longer time than it did to run
+across from house to house, and at any rate in the first fortnight Mary
+and Betty spent the greater part of their waking hours together. Still
+the signal service, as they proudly called it, was of great use.
+
+One morning, when Mary had been summoned, Betty came rushing to meet
+her.
+
+"Aunt Barbara is going to let me have a tea-party. What do you think of
+that?" she cried.
+
+Mary Beck looked pleased, and then a doubting look crept over her face.
+
+"I don't know any of the boys and girls very well except you," Betty
+explained, "and Aunt Barbara likes the idea of having them come. Aunt
+Mary thinks that she can't come down, for the excitement would be too
+much for her, but I am going to tease her again as soon as I have time.
+It is to be a summer-house tea at six o'clock; it is lovely in the
+garden then. Just as soon as I have helped Serena a little longer, you
+and I will go to invite everybody. Serena is letting me beat eggs."
+
+It was a great astonishment that Betty should take the serious occasion
+so lightly. Mary Beck would have planned it at least a week beforehand,
+and have worried and worked and been in despair; but here was Betty as
+gay as possible, and as for Aunt Barbara and Serena and Letty, they were
+gay too. It was entirely mysterious.
+
+"I have sent word by Jonathan to the Picknell girls; he had an errand on
+that road. They looked so old and scared in church last Sunday that I
+kept thinking that they ought to have a good time. They don't come in to
+the village much, do they?" inquired Betty with great interest.
+
+"Hardly ever, except Sundays," answered Mary Beck. "They turn red if you
+only look at them, but they are always talking together when they go by.
+One of them can draw beautifully. Oh, of course I go to school with
+them, but I don't know them very well."
+
+"I hope they'll come, don't you?" said Betty, whisking away at the eggs.
+"I don't know when I've ever been where I could have a little party. I
+can have two or three girls to luncheon or tea almost any time,
+especially in London, but that's different. Who else now, Becky? Let's
+see if we choose the same ones."
+
+"Mary and Julia Picknell, and Mary and Ellen Grant, and Lizzie French,
+and George Max, and Frank Crane, and my cousin Jim Beck,--Dan's too
+little. They would be eight, and you and I make ten--oh, that's too
+many!"
+
+"Dear me, no!" said Betty lightly. "I thought of the Fosters, too"--
+
+"We don't have much to do with the Fosters," said Mary Beck. "I don't
+see why that Nelly Foster started up and came to see you. I never go
+inside her house now. Everybody despises her father"--
+
+"I think that Nelly is a dear-looking girl," insisted Betty. "I like her
+ever so much."
+
+"They acted so stuck-up after Mr. Foster was put in jail," Mary went on.
+"People pitied them at first and were carrying about a subscription-paper,
+but Mrs. Foster wouldn't take anything, and said that they were going to
+support themselves. People don't like Mrs. Foster very well."
+
+"Aunt Barbara respects her very much. She says that few women would
+show the courage she has shown. Perhaps she hasn't a nice way of
+speaking, but Aunt Barbara said that I must ask Harry and Nelly, when we
+were talking about to-night." Betty could not help a tone of triumph;
+she and Becky had fought a little about the Fosters before this.
+
+"Harry is just like a wild Indian," said Mary Beck; "he goes fishing and
+trapping almost all the time. He won't know what to do at a party. I
+believe he makes ever so much money with his fish, and pays bills with
+it." Becky relented a little now. "Oh, dear, I haven't anything nice
+enough to wear," she added suddenly. "We never have parties in
+Tideshead, except at the vestry in the winter; and they're so poky."
+
+"Oh, wear anything; it's going to be hot, that's all," said industrious
+Betty, in her business-like checked apron; and it now first dawned upon
+Becky's honest mind that it was not worth while to make one's self
+utterly miserable about one's clothes.
+
+The two girls went scurrying away like squirrels presently to invite the
+guests. Nelly Foster looked delighted at the thought of such a
+pleasure.
+
+"But I don't know what Harry will say," she added, doubtfully.
+
+"Please ask him to be sure to come," urged Betty. "I should be so
+disappointed, and Aunt Barbara asked me to say that she depended upon
+him, for she knows him better than she does almost any of the young
+people." Nelly looked radiant at this, but Mary Beck was much offended.
+"I go to your Aunt Barbara's oftener than anybody," she said jealously,
+as they came away.
+
+"She asked me to say that, and I did," maintained Betty. "Don't be
+cross, Becky, it's going to be such a jolly tea-party. Why, here's
+Jonathan back again already. Oh, good! the Picknells are happy to come."
+
+The rest of the guests were quickly made sure of, and Betty and
+reluctant Mary went back to the house. It made Betty a little
+disheartened to find that her friend took every proposition on the wrong
+side; she seemed to think most things about a tea-party were impossible,
+and that all were difficult, and she saw lions in the way at every turn.
+It struck Betty, who was used to taking social events easily, that
+there was no pleasuring at all in the old village, though people were
+always saying how gay and delightful it _used_ to be and how many guests
+_used_ to come to town in the summer.
+
+The old Leicester garden was a lovely place on a summer evening. Aunt
+Barbara had been surprised when Betty insisted that she wished to have
+supper there instead of in the dining-room; but Betty had known too many
+out-of-door feasts in foreign countries not to remember how charming
+they were and how small any dining-room seems in summer by contrast. And
+after a few minutes' thought, Aunt Barbara, too, who had been in France
+long before, asked Serena and Letty to spread the table under the large
+cherry-tree near the arbor; and there it stood presently, with its white
+cloth, and pink roses in two china bowls, all ready for the sandwiches
+and bread and butter and strawberries and sponge-cake, and chocolate to
+drink out of the prettiest cups in Tideshead. It was all simple and gay
+and charming, the little feast; and full of grievous self-consciousness
+as the shyest guest might have been when first met by Betty at the
+doorstep, the pleasure of the party itself proved most contagious, and
+all fears were forgotten. Everybody met on common ground for once,
+without any thought of self. It came with surprise to more than one
+girl's mind that a party was really so little trouble. It was such a
+pity that somebody did not have one every week.
+
+Aunt Barbara was very good to Harry Foster, who seemed at first much
+older and soberer than the rest; but Betty demanded his services when
+she was going to pass the sandwiches again, and Letty had gone to the
+house for another pot of chocolate. "I will take the bread and butter;
+won't you please pass these?" she said. And away they went to the rest
+of the company, who were scattered along the arbor benches by twos and
+threes.
+
+"I saw you in your boat when I first came up the river," Betty found
+time to say. "I didn't know who you were then, though I was sure you
+were one of the boys whom I used to play with. Some time when Nelly is
+going down couldn't you take me too? I can row."
+
+"Nelly would go if you would. I never thought to ask her. I always wish
+there were somebody else to see how pleasant it is"--and then a voice
+interrupted to ask what Harry was catching now.
+
+"Bass," said Harry, with brightening face. "I do so well that I am
+sending them down to Riverport every day that the packet goes, and I
+wish that I had somebody to help me. You don't know what a rich old
+river it is!"
+
+"Why, if here isn't Aunt Mary!" cried Betty. Sure enough, the eager
+voices and the laughter had attracted another guest. And Aunt Barbara
+sprang up joyfully and called for a shawl and footstool from the house;
+but Betty didn't wait for them, and brought Aunt Mary to the arbor
+bench. Nobody knew when the poor lady had been in her own garden before,
+but here she was at last, and had her supper with the rest. The good
+doctor would have been delighted enough if he had seen the sight.
+
+Nothing had ever tasted so good as that out-of-door supper. The white
+June moon came up, and its bright light made the day longer; and when
+everybody had eaten a last piece of sponge-cake, and the heap of
+strawberries on a great round India dish had been leveled, what should
+be heard but sounds of a violin. Betty had discovered that Seth
+Pond,--the clumsy, good-natured Seth of all people!--had, as he said,
+"ears for music," and had taught himself to play.
+
+So they had a country-dance on the green, girls and boys and Aunt
+Barbara, who had been a famous dancer in her youth; and those who didn't
+know the steps of "Money Musk" and the Virginia reel were put in the
+middle of the line, and had plenty of time to learn before their turns
+came. Afterward Seth played "Bonny Doon," and "Nelly was a Lady," and
+"Johnny Comes Marching Home," and "Annie Laurie," and half a dozen other
+songs, and everybody sang, but, to Betty's delight, Mary Beck's voice
+led all the rest.
+
+The moon was high in the sky when the guests went away. It seemed like a
+new world to some young folks who were there, and everybody was
+surprised because everybody else looked so pretty and was so
+surprisingly gay. Yet, here it was, the same old Tideshead after all!
+
+"Aunt Barbara," said Betty, as that aunt sat on the side of Betty's
+four-post bed,--"Aunt Barbara, don't say good-night just yet. I must
+talk about one or two things before I forget them in the morning. Mary
+Picknell asked me ever so many questions about some of the pictures, but
+she knows more about them than I do, and I thought I would ask her to
+come some day so that you could tell her everything. She ought to be an
+artist. Didn't you see how she kept looking at the pictures? And then
+Harry Foster knows a lovely place down the river for a picnic, and can
+borrow boats enough beside his own to take us all there, only it's a
+secret yet. Harry said that it was a beautiful point of land, with large
+trees, and that there was a lane that came across the fields from the
+road, so that you could be driven down to meet us, if you disliked the
+boats."
+
+"I am very fond of going on the water," said Aunt Barbara, with great
+spirit. "I knew that point, and those oak-trees, long before either of
+you were born. It was very polite of Harry to think of my coming with
+the young folks. Yes, we'll think about the picnic, certainly, but you
+must go to sleep now, Betty."
+
+"Aunt Barbara must have been such a nice girl," thinks Betty, as the
+door shuts. "And if we go, Harry must take her in his boat. It is
+strange that Mary Beck should not like the Fosters, just because their
+father was a scamp."
+
+But the room was still and dark, and sleepiness got the better of
+Betty's thoughts that night.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+THE SIN BOOKS.
+
+
+ONE morning Betty was hurrying down Tideshead street to the post-office,
+and happened to meet the minister's girls and Lizzie French, who were
+great friends with each other. They seemed to be unusually confidential
+and interested about something.
+
+"We've got a secret club and we're going to let you belong," said Lizzie
+French. "Where can we go to tell you about it, and make you take the
+oath?"
+
+"Come home with me just as soon as I post this letter," responded Betty
+with great pleasure. "Do you think my front steps would be a good
+place?"
+
+"It would be too hot; beside, we don't want Mary Beck to see us,"
+objected Ellen Grant, who was the most pale and quiet of the two
+sisters. They were both pleasant, persistent, mild-faced girls, who
+never seemed tired or confused, and never liked to change their minds
+or to go out of their own way. Usually all the other girls liked to do
+as they said, and they were accordingly very much pleased with Betty,
+apparently because she hardly ever agreed with them.
+
+"Let's go to walk, then," said Betty.
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do," Lizzie Grant said in a business-like
+tone. "Let's go down the old road a little way, toward the river, and
+sit under the black cherry-tree on the stone wall; you know how cool it
+is there in the morning? I can't stay but a little while any way. I am
+going to help mother."
+
+Nobody objected and away they went two by two. Evidently there was
+serious business on hand, which could by no means be told lightly or
+without some regard to the surroundings.
+
+"Now what is it?" demanded Betty, when they had seated themselves under
+the old black cherry-tree; but neither of the girls took it upon her to
+speak first. "I promise never, never to tell."
+
+Mary Grant took a thin, square little book out of her pocket, half of a
+tiny account book of the plainest sort, and held it up to Betty so that
+she could see the letters S. B. C. on the pale brown pasteboard cover.
+It certainly looked very interesting and mysterious. "We thought that we
+would admit another member," said Mary; "but it is a very difficult
+thing to belong, and you must hold up your right hand and promise on
+your word of honor that you will never speak of it to any girl in
+Tideshead."
+
+"I may have to speak of it to papa. I always tell papa if I am not quite
+certain about things. He said a great while ago that it was the safest
+way. I mean I am on my honor about it, that's all. He never asks me."
+Betty's cheeks grew red as she spoke, but she did speak bravely, and the
+girls were more impressed than ever by the seriousness of the club.
+
+"I don't believe that she will have to tell him, do you, girls?" Lizzie
+French insisted. "Any way we want you to belong, Betty. You be the one
+to tell her, Mary."
+
+"It is a society to help us not to say things about people," said Mary
+Grant solemnly, and Betty Leicester gave a little sigh of relief. She
+thought that would be a most worthy object, though somewhat poky.
+
+"We have made a league that we will try to break ourselves of speaking
+harshly and making fun of people, and of not standing up for them when
+others talk scandal. There, you see this book is ruled into little
+squares for the days of the week, a month on a page, and when we get
+through a day without saying anything against anybody we can put a nice
+little cross in, but when we have broken the pledge we must mark it with
+a cipher, and then when we are just horrid and keep on being cross, we
+must black the day all over. Then once a week we have to show the books
+to each other and make our confessions."
+
+"Wouldn't it be splendid, if we could have a whole week of good marks,
+to wear a little badge or something?" proposed Lizzie French.
+
+"Oh Lizzie! we never can, it will be so hard to get through one single
+day," Betty answered quickly. "I should just love to belong, though; I
+am always saying ugly things and being sorry. What does S. B. C. mean?
+How did you ever think of it?"
+
+"The Sin Book Club," Ellen Grant explained. "Mary and I heard of one
+that our cousin belonged to at boarding-school. She said that it took
+weeks and weeks for some of the members to make one good mark, but after
+you get into the habit of it, you find it quite easy. I will let you
+take my book to make yours by, if you will let me have it back to-night.
+I bought a little book for Mary and me that was only three cents, and
+cut it in two; and Lizzie hasn't got hers yet, so you can buy one
+together and go halves."
+
+"I'd like to know who will pay the two cents," laughed Betty. "I will,
+and then you can give me half a one-cent lead pencil to make change.
+Papa always has such a joke about a man in one of Mr. Lowell's poems who
+used to change a board nail for a shingle nail so as to make the weight
+come right."
+
+"No, you give me the pencil," said Lizzie, "I lost mine yesterday," and
+the new members became unduly frivolous.
+
+"Now we mustn't laugh, girls, because it is a solemn moment," said Ellen
+Grant, though she did not succeed in looking very sober herself.
+
+Betty was looking at Mary Grant's sin book, which had kept the record
+of two days, both with bad marks. If Mary had failed, what could
+impulsive Betty hope for? it was one of her worst temptations to make
+fun or to find petty faults in people. She did not know what her friends
+would think of her as time went on, but she meant to try very hard.
+
+"Just think how lovely it will be if we learn never to say anything
+against any one! Perhaps we ought to make it a big club instead of a
+little one," but one of the girls said that people would laugh and would
+be watching them.
+
+"Oughtn't we to ask Becky to belong?" It was difficult for Betty to ask
+this question, but she feared that her dear friend and neighbor's sharp
+eyes would detect the secret alliance, and Mary Beck was very hard to
+console when she was once roused into displeasure. Somehow Betty liked
+the idea of belonging to a club that Mary Beck did not know about. She
+was a little ashamed of this feeling, but there it was! The Grants and
+Lizzie refused to have Becky join, at any rate just now; and so Betty
+said no more. Perhaps it would be just as well at first, and she would
+be as careful as possible to gain good marks for her friend's sake as
+well as her own. Then the four members of the S. B. C. came back
+together into the village, and if the black cherry-tree heard their
+secret it never told. Whom should they meet as they turned the corner
+into the main street but Mary Beck herself, and Betty for one moment
+felt guilty of great disloyalty.
+
+"We have been to walk a little way; I met the girls as I was going to
+the post-office, and we just went down the old road and sat under the
+cherry-tree," she hastened to explain, but Becky was in a most friendly
+mood and joined them with no suspicion of having been left out of any
+pleasure. Betty felt a secret joy in belonging to the club while Becky
+did not, and yet she was sorry all the time for Becky, who had a great
+pride in being at the front when anything important was going on. Becky
+liked to keep Betty Leicester to herself, and indeed the two girls were
+growing more and more fond of each other, though a touch of jealousy in
+one and a spirit of independence and freedom in the other sometimes blew
+clouds over their sunny spring sky. Mary Beck had a way of seeing how
+people treated her and rating them accordingly--a silly
+self-compassionate way of saying that one was good to her, and a surly
+suspicion of another who did not pay her an expected attention, and
+these traits offended Betty Leicester, who was not given to putting
+either herself or other people under a microscope. There was nothing
+morbid about Betty and no sentimentality in her way of looking at
+herself. Becky's sensitiveness and prejudice were sometimes very
+tiresome, but they made nobody half so miserable as they did Becky
+herself; the talk she had always heard at home was very narrowing; a
+good deal of fruitless talk about small neighborhood affairs went on
+continually and had nothing to do with the real interests of life. It
+was a house where there was very little to show for the time that was
+spent. Mary Beck and her mother let many chances for their own
+usefulness and pleasure slip by, while they said mournfully that
+everything would have been so different if Mary's father had lived.
+Betty Leicester was taught to do the things that ought to be done.
+
+The Sin Book Club continued to be a profound secret, and was considered
+of great value. Some days passed without a second meeting of the
+members for reports, but they gave each other significant looks and
+tried very hard to gain the little crosses that were to mark a good day.
+Betty was in despair when evening after evening she had to put down a
+cipher, and it was a great humiliation to find how often she yielded to
+a temptation to say funny things about people. To be sure old Mrs. Max
+was an ugly old gossip, but Betty need not have confided this opinion to
+Serena and Letty as they happened to look out of the kitchen windows, to
+see Mrs. Max go by. Betty had succeeded in being blameless until past
+six o'clock that day, and it was the fifth day of trial; lost now, and
+black-marked like those that had gone before. She went back to the
+garden and sat down in the summer-house much dejected. The light that
+came through the grape and clematis leaves was dim and tinted with
+green; it was a little damp there too, and quite like a sorrowful little
+hermitage. It is very hard work trying to cure a fault. Betty did so
+like to make people laugh, and she was always seeing what funny things
+people looked like; and altogether life was much soberer if one could no
+longer say whatever came into one's head. She was sure that all funny
+personalities did not make people think the less of their fellows, but
+it seemed as if most, and the very funniest, did. Our friend dreaded the
+inspection of her sin book, but when the Grants and Lizzie French showed
+theirs too in solemn conclave there was only one good mark for the whole
+four. This was Ellen Grant's, who talked much less than either of the
+others and so may have found that silence cost less effort.
+
+"Even if we never succeed it will make us more careful," Lizzie French
+said, trying to keep up good courage.
+
+"I keep wishing that Mary Beck belonged;" urged Betty loyally, but the
+others were resolute and insisted, nobody could tell exactly why, that
+Becky would spoil it all.
+
+Betty was valiant enough in case of open war, but she hated heartily--as
+who does not hate?--a chilling atmosphere of disapproval, in which no
+good-fellowship can flourish. Of course the club soon betrayed its
+common interest, and because Mary Beck was unobservant for the first
+week or two, Betty took little pains to conceal the fact that she and
+the Grants had a new interest in common. Then one day Becky did not
+come over, though the white handkerchief was displayed betimes; and
+when, as soon as possible, Betty hurried over to see what the matter
+was, Becky showed unmistakable signs of briefness and grumpiness of
+speech, and declared that she was busy at home, and evidently did not
+care for the news that an old AEolian harp had been discovered on a high
+upper shelf and carried to one of the dormer windows, where it was then
+wailing. The plaintive strains of it would have suited Becky's spirit
+and temper of mind excellently. It did not occur to Betty until she was
+going home, disappointed, that the club was beginning to make trouble;
+then her own good temper was spoiled for that day, and she was angry
+with Becky for thinking that she had no right to be intimate with
+anybody else. So serious a disagreement had never parted them before.
+Betty Leicester assured herself that Mary knew she was fond of her and
+liked to be with her best, and that ought to be enough. The AEolian harp
+was quite forgotten.
+
+Later in the day Betty happened to look across the street as she was
+shutting the blinds in the upper hall, and saw Mary Beck come proudly
+down her short front walk with her best hat on and go stiffly away
+without a look across. The sight made her feel misunderstood and lonely;
+and one minute later she was just going to shout to Becky when she
+remembered that it was a far cry and would wake the aunts from their
+afternoon naps. Then she ran lightly down the wide staircase and all the
+way to the gate and called as loud as she could, "Mary! Mary!" but
+either Becky was too far away or would not turn her proud head. There
+were some other persons in the street, who looked with surprise and
+interest to see where such an eager shout came from, but Betty Leicester
+had turned toward the house again with a heartful of rage and sorrow. It
+seemed to be the sudden and unlooked-for end of the summer's pleasure.
+When Aunt Barbara waked she asked Betty, being somewhat surprised to
+find her in the house alone, to go to the other end of the village to do
+an errand.
+
+It was good to have something to do beside growing crosser and crosser,
+and Betty gladly hurried away. She hoped that she should meet Becky,
+and yet she did not mean to make up too easily, and when she saw Mrs.
+Beck watching her out of a front window she felt certain that Mrs. Beck
+was cross too. "Let them get pleased again!" grumbled Miss Betty
+Leicester, and Mary Beck herself had not borne a more forbidding
+expression. She lingered a moment at Nelly Foster's gate, hoping to find
+Nelly free, but the noise of the sewing-machine was plainly to be heard,
+and Nelly said wistfully that she could not go out until after tea; then
+she would come down to the house for a little while if Betty would like
+it, and Betty gladly said yes. Her heart was shaken as she walked on
+alone and came to the oak-tree on the high ridge where Becky had taken
+her to see the view and told her that she always called it their tree,
+in that first afternoon's walk. What could make poor old Becky so
+untrustful and unkind? Perhaps after all everything would be right when
+they met again; it might be one of Becky's freaks, only a little worse
+than usual. Alas, Mary with Julia Picknell, who happened to be in the
+village that afternoon, came out of one of the stores as the returning
+Betty was passing, and Becky looked another way and pushed by, though
+Betty had spoken pleasantly and tried to stop her.
+
+"I don't care one bit; you're rude and hateful, Mary Beck!" said Betty
+hotly, at which Julia, mild little friend that she was, looked
+frightened and amazed. She had thought many times how lovely it must be
+to live in town and have friendships of a close and intimate kind with
+the girls. She pitied Betty Leicester, who looked as if she could hardly
+keep from crying; but the grievous Becky was more grumpy than before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Serena was walking in the side yard in her nice plain afternoon dress,
+and somehow Betty felt more like seeking comfort from her than from Aunt
+Barbara, and was glad to go in at the little gate and join her kind old
+friend.
+
+"What's fell upon _you_?" asked Serena, with sincere compassion.
+
+"Mary Beck's just as disagreeable as she can be to-day," responded
+Betty, regardless of her sin book. "Serena! I just hate her, and I hate
+that horrid best hat of hers with the feather in it."
+
+"Oh, no you don't, sweetin's;" Serena protested peacefully. "You'll be
+keepin' company same's ever to-morrow. Now I think of 't, you've been
+off a good deal with the Grants and that French girl" (not a favorite of
+Serena's); "I wonder if that's all?"
+
+"Yes--no"--wavered Betty. "Don't you tell anybody, but I do belong to a
+little club, but Becky doesn't really understand, for we've kept it very
+secret indeed."
+
+"I want to know," exclaimed Serena.
+
+"Yes, and it's for such a good object. I'll tell you some time, perhaps,
+but we want to cure ourselves of a fault." It seemed no harm to tell
+good old Serena; the compact had only been that none of the other girls
+should know. "We keep a little book, and we can have a good mark at
+night if we haven't said anything against anybody, but to-day I shall
+have such a black one! It makes us careful how we speak; truly, Serena;
+but Becky doesn't know, and she's making me feel so badly just because
+she suspects something."
+
+"The tongue is an evil member," said Serena. "I don't know but doing
+things is full as bad as sayin' 'em, though. I s'pose you ain't kind of
+flaunted it a little speck that you had some secret amon'st you, to
+spite Mary?"
+
+"She was stuffy about it and she had no right to be," Betty said this at
+first hastily, and then added: "I did wish yesterday that she would ask
+to belong and find that for once she couldn't."
+
+Serena took Betty's light hand in her own work-worn one and held it
+fast. "Le's come and set on the doorstep a spell," she said; "I want to
+tell you something about me an' a girl I thought everything of when we
+was young.
+
+"She was real pretty, and we went together and had our young men--not
+serious, only kind o' going together; an' Cynthy an' me we had a
+misunderstandin' o' one another and we didn't speak for much's a
+fortnight an' said spiteful things. I was here same's I be now, an' your
+Aunt Barbara, she was young too, an' the old lady, Madam Leicester, she
+was alive and they all was inquirin' what had come over me. I used to
+have a pretty voice then, and I wouldn't go to singin'-school or evenin'
+meetin' nor nothin'. I set out to leave here an' my good kind home an'
+go off to Lowell working in the mill, 't was when so many did, and girls
+liked it. Cynthy lived to the minister's folks. I've never got over it
+how ugly spoken I was about that poor girl, and she used to look kind of
+beseechin' at me the two or three times we met, as if she'd make up if I
+would, but I wouldn't. An' don't you think, one night her brother come
+after her to take her home, up Great Hill way, and the horse got scared
+and threw 'em out on the ice; an' when they picked Cynthy up she was
+just breathin' an' that was all, an' never spoke nor knew nothin' again.
+'T was at the foot o' that hill just this side o' the Picknells. It give
+me a fit o' sickness; it did so," said Serena mournfully. "I can't bear
+to think about her never. Oh, she was one of the prettiest girls you
+ever saw. I try to go every summer an' lay a bunch o' pink roses on to
+her grave; she used to like 'em. I know 't was a fault o' youth an'
+hastiness, but I ain't never forgot it all my long life. I tell you with
+a reason. Folks says it takes two to make a quarrel but only one to end
+it. Now you bear that in your mind."
+
+Betty glanced at old Serena, and saw two great tears slowly running down
+her faded cheek. She was much moved by the sad little story, and
+Serena's pretty friend and the pink roses. She wondered what the quarrel
+had been about, but she did not like to ask, and as Serena still held
+one hand she put the other over it, while Serena took the corner of her
+afternoon apron to wipe away the tears.
+
+"It's very hard to be good, isn't it, Serena dear?" asked Betty.
+
+"It's master hard, sweetin's," answered Serena gravely,--"master hard;
+but it can be done with help." They sat there on the shady doorstep for
+some minutes without speaking. A robin was chirping loud, as if for
+rain, high in one of the elms overhead, and the sun was getting low.
+Presently Serena was mindful of her evening duties and rose to go in,
+but not before Betty had put both arms round her and kissed her.
+
+"There, there! somebody'll see you," protested the kind soul, but her
+face shone with joy. "Which d' you want for your supper, shortcakes or
+some o' them crispy rye ones?" she asked, trying to be very
+matter-of-fact. As for Betty, she turned and went down the yard and out
+of the carriage gate and straight across the wide street. She opened the
+Becks' front door and saw Becky at the end of the entry trying to escape
+to the garden.
+
+"Don't let's be grumpy," she said in a friendly tone, "I've come over to
+make up."
+
+Becky tried to preserve a stern expression, but somehow there was a
+warmth at her heart which suddenly came to the surface in a smile and
+the two girls were friends again. That night Betty put down a black
+mark, but not without feeling that the day had ended well in spite of
+its dark shadows.
+
+"I don't believe that we ought to keep the sin books secret," she told
+the members of the club one afternoon when the second week's trial was
+over and there had been four or five good days for encouragement. "I
+don't wish everybody to know, but now that we find how much good they do
+us, we ought to let somebody else try; only Becky and the Picknells and
+Nelly Foster."
+
+But there was no expression of approval.
+
+"Then I'm going to do this: not tell them about this club, but behave as
+if it was something new and start another club. I could belong to two
+as well as one, you know."
+
+"I wouldn't be such a copy-cat," said Lizzie French quickly. "It's _our_
+secret; we shall be provoked that we ever asked you," and with this
+verdict Betty was forced to be contented. She felt as if she had taken
+most inflexible vows, but there was a pleasing excitement in such dark
+mystery. The girls had to employ much stratagem in order to have their
+weekly meetings unsuspected, for Betty was determined not to make any
+more trouble among her friends. When she was first in Tideshead she
+often felt more enlightened than her neighbors, as if she had been
+beyond those bounds and experiences of every-day life known to the other
+girls, but she soon discovered herself to be single-handed and weak
+before their force of habit and prejudice. With all their friendliness
+and affection for Betty Leicester they held their own with great
+decision, and sometimes she found herself nothing but a despised
+minority. This was very good for her, especially when, as it sometimes
+happened, she was quite in the wrong, while if she were right she became
+more sure of it and was able to make her reasons clear.
+
+There were several solemn evening meetings of the Sin Book Club after
+this; the favorite place of assemblage was a shady corner of Lizzie
+French's damp garden, where the records were sorrowfully inspected by
+the fleeting light of burnt matches, and gratified crowds of mosquitoes
+forced the sessions to be extremely brief. Whether it was that new
+interests took the place of the club, or whether the members thought
+best to keep their trials to themselves, no one can say, but by the
+middle of August the regular meetings had ceased. Yet sometimes the
+little books came accidentally out of pocket with a member's
+handkerchief, and were not without a good and lasting effect upon four
+quick young tongues; perhaps this will be seen as the story goes on.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+A CHAPTER OF LETTERS.
+
+
+THE summer days flew by. Some letters came from Mr. Leicester on his
+rapid journey northward, and Betty said once that it seemed months since
+she left England instead of a few weeks, everybody was so friendly and
+pleasant. Tideshead was most delightful to a girl who had been used to
+seeing strange places and to knowing nobody but papa at first, and only
+getting acquainted by degrees with the lodgings people and the shops,
+and perhaps with some new or old friends of papa's who lived out of the
+town. Once or twice she had stayed for many weeks in rough places in the
+north of Scotland, going from village to village and finding many queer
+people, and sometimes being a little lonely when her father was away on
+his scientific quests. Mr. Leicester insisted that Betty learned more
+than she would from books in seeing the country and the people, and
+Betty herself liked it much better than if she had been kept steadily at
+her lessons. The most doleful time that she could remember was once when
+papa had gone to the south of Italy late in spring and had left her at a
+French convent school until his return. However, there were delightful
+things to remember, especially about some of the good sisters whom Betty
+learned to love dearly, and it may be imagined how brimful of stories
+she was, after all these queer and pleasant experiences, and how short
+she made the evenings to Aunt Barbara and Aunt Mary by recounting them.
+It was no use for the ladies to worry any more about Betty's being
+spoiled by such an erratic course of education, as they often used to
+worry while she was away. They had blamed Betty's father for letting her
+go about with him so much, but there did not seem to be any great harm
+wrought after all. She knew a great many things that she never would
+have known if she had stayed at school. Still, she had a great many
+things to learn, and the summer in Tideshead would help to teach her
+those. She was really a home-loving girl, our Betty Leicester, and the
+best part of any new town was always the familiar homelike place that
+she and papa at once made in it with their "kits," as Betty called their
+traveling array of books and a few little pictures, and papa's special
+kits and collections of the time being. Aunt Barbara could never know
+upon how many different rooms her little framed photograph had looked.
+She had grown older since it was taken, but when she said so Betty
+insisted that it was a picture of herself and would always look exactly
+like her. Betty had grown so attached to it that it was still displayed
+on the dressing-table of the east bedroom, even though the original was
+hourly to be seen.
+
+In this summer quiet of the old town it seemed impossible that papa
+should not come hurrying home, as he used in their long London winters,
+to demand an instant start for some distant place. When the traveling
+kit was first bestowed in the lower drawer of one of the deep bureaus,
+Betty felt as if it might have to come out again next day, but there it
+stayed, and was abandoned to neglect unless its owner needed the tumbler
+in its stiff leather box for a picnic, or thought of a particular spool
+that might be found in the traveling work-bag. But with all the quiet
+and security of her surroundings, sometimes her thoughts followed papa
+most wistfully, or she wondered what her friends were doing on the other
+side of the sea. It was very queer to be obliged to talk about entirely
+new and different things, and Tideshead affairs alone, and not to have
+anybody near who knew the same every-day life that had stopped when she
+came to Tideshead, and so letters were most welcome. Indeed, they made a
+great part of the summer's pleasure. Suppose we read a handful as if we
+had picked them from Betty's pocket:--
+
+                                       INTERLAKEN, _July 2._
+
+          MY DEAR BETTY,--It was very good of you to write
+          me so soon. You would be sure that I was eager to
+          hear from you, and to know whether you had a good
+          voyage and found yourself contented in Tideshead.
+          I am sure that your grandaunts are even more glad
+          to have you than I was sorry to let you go. But we
+          must have a summer here together one of these
+          days; you would be sure to like Interlaken. It
+          seems to me pleasanter and quainter than ever;
+          that is, if one takes the trouble to step a little
+          one side of the torrent of tourists. Our rooms in
+          the old _pension_ are well lighted and aired, and
+          two of my windows give on the valley toward the
+          Jungfrau and the high green mountain slopes. Every
+          morning since we have been here I have looked out
+          to see a fresh dazzling whiteness of new snow that
+          has covered the Jungfrau in the night, and we
+          always say with a sigh every evening, as we look
+          up out of the shadowy valley and see the high peak
+          still flushed with red sunset light, that such
+          clear weather cannot possibly last another day.
+          There are some old Swiss chalets across the green,
+          and we hear pleasant sounds of every-day life now
+          and then; last night there was a festival of some
+          sort, and the young people sang very loud and very
+          late, jodeling famously and as if breath never
+          failed them. I suppose that the girls have already
+          written to you, and that you will have two full
+          descriptions of our scramble up to one of the
+          highest chalets which I can see now as I look up
+          from my writing-table, like a toy from a Nuernberg
+          box with a tiny patch of greenest grass beside it
+          and two or three tufts of trees. In truth it is a
+          good-sized, very old house, and the green square
+          is a large field. It is so steep that I wonder all
+          the small children have not rolled out of the door
+          and down to the valley one after the other, which
+          is indeed a foolish remark to have made.
+
+          I take great pleasure in my early morning walks,
+          in which you have so often kept me company, dear
+          child. I meet the little peasants coming down from
+          the hillsides to eight o'clock school in their
+          quaint long frocks like little old fairies, they
+          look so wise and sedate. Often I go to the village
+          of Unterseen, just beyond the great modern hotels,
+          but looking as if it belonged to another century
+          than ours. We have some friends, artists, who have
+          lodgings in one of the old houses, and when I go
+          to see them I envy them heartily. Here it is very
+          comfortable, but some of the people at _table
+          d'hote_ are very tiresome to see, noisy strangers,
+          who eat their dinners in most unpleasant fashion;
+          but I should not forget two delightful German
+          ladies from Hanover, who are taking their first
+          journey after many years, and are most simple and
+          enviable in their deep enjoyment of the Kursaal
+          and other pleasures easily to be had. But I must
+          not write too long about familiar pictures of
+          travel. I will not even tell you our enthusiastic
+          plan for a long journey afoot which will take nine
+          days even with the best of weather. Ada and Bessie
+          will be sure to keep a journal for your benefit
+          and their own. Are you really well, my dear Betty,
+          and busy, and do you find yourself making new
+          friends with your old friends and playmates? It
+          goes without saying that you are missing your
+          papa, but before one knows we shall all be at home
+          in London, as hurried and surprised as ever with
+          the interesting people and events that pass by.
+          Mr. Duncan is to join us for the walking tour, and
+          has planned at least one daring ascent with the
+          Alpine Club. I came upon his terrible shoes this
+          morning in one of his boxes and they made me quite
+          gloomy. Pray give my best regards to Miss
+          Leicester, and Miss Mary Leicester; they seem very
+          dear friends to me already, and when I come to
+          America I shall be seeing old friends for the
+          first time, which is always charming. I leave the
+          girls to write their own words to you, but
+          Standish desires her duty to Miss Betty, and says
+          that her winter coat is to be new-lined, if she
+          would kindly bear it in mind; the silk is badly
+          frayed, if Standish may say so! I do not think
+          from what I know of the American climate that you
+          will be needing it yet, but dear old Standish is
+          very thoughtful of all her charges. We had only a
+          flying note from your papa, written on his way
+          north, and shall be glad when you can send us news
+          of him. God bless you, my dear child, and make you
+          a blessing! I hope that you will do good and get
+          good in this quiet summer. Write to me often; I
+          feel as if you were almost my own girl. Yours most
+          tenderly,
+
+                                                MARY DUNCAN.
+
+
+From papa, these:--
+
+          DEAREST BETTY,--This morning it is a wild country
+          all along the way, untamed and unhumanized for the
+          most part, and we go flying along through dark
+          forests and forlorn burnt lands from tiny station
+          to station. I am getting a good bit of writing
+          done with the only decent stylographic pen I ever
+          saw. I thought I had brought plenty of pencils,
+          but they were not in my small portmanteau, and
+          after going to the baggage-car and putting
+          everybody to great trouble to get out my large
+          one, they were not there either. Can any one
+          explain? I found the dear small copy of Florio's
+          "Montaigne" which you must have tucked in at the
+          last moment. I like to have it with me more than I
+          can say. You must have bought it that last morning
+          when I had to leave you to go to Cambridge. I do
+          so like to own such a Betty! Why do you still wish
+          that you had come with me? Tideshead is much the
+          best place in the world. I send my dear love to
+          the best of aunts, and you must assure Serena and
+          Jonathan and all my old friends of my kind
+          remembrance. I wish every day that our friend Mr.
+          Duncan could have come with me. The country seems
+          more and more wide and wonderful, and I am quite
+          unconscious now of the motion of the cars and feel
+          as fresh every morning and as sleepy every night
+          as possible; so don't worry about me, but pick me
+          a sprig of Aunt Barbara's sweetbrier roses now and
+          then, and try not to be displeasing to any one,
+          dear little girl. Your fond father,
+
+                                            THOMAS LEICESTER.
+
+
+                         CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY, _18th June._
+
+          DEAR BETTY,--The pencils all tumbled on the
+          car-floor out of my light overcoat pocket. I then
+          recalled somebody's command that I should put them
+          into the portmanteau at once, the day they came
+          home from the stationer's. I have found a
+          fortune-telling, second-sighted person in the car.
+          She has the section next to mine and has been
+          directed by a familiar spirit to go to Seattle.
+          She has a parrot with her, and they are both very
+          excitable and communicative. She just told me that
+          it is revealed to her that my youngest boy will
+          have a genius for sculpture. I miss you more than
+          usual to-day. You could help me with some copying,
+          and there is positively nothing interesting to see
+          out of the window; what there is of uninteresting
+          twirls itself about. We shall soon be reaching the
+          mountains, in fact, I have just caught my first
+          glimpse of them beyond these great plains. I must
+          really have some one to write for me next year,
+          but this winter we keep holiday, you and I, if we
+          get in for nothing new. It pleases me to write to
+          you and takes up the long day. You will have
+          finished "L'Allegro" by this time; suppose you
+          learn two of the "Sonnets" next. I wish you to
+          know your Milton as well as possible, but I am
+          sorry to have you take it while I am away. Take
+          Lowell's "Biglow Papers" and learn the Spring
+          poem. You will find nothing better to have in your
+          mind in the Tideshead June weather. And so good-by
+          for this day.
+
+                                             T. LEICESTER.
+
+
+          MR DEAR BETTY,--Your letter is very good, and I am
+          more glad than ever that you chose to go to
+          Tideshead. You will learn so much from Aunt
+          Barbara that I wish my girl to know and to be. And
+          you must remember, in Aunt Mary's self-pitying
+          moments, all her sympathy and her true love for us
+          both, and remember that she has in her character
+          something that makes her the dearest being in the
+          world to such a woman as Aunt Barbara. She is a
+          person, in fact they both are, to be liked and
+          appreciated more and more. You and your Mary Beck
+          interest me very much, Are you sure that it is
+          wise to call her Becky? I thought that she was a
+          new girl, but a nickname is indeed hard to drop. I
+          remember her, a good little red-cheeked child.
+          Let me say this: You have indeed lived a wider
+          sort of life, but I fear that I have made you
+          spread your young self over too great a space,
+          while your Becky has stepped patiently to and fro
+          in a smaller one. You each have your advantages
+          and disadvantages, so be "very observant and
+          respectful of your neighbor," as that good old
+          Scottish preacher prayed for us in Kelso. Be sure
+          that you don't "feel superior," as your Miss
+          Murdon used to say. It is a great thing to know
+          Tideshead well. Remember Selborne and how famous
+          that town came to be!
+
+                                 Yours fondly,
+                                                 T. L.
+
+
+                                  INTERLAKEN, _July 11th._
+
+          DEAR BETTY,--Ada and I mean to take turns in
+          writing to you,--one letter on Sunday and one in
+          the middle of the week; for if we write together
+          we shall tell you exactly the same things. So, you
+          see, this is my turn. We do so wish for you and
+          think that you cannot possibly be having so much
+          fun in Tideshead as if you had come with us. We
+          see such droll people in traveling; they do not
+          look as if they were going anywhere, but as if
+          they were lost and trying hard to find their way
+          back, poor dears! There was an old woman sitting
+          near us on a bench with a stupid-looking young
+          man, to hear the band play, and when it stopped
+          she said to him: "Now we've only got three tunes
+          more, and _they_ will soon be done." We wondered
+          why she couldn't go and do something else if she
+          hated them so much. Ada and I play a game every
+          morning when we walk in the town: We take sides
+          and one has the Germans and one the English, and
+          then see which of us can count the most. Of course
+          we don't always know them apart, and then we
+          squabble for little families that pass by, and Ada
+          is _sure_ they are Germans,--you know how sure Ada
+          always is if she feels a little doubtful!--but
+          yesterday there were Cook's tourists as thick as
+          ants and so she had no chance at all. Miss Winter
+          writes that she will be ready to join us the first
+          of August, which will be delightful, and mamma
+          won't have us to worry about. She said yesterday
+          that we were much less wild without you and Miss
+          Winter, and we told her that it was because life
+          was quite _triste_. She wishes to go to some far
+          little villages quite off the usual line of
+          travel, with papa, and does not yet know whether
+          to go now and take us, or wait and leave us with
+          Miss Winter. I promised to be _triste_ if she
+          would let us go. _Triste_ is my word for
+          everything. Do you still wear out two or three
+          dozen _hates_ a day? Ada said this morning that
+          you would _hate_ so many hard little green pears
+          for breakfast; but we are coming to plum-time now,
+          and they are so good and sweet. Every morning such
+          a nice Swiss maiden called Marie (they are all
+          Maries, I believe) comes and bumps the corner of
+          her tray against our door and smiles a very wide
+          smile and says "Das fruehstueck" in exactly the same
+          tone as she comes in, and we have such delectable
+          breakfasts of crisp little rolls and Swiss honey
+          and very weak and hot-milky _cafe au lait_. I
+          don't believe Miss Winter will let us have honey
+          every day, but mamma doesn't mind. I think she
+          gives orders for a very small dish of it, because
+          Ada and I have requested more until we are
+          disheartened. Mamma says that while we run up so
+          many hillsides here we may eat what we please. Oh,
+          and one thing more: no end of dry little mountain
+          strawberries, sometimes they taste like
+          strawberries and sometimes they don't; but this is
+          enough about what one eats in Interlaken. I have
+          filled my four pages and Ada is calling me to
+          walk. We are going on with our botany. Are you? I
+          send a better edelweiss which I plucked myself. I
+          must let Ada tell you next time about that day.
+          She is the best at a description, but I love you
+          more than ever and I am always your fond and
+          faithful
+
+                                             BESSIE DUNCAN.
+
+          P. S. I forgot to say that Ada has made such
+          clever sketches. Papa says that they quite
+          surprise him, and we just long to show them to
+          Miss Winter. There is one of a little girl whom we
+          saw making lace at Lauterbrunnen. The Drummonds of
+          Park Lane drove by us yesterday; we couldn't hear
+          the name of their hotel, though they called it
+          out, but we are sure to find them. They looked,
+          however, as if they were on a journey, the
+          carriage was so dusty. It was so nice to see the
+          girls again.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+BETTY'S REFLECTIONS.
+
+
+AS Betty shut the gate behind her one day and walked down the main
+street of Tideshead she felt more than ever as if the past four years
+had been a dream, and as if she were exactly the same girl who had paid
+that last visit when she was eleven years old. Yet she seemed to herself
+to have clearer eyes than before; her years of travel had taught her to
+observe, the best gift that traveling can bestow. She saw new beauties
+in the gardens and the queer-shaped porches over the front doors, and
+noticed particularly the cupolas of one or two barns that were clear and
+sharp in their good outlines. More than all, she was astonished at the
+beauty of the old trees. Tideshead was not a forest of maples, like many
+other New England towns, but there were oaks along the village streets,
+and ash-trees, and willows, beside great elms in stately rows, and
+silver poplars, and mountain ashes, and even some fruit-trees along the
+roadsides outside the village. Betty remembered a story that she had
+often heard with great interest about one of the old Tideshead ministers
+who had been much beloved, and whose influence was still felt. Every
+year he had brought ten trees from the woods and planted them either on
+the streets or in his neighbor's yards; one year he chose one sort of
+tree and the next another, and at last, when he grew older and could not
+go far afield in his search he asked his friends for fruit-trees and
+planted them for the benefit of wayfarers. These had made a delightful
+memorial of the good old man, but many of the trees had fallen by this
+time, and though everybody said that they ought to be replaced, and
+complained of such shiftless neglect, as usual what was everybody's
+business was nobody's business, and Tideshead looked as if it were sorry
+to be forgotten. Betty had been used to the thrifty English and French
+care of woodlands, and felt as if it were a great pity not to take
+better care of the precious legacy. Aunt Barbara sometimes sent Jonathan
+and Seth Pond to care for the trees that needed pruning or covering at
+the roots, but hardly any one else in Tideshead did anything but chop
+them up and clear them away when they blew down.
+
+It seemed very strange that all the old houses were so handsome and all
+the new ones so ugly. A stranger might wonder, why, with the good
+proportions, and even a touch of simple elegance that the house builders
+of the last century almost always gave, their successors seemed to have
+no idea of either, and to take no lessons from the good models before
+their eyes. "Makeshifts o' splendor," sensible old Serena called some of
+the new houses which had run much to cheap decoration and irregular
+roofs and fancy colors of paint. But the old minister's elms and willows
+hung their green boughs before some of these architectural failures as
+if to kindly screen them from the passers-by. They looked like
+imitations of houses, one or two of them, and as if they were put down
+to fill spaces, and not meant to live in, as the old plain-roofed and
+wide-roomed dwellings are. The sober old village looked here and there
+as if it were a placid elderly lady upon whom a child had put it's own
+gay raiment. People do not consider the becomingness of a building to
+its surroundings as they should, but Betty did not make this clear to
+herself exactly, though she was sorry at the change in the familiar
+streets. She was more delighted than she knew because she felt so
+complete a sense of belongingness; as if she were indeed made of the
+very dust of Tideshead, and were a part of it. It was much better than
+getting used to new places, though even in the dullest ones she had
+known there was some charm and some attaching quality ever to be
+remembered. She liked dearly to think of some of the places where she
+and papa had made their home, but after all there was the temporary
+feeling about every one. She could bear transplanting from most of them
+with equanimity, no matter how deep her roots had seemed to strike.
+
+After she had posted her letters there was a question of what to do
+next. She had really come out for a walk, but Mary Beck's mother had a
+dressmaker that day and Becky was not at liberty; and Nelly Foster was
+busy, too. The Grants were away for a few days on a visit; it was a
+lonely morning with our friend, who felt a hearty wish for one of her
+usual companions. She strayed out toward the fields and seated herself
+in the shade of Becky's favorite tree, looking off toward the hills. The
+country was very green and fresh-looking after a long rain, and the
+farmers were out cutting the later hay in the lower meadows. She could
+hear the mowing-machines like the whirr of great locusts, and the men's
+voices as they shouted to each other and the horses. On the field side
+of the fence, in the field corner, she and Becky had made a comfortable
+seat by putting a piece of board across the angle of the two fences, and
+there was a black cherry-tree thicket near, so that the two girls could
+not be seen from the road as they sat there. As Betty perched herself
+here alone she could look along the road, but not be discovered easily.
+She wished for Becky more than ever after the first few minutes, but her
+thoughts were very busy. She had had a misunderstanding with both the
+aunts that morning, and was still moved by a little pity for herself.
+They had grown used to their own orderly habits, and it seemed to be no
+trouble to them to keep their possessions in order, and Betty had found
+them standing before an open bureau drawer in her room quite aghast with
+the general disarray, and also with the buttonless and be-ripped
+condition of different articles of her underclothing. They had laughed
+good-naturedly and were not so hard upon Betty as they meant to be, when
+they saw her shame-stricken face, and Betty herself tried to laugh. She
+did not mind Aunt Barbara's seeing the things so much as Aunt Mary's
+aggravating assumption that it was a perfectly hopeless case, and
+nothing could be done about it.
+
+"Nobody knows how or where they were washed," Aunt Barbara said in her
+brisk way; and though she looked very stern, Betty knew that she meant
+it partly for an excuse.
+
+"You certainly ought to have been looking them over in this rainy
+weather," complained Aunt Mary. "A young lady of your age is expected to
+keep her clothing in exquisite order."
+
+Betty hated being called a young lady of her age.
+
+"I hope that you take better care of your father's wardrobe than this:
+why, there isn't a whole thing here, and they are most expensive new
+things, one can see; unmended and spoiled." Aunt Mary held up a pretty
+underwaist and sighed deeply.
+
+"Mrs. Duncan chose them with me; one doesn't have to give so much for
+such things in London," explained Betty somewhat hotly. "It is no use to
+pick out ugly things to wear."
+
+"Dear, dear!" said Aunt Barbara, "don't fret about it, either of you!
+We'll look them over by and by, Betty, and see what can be done;" and
+she shut the drawer upon the pathetic relics. "You must be ready to meet
+your responsibilities better than this," she said sharply to her niece,
+but Betty was already hurrying out of the door. She did not mind Aunt
+Barbara, but Aunt Mary in the distressing silk wrapper that belonged to
+cross days was too much for one to bear. They had no business to be
+looking over her bureau drawer; then Betty was sorry for having been so
+ill-natured about it. Letty had told her, earlier, that some of her
+clothes could not be worn again until they were mended, and Aunt Barbara
+had, no doubt, been consulted also, and was wondering what was best to
+be done. Betty's great pride had been in being able to take care of
+papa, and she had almost boasted of her skill, and of her management of
+housekeeping affairs when they were in lodgings. She was too old now to
+be treated like a child, and hated being what Serena called "stood
+over."
+
+Betty's temper was usually very good, and such provocations could not
+make her miserable very long. As she sat under the oak-tree she even
+laughed at the remembrance of Aunt Mary's expression of perfect
+hopelessness as she held up the underwaist. Aunt Barbara's favorite
+maxim that there was "nothing so inconvenient as disorder" seemed to
+have deeper reason and wisdom than ever. Betty considered the propriety
+of throwing away all her subterfuges of pins, so that a proper stitch
+must be inevitably taken when it was needed. Pins in underclothes are
+not always comfortable, but our heroine was apt to be in a hurry, and to
+suffer the consequences in more ways than one. She made some brave
+resolutions now, and promised herself to look over her belongings, and
+to mend all that could be mended and throw away the remainder rags that
+very day after dinner. Betty was fond of making good resolutions, and
+it seemed to help her much about keeping them if she wrote them down.
+She had learned lately from Aunt Barbara, who complained of forgetting
+things over night, to make little lists of things to be done, and it
+appeared a good deal easier to mark off the items on the list one by
+one, than to carry them in one's mind and wonder what should be done
+next. Our friend liked to make notes about life in general and her own
+responsibilities, and had many serious thoughts now that she was growing
+older.
+
+She made her lead pencil as pointed as possible with a knife newly
+sharpened by Jonathan, and wrote at the end of her slip of paper, which
+had come out much crumpled from her pocket: "Look over my clothes and
+every one of my stockings, and put them in as good order as possible."
+Then she smoothed out another larger piece of paper on her knee and read
+it. One day she had copied some scattered sentences from a book, and
+prefaced them with some things that her father often had said: "Learn
+the right way to do things. Do everything that you can for yourself. Try
+to make yourself fit to live with other people. Try to avoid making
+other people wait upon you. Remember that every person stands in a
+different place from every other and so sees life from a different point
+of view. Remember that nobody likes to be proved in the wrong, and be
+careful in what manner you say things to people that they do not wish to
+hear."
+
+Betty read slowly with great approval at first, but the end seemed
+disturbing. "That's just what Aunt Mary likes!" she reflected, with
+suddenly rising wrath. "She says things over twice, for fear I don't
+hear them the first time. I wish she would let me alone!" but Betty's
+conscience smote her at this point. She really was beginning to wish
+most heartily that she were good, and like every one else wished for the
+approval of others as well as for the peace of her own conscience. This
+was a black-mark day when she had neither, and she thought about her
+life more intently than usual. When she liked herself everybody liked
+her, but when she was on bad terms with herself everybody else seemed
+ready to join in the stern disapproval. Papa was always ready to lend a
+helping hand at such times, but papa was far away. Nothing was so
+pleasant as usual that morning, and a fog of discouragement seemed to
+shut out all the sunshine in Betty Leicester's heart. She did not often
+get low-spirited, but for that hour all the excitement of coming to
+Tideshead and being liked and befriended by her old friends had vanished
+and left only a miserable hopelessness in its place. The road of life
+appeared to lead nowhere, and perhaps our friend missed the constant
+change and excitement of interest brought to her by living alongside
+such a busy, inspiriting life as her father's. Here in Tideshead she had
+to provide her own motive power instead of being tributary to a stronger
+current.
+
+"I don't seem to have anything to do," thought Betty. "I used to be so
+busy all the time last spring in London and never had half time enough,
+and now everything is raveling out instead of knitting up. I poke
+through the days hoping something nice will happen, just like the
+Tideshead girls." This thought came with a curious flash of
+self-recognition such as rarely comes, and always is the minute of
+inspiration. "I must think and think what to do," Betty went on, leaning
+her cheek on her hand and looking off at the blue mountains far to the
+northward. There was a tuft of rudbeckias in bloom near by, and just
+then the breeze made them bow at her as if they were watching and
+approved her serious thoughts. They had indeed a friendly and cheering
+look, as if there were still much hope in life, and Betty forgot herself
+for a minute as she was suddenly conscious of their companionship. She
+even gave the gay yellow flowers a friendly nod, and resolved to carry
+some of them home to the aunts. It would be a good thing to make a rule
+for devoting the first half hour after breakfast to the care of her
+clothes and that sort of thing: then she could take the next hour for
+her writing. But it was often very pleasant to scurry down into the
+garden or to the yard for a word with Jonathan or Seth. Aunt Barbara was
+always busy housekeeping with Serena just after breakfast, and Betty was
+left to herself for a while; it would take stern principle to settle at
+once to the day's work, but to-morrow morning the plan should be tried.
+Betty had offered, soon after she came, to take care of the flowers in
+the house, to pick fresh ones or to put fresh water in the vases, but
+she had forgotten to do it regularly of late, though Aunt Barbara had
+been so pleased in the beginning. "I ought to do my part in the house,"
+she thought, and again the gay "rude beckies" nodded approval, and a
+catbird overhead said a great deal on the subject which was difficult to
+understand but very insistent. Betty was beginning to be cheerful again;
+in truth, nothing gets a girl out of a tangle of provocations and
+bewilderments and regrets like going out into the fields alone.
+
+Nobody had driven by in all the time that Betty had sat in the fence
+corner until now there was a noise of wheels in the distance. It seemed
+suddenly as if the session were over, and Betty, quite restored to her
+usual serenity, said good-by to her solitary self and the cheerful
+wild-flowers. "I am going to be good, papa," she thought with a warm
+love in her hopeful heart, as she looked out through the young black
+cherry-trees to see who was going by in the road. "Seth! Seth Pond!" she
+called, "Where are you going?" for it proved to be that important member
+of the aunts' household, with the old wagon and Jimmy, the old black
+horse.
+
+"Goin' to mill," answered Seth, recognizing the voice and looking about
+him, much pleased. "Want to come? be pleased to have ye," and Betty was
+over the fence in a minute and appeared to his view from behind the
+thicket. I dare say the flowers waved a farewell and looked fondly after
+her as she drove away.
+
+Seth was not in the least vexed by his thoughts. He was much gratified
+by Betty's company and behaved with great dignity, giving her much
+information about the hay crop, and how many tons were likely to be cut
+in this field and the next. They could not drive very fast because the
+wagon was well loaded with bags of corn, and so they jogged on at an
+even pace, though Seth flourished his whip a good deal, striking
+sometimes at the old horse, and sometimes at the bushes by the roadside.
+
+"Do you expect I shall ever get to be much of a hand to play the
+violin?" he inquired with much earnestness.
+
+"I don't know, Seth," answered Betty, a little distressed by the
+responsibility of answering. "Do you mean to be a musician and do
+nothing else?"
+
+"I used to count on it when I was little," said Seth humbly. "I heard a
+fellow play splendid in a show once, and I just used to lay awake nights
+an' be good for nothin' days, wonderin' how I could learn; but I can
+play now 'bout's good's he could, I s'pose, an' it don't seem to be
+nothin'. Them tunes in the book you give me let in some light on me as
+to what playin' was. I mean them tough ones over in the back part."
+
+"I suppose you would have to go away and study; teachers cost a great
+deal. That is, the best ones do."
+
+"They're wuth it; I don't grudge 'em the best they get," said Seth,
+honorably. "I've got to think o' marm, you see, up-country. She couldn't
+get along nohow without my wages comin' in. You see I send her the most
+part. I ain't to no expense myself while I live there to Miss
+Leicester's. If there was only me I'd fetch it to live somehow up in
+somebody's garret, and go to one o' them crack teachers after I'd saved
+up consid'able. Then I'd go to work again an' practice them lessons till
+I earnt some more. But I ain't never goin' to pinch marm; she worked an'
+slaved an' picked huckleberries and went out nussin' and tailorin' an'
+any work she could git, slick or rough, an' give me everything she could
+till I got a little schoolin' together and was big enough to work. She's
+kind o' slim now; I think she worked too hard. I was awful homesick when
+I was first to your aunts', but Jonathan he used me real good. He come
+there a boy from up to our place just the same, an' used to know marm.
+Miss Leicester she lets me go up and spend Sunday consid'able often.
+Marm's all alone except what use she gets of the neighbors comin' in.
+But seems if I'd lived for nothin', if I can't learn to play a fiddle
+better than I can now," and Seth struck hard with his whip at an
+unoffending thistle.
+
+"Then you're sure to do it," said Betty. "I believe you _must_ learn,
+Seth. Where there's a will there's a way."
+
+"Why, that's just what Sereny says," exclaimed Seth with surprise.
+"Well, they say 't was the little dog that kep' runnin' that got there
+Saturday night."
+
+"Should you play in concerts, do you suppose?" asked Betty, with
+reverence for such overpowering ambition in the rough lad.
+
+"You bet, an' travel with shows an' things," responded Seth. "But if I
+kep' to work on somethin' else that give mother an' me a good livin',
+I'd like to be the one they sent for all round this part of the country
+when they wanted first-rate playin'; an' I'd be ready, you know, and
+just make the old fiddle squeak lovely for dancin' or set pieces for
+weddings an' any occasions that might rise. I'd like to be _the_ player,
+an' I tell ye I'm goin' to be 'fore I die. Marm she knows I can, but one
+spell she used to expect 't would draw me into bad company."
+
+"Oh you wouldn't let it, I'm sure, Seth," agreed Betty, with pleasing
+confidence. "I like to hear you play now," she said. "I wish we could
+get you a teacher. Perhaps papa can tell you, and--well, we'll see."
+
+"I'd just like to have you see marm," said Seth shyly as they drove to
+the mill door. "She'd like you an' you'd like her. I don't suppose your
+aunts would let you go up-country, would they? It's pretty up there;
+mountains, an' cleared pastur's way up their sides higher 'n you'd git
+in an afternoon. You can see way down here right from our house," he
+whispered, as they stopped before the mill, door.
+
+Betty thought it was very pleasant in the old mill. While Seth and the
+miller were transacting their business, she went to one of the little
+windows on the side next the swift rushing mill-stream and looked out
+awhile, and watched some swallows and the clear water and the house on
+the other side where the miller lived. Then she was shown how the corn
+was ground and tasted the hot meal as it came sifting down from the
+little boxes on the band, and the miller even had the big wheel stopped
+in its dripping dark closet where it seemed to labor hard to keep the
+mill going. "Something works hard for us in our lives to make them all
+come right," she thought with wistful gratitude, and looked with new
+interest at the busy maze of wheels and hoppers and rude machinery that
+joggled on steadily from the touch of the hidden wheel and the plash of
+its live water. She wandered out into the sunshine and down the river
+side a little way. There was a clean yellow sandy bottom in one place
+with shoals of frisky little minnows and a small green island only a
+little way out, and Betty was much tempted to take off her shoes and
+stockings and wade across. Her toes curled themselves in their shoes
+with pleased anticipation, but she thought with a sigh that she was too
+tall to go wading now, that is, near a public place like the mill. It
+was impossible not to give a heavy sigh over such lost delights. Then
+she looked up at the mill and discovered that there were only one or two
+high and dusty windows at that end, and down she sat on the short green
+turf to pull off the shoes and stockings as fast as she could, lest
+second thoughts might again hinder this last wade. She gathered her
+petticoats and over to the island she splashed, causing awful
+apprehension of disaster among the minnows.
+
+The green island was a delightful place indeed; the upper end was near
+the roaring dam, and the water plashed and dashed as it ran away on
+either side. There were two or three young elms and some alders on the
+island, and the alders were full of clematis just coming into bloom. The
+lower end of this strip of island-ground was much less noisy, and Betty
+went down to sit there after she had seen two or three turtles slide
+into the water, and more minnows slip away into deeper pools out of
+sight. There was a pleasant damp smell of cool water, and a ripple of
+light went dancing up the high stone foundation of the old mill. Betty
+could still hear the great wet wheel lumbering round. She thought that
+she never had found a more delightful place, so much business was going
+on all about her and yet it was so quiet there, and as she looked under
+a young alder what should she see but a wild duck on its nest. Even if
+the shy thing had fluttered off at her approach, it had gone back again,
+and now watched her steadily as if to be ready to fly, yet not really
+frightened. It was a dear kind of relationship to be in this wild little
+place with another living creature, and Betty settled herself on the
+soft turf, against the straight young elm trunk, determined not to give
+another glance in the duck's direction. It would be great fun to come
+and see it go away with its ducklings when they were hatched, if one
+only knew the proper minute. She wished that she could paint a picture
+of the mill and the river, or could write a song about it, even if she
+could not sing it, so many girls had such gifts and did not care half
+so much for them as Betty herself would. Dear Betty! she did not know
+what a rare gift she had in being able to enjoy so many things, and to
+understand the pictures and songs of every day.
+
+Then it was time to wade back to shore, and so she rose and left the
+duck to her peaceful seclusion, not knowing how often she would think of
+this pretty place in years to come. The best thing about such pleasures
+is that they seem more and more delightful, as years go on. Seth was
+just coming to tell Betty that the meal was all ground and ready when
+she appeared discreetly from behind the willows that grew at the mill
+end, and so they drove home without anything exciting to mark the way.
+
+Betty had taken many music lessons, but she was by no means a musician,
+and seldom played for the pleasure of it. For some reason, after tea was
+over that evening she opened Aunt Barbara's piano and began to play a
+gay military march which she had toilsomely learned from one of the
+familiar English operas. She played it once or twice, and played it
+very well; in fact, an old gentleman who was going slowly along the
+street stopped and leaned on the fence to listen. He had been a captain
+in the militia in the days of the old New England trainings, and now
+though he walked with two canes and was quite decrepit, he liked to be
+reminded of his military service, and the march gave him a great
+pleasure and made him young again while he stood there beating time on
+the front fence, and nodding his head. One may often give pleasure
+without knowing it, if one does pleasant things.
+
+Next morning, early after breakfast, Betty appeared at Miss Mary
+Leicester's door with an armful of mending. Aunt Mary waked up early and
+had her breakfast in bed, and liked very much to be called upon
+afterward and to hear something pleasant. One of the windows of her room
+looked down into the garden and it was cool and shady there at this time
+of the day, so Betty seated herself with a dutiful and sober feeling not
+unmixed with enjoyment.
+
+"I have thought ever since yesterday that I was too severe, my dear,"
+said Aunt Mary somewhat wistfully from her three pillows. "But you see,
+Betty, I am so conscious of the mistakes of my own life that I wish to
+help you to avoid them. It is a terrible thing to become dependent upon
+other people,--especially if they are busy people," she added
+plaintively.
+
+"Oh, I ought to have managed everything better," responded Betty,
+looking at the ends of two fingers that had poked directly through a
+stocking toe. "I don't mean to let things get so bad again. I never do
+when I am with papa, because--I know better. But it has been such fun to
+play since I came to Tideshead! I don't feel a bit grown up here."
+
+Aunt Mary looked at little Betty with an affectionate smile.
+
+"I think fifteen is such a funny age," Betty went on; "you seem to just
+perch there between being a little girl and a young lady, and first you
+think you are one and then you think you are the other. I feel like a
+bird on a bough, or as if I were living in a railway station, waiting
+for a train to come in before I could do anything."
+
+Betty said this gravely, and then felt a little shy and self-conscious.
+Aunt Mary watched her as she sat by the window sewing, and was wise
+enough not to answer, but she could not help thinking that Betty was a
+dear girl. It was one of Aunt Mary's very best days, and there were some
+things one could say more easily to her than to Aunt Barbara, though
+Aunt Barbara was what Betty was pleased to irreverently call her pal.
+
+"I do wish that I had a talent for something," said Betty. "I can't
+sing: if I could, I am sure that I would sing for everybody who asked
+me. I don't see what makes people so silly about it; hear that old robin
+now!" and they both laughed. "Nobody asks me to play who knows anything
+about music. I wish I had Aunt Barbara's fingers; I don't believe I can
+ever learn. I told papa it was just throwing money away, and he said it
+was good to know how to play even a little, and good for my hands, to
+make them quick and clever."
+
+"You played that march very well last night," said Aunt Mary kindly.
+
+"Oh, that sort of thing! But I mean other music, the hard things that
+papa likes. There is one of the Chopin nocturnes that Mrs. Duncan
+plays, oh, it is so beautiful! I wish you and Aunt Barbara knew it."
+
+"You must ask Aunt Barbara to practice it. I like to have her keep on
+playing. We used to hear a great deal of music when I was well enough to
+go to Boston in the winter, years ago," and Aunt Mary sighed. "I think
+it is a great thing to have a gift for home life, as you really have,
+Betty dear."
+
+"Papa and I have been in such queer holes," laughed Betty. "Mrs. Duncan
+and some of our friends are never tired of hearing about them. But you
+know we always try to do the same things. If I hadn't any other teacher
+when we were just flying about, papa always heard my lessons and made me
+keep lesson hours; and he goes on with his affairs and we are quite
+orderly, indeed we are, so it doesn't make much difference where we
+happen to be. Then I have been whole winters in London, and Mrs. Duncan
+looks after us a good deal."
+
+"Mary Duncan is a wise and charming woman," said Aunt Mary.
+
+"All the big Duncans are so nice to the little ones!" said Betty; "but
+papa and I can be old or young just as we choose, and we try to make up
+for not being a large family," which seemed to amuse both Aunt Mary and
+Letty, who had just come in.
+
+The hour soon slipped by and Betty's needle had done great execution,
+but a little heap was laid aside for the rag-bag as too hopeless a wreck
+for any mending. It was plain that too much trust had been reposed in
+strange washerwomen, for one could put a finger through the underwaists
+anywhere, such damaging soap had evidently been used to make them clean.
+Betty had heard that paper clothes were coming into fashion from Japan,
+and informed her aunt of this probable change for the better with great
+glee. Then she went away to the garden to cut some flowers for the
+house, and found Aunt Barbara there before her, tying up the hollyhock
+stalks to some stakes that Seth Pond was driving down. Aunt Barbara had
+a shallow basket and was going to cut the sweet-clover flowers that
+morning, to dry and put on her linen shelves along with some sprigs of
+lavender, and this pleasant employment took another half hour.
+
+"Aunt Mary was so dear this morning!" said Betty, as they stood on
+opposite sides of a tall sweet-clover top.
+
+"She feels pretty well, then," answered Miss Leicester, much pleased.
+
+"Yes," said Betty, snipping away industriously; "she didn't wish to be
+pitied one bit. Don't you think we could give her some chloroform, Aunt
+Bab, and put her on the steamer and take her to England? She would get
+so excited and have such a good time and be well forever after."
+
+"I really have thought so," acknowledged Aunt Barbara, smiling at
+Betty's audacity. "But your Aunt Mary has suffered many things, and has
+lost her motive power. She cannot rouse herself when she wishes to,
+nowadays, but must take life as it comes. I can see that it was a
+mistake to yield years ago to her nervous illness, but I was not so wise
+then, and now it is too late. You know, Betty, she had a great sorrow,
+and has never been the same person since."
+
+"So had papa when mamma died," said Betty gravely, and trying hard to
+understand; "but he cured himself by just living for other people, and
+thinking whether _they_ were happy."
+
+"It is the only way, dear," said Aunt Barbara, "but when you are older
+you will know better how it has been with my poor sister."
+
+Betty said no more, but she had many thoughts. Something that had been
+said about losing one's motive power had struck very deep. She had said
+something herself about waiting for her train in the station, and she
+had a sudden vision of the aimlessness of it, and of even the train
+bills and advertisements on the wall. She was eager, as all girls are,
+for one single controlling fate or fortune to call out all her growing
+energies, but she was aware at this moment that she herself must choose
+and provide; she must learn to throw herself heartily into her life just
+as it was. It was a moment of clear vision to Betty Leicester, and her
+cheeks flushed with bright color. It wasn't the thing one had to do, but
+the way one learned to do it, that distinguished one's life. Perhaps she
+could be famous for every-day homely things and have a real genius for
+something so simple that nobody else had thought of it. That night when
+Betty said her prayers one new thing came into her mind to be asked for,
+and was a great help, so that she often remembered it afterward. "Help
+me to have a good time doing every-day things, and to make my work my
+pleasure."
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+UP-COUNTRY.
+
+
+AUNT BARBARA and Betty had finished their breakfast in the cool
+breakfast-room, or little dining-room as it was sometimes called by the
+family. This looked out on the short elm-shaded grass of the side yard,
+but it was apt to get too warm later in the day. The dining-room was
+much larger, and had most of the family portraits in it and a ponderous
+sideboard and side tables, and Betty sometimes thought that a good deal
+of machinery had to be set running there to give a quiet dinner or
+supper just to Aunt Barbara and herself. But the little dining-room was
+very cosy, with a small sideboard and a tall clock and an old
+looking-glass and very old-fashioned slender wooden armchairs. The sun
+came dancing in through the leaves at a square window. The
+breakfast-room was nearer the kitchen, and Serena had a sociable custom
+of appearing now and then to ask Miss Leicester about the housekeeping.
+
+"There now, Miss Barb'ra," she exclaimed, putting her head in at the
+door, while Betty and her aunt still lingered. "You excuse me this time,
+but here's Jonathan considers it best to go off up-country looking for
+winter's wood, of all things! I told him I'd like to ride up long of him
+to see sister Sarah when he went, but I never expected he'd select the
+very day I set two weeks ago for us to pick the currants."
+
+"But one day will make very little difference; I thought yesterday when
+you spoke of them that they needed a little more sun," said Miss
+Leicester persuasively.
+
+"'T will bring the jelly right into the last o' the week when there's
+enough to do any way." One would have thought that Serena was being
+forced into unpleasant duty, but this was her way of beginning a day's
+pleasure, and Miss Leicester had been familiar with it for many years.
+
+"He's goin' right off; puttin' the hosses in now; never gives nobody a
+moment to consider," grumbled Serena, but Miss Leicester laughed and
+bade the good soul hurry and get herself ready. There was nothing to be
+done that day that Letty could not manage, or Letty's sister would come
+over in the afternoon, or Mrs. Grimshaw, the extra helper who was
+frequently on hand. "I think Jonathan is wise not to give you any more
+time to think about it. There's no use in scouring the whole house
+outside and in before you take a day's pleasure," she suggested
+cheerfully.
+
+"I like to have my mind at rest," responded Serena, but still there was
+something unsaid. Betty's eyes were eager, but she considerately waited
+for Serena to speak first. "You see, Miss Barb'ra, Jonathan's got to
+take up the rag-bags, 't is most a year since I got 'em up to sister
+Sarah's before, and they're in the way here, we all know, and I've got
+some bundles beside, and I told Seth Pond to run out an' pick a mess o'
+snap beans. Sister Sarah's piece is very late land and I s'pose she
+won't have any; and Jonathan he knows when I start I fill up more than
+the little wagon; so he's got the big one, and that makes empty seats,
+an' Miss Betty was saying that when I was goin' up again"--
+
+"You are base conspirators, both of you," said Aunt Barbara, much
+amused. "It is a delightful day; the weather couldn't be better. Now
+hurry, Betty, and don't keep Serena waiting."
+
+"If it's so that you really want to go, Miss Betty."
+
+"I do, indeed, Miss Serena," responded Betty with great spirit, and off
+she ran up-stairs, while her aunt hurried to find something to send by
+way of remembrance, not only to Serena's sister Sarah, but to Seth's
+mother, who lived two miles this side.
+
+There was great excitement for the next half hour. Everybody behaved as
+if there were danger of missing a train, and Seth and Letty were sent
+this way and that, and Serena gave as many last charges as if she meant
+to be absent a fortnight, while Jonathan, already in the wagon, grumbled
+at the delay and shouted to the horses if they so much as lifted a foot
+at a fly. When they had fairly started he gave a chuckle of satisfaction
+and said that he didn't expect when he was harnessing to get off until
+much as an hour later, whereat Serena with unwonted levity called him a
+"deceivin' old sarpent." The wind was blowing gently from the north,
+and was cool enough to make one comfortable in a jacket, though Betty
+could not be persuaded that hers was needed. Serena's shawl was pinned
+neatly about her shoulders. She sat alone on the back seat of the wagon,
+for Jonathan had said that it would ride better not to be too heavy
+behind and therefore Betty was keeping him company in front, of which
+scheme Serena had her own secret opinion. The piece-bags took up a large
+part of the spare seat. Sister Sarah was lame and took great joy in
+working the waste material of the Leicester house into rugs and rag
+carpets, and it was one of Serena's joys to fill the round piece-bags
+even to bursting.
+
+Then there were the beans, and the bundles large and small, and Betty
+was in charge of a package of newspapers and magazines and patent
+medicine almanacs and interesting circulars of all sorts which Seth had
+been saving for his mother.
+
+Jonathan was a tall, thin man, with a shrewd clean-shaven face. He wore
+a new straw hat that day, with a faded linen coat, and a much washed-out
+plaid gingham cravat under his shirt collar. The best hat was worn on
+Betty's account, and was evidently a little stiff and uncomfortable, for
+he took it off once or twice and looked into the crown soberly and then
+put it on again.
+
+"Sorry you wore it, I s'pose?" observed Serena on one of these
+occasions.
+
+"Got to wear it some time," answered Jonathan gruffly, so that nobody
+thought best to speak of the hat again even when a sudden puff of wind
+blew it over into a field. Betty had been ready to put on one of her old
+play-gowns, as she still called them, but upon reflection decided that
+it would be hardly respectful when she had been invited to go visiting
+with such kind and proper friends, and indeed Serena had given her a
+hasty and complacent glance from head to foot when she came down dressed
+in one of the prettiest of the London ginghams. Mrs. Duncan, Betty's
+kind friend and adviser, had been sure that these ginghams would all
+four be needed to clothe our heroine comfortably through the summer,
+that is to judge from experience in other summers; but it made a
+difference in the stress put upon ginghams, to be a year older.
+
+The up-country road wound first among farms and within sight of the
+river, then it took a sudden northward turn and there were not so many
+white elder flowers by the way as there were junipers and young birches.
+There were long reaches through the cool woods, and the road was always
+rising to a higher part of the country, veritable up-country, among the
+hills. From one high point where they stopped to let the horses rest a
+minute there was a beautiful view of the low lands that lay toward the
+sea, and the river which ran southward in shining lines. It would be
+hard to say who most enjoyed the morning. The elder members of the party
+seldom felt themselves free for a holiday, and Betty was always ready to
+enjoy whatever came in her way; but there was a delicious novelty in
+being asked to spend a day with Serena and Jonathan. They were hostess
+and host, and Betty felt an unusual spirit of deference and gratitude
+toward them; it seemed as if they were both quite conscious of a
+different relationship toward Betty from that at home. It was wonderful
+to see what cordial greetings most of the people gave them along the
+road, and how many warm friends they seemed to possess. The farther
+they went, the more struck by this was our Betty, who gave a little sigh
+at some unworded thought about always being a newcomer and stranger. She
+had begun to feel so recognized and at home in Tideshead that it was a
+little hard now to find herself unknown again.
+
+But Serena liked to tell her who every one was, and there was as much
+friendly interest shown in Miss Betty Leicester as any heart could wish.
+
+They had gone almost fourteen miles, and Betty was just nearing the end
+of a long description of her experiences at the Queen's Jubilee, when
+Jonathan said: "Now you can rec'lect just where you put the mark in. I
+don't calc'late to lose none of it, but here we've got to stop top of
+the hill an' see Seth's folks. You've got them papers an' things handy,
+ain't you, Serena?"
+
+Betty saw a yellow story-and-a-half house by the roadside with some
+queer little sheds and outbuildings, and looked with great interest to
+see if any one came to the window. "Seth's folks" meant nobody but his
+mother, who lived alone as Betty knew, and there she was standing in
+the door, a kind-faced, round-shouldered little creature, who had the
+patient, half-apprehensive look of those women who live alone in lonely
+places. She threw her big clean gingham apron over her head and came
+forward just as Jonathan had got out of the wagon and Betty followed
+him.
+
+"There, bless ye!" said "Seth's folks." "I waked up this morning kind of
+expecting that I should see somebody from down Seth's way. I expect he's
+well's common?"
+
+"Oh, yes," responded Jonathan. "We had to leave him to keep house. He
+was full o' messages, but I can't seem to remember none on 'em now."
+
+"No matter, so long I know's he's well," said the little woman, shaking
+hands with Betty and looking at her delightedly. "Now I want you all to
+come in and stop to dinner," but Serena could not even be persuaded to
+"'light down" on account of her duty to sister Sarah. Betty carried in
+the armful of reading matter and Mrs. Pond followed her, and while our
+friend looked at the plain little house and fancied Seth practicing his
+tunes, and saw the beautiful cone frame which he had helped his mother
+to make, the hospitable little mother was getting some home-made
+root-beer out of a big stone jug, and soon served it to her three guests
+in pretty old-fashioned blue and white mugs. Betty thought she had never
+tasted anything so delicious as the flavor of spice and pleasing
+bitterness in the cold drink, and Jonathan smacked his lips loudly and
+promised to call for more as he came back. Mrs. Pond took another good
+long look at Betty before they parted. "I wasn't expectin' you to be so
+much of a young lady, I do' know's you be quite growed up yet, though,"
+she said. This was not the least of the pleasures of that day, and they
+went on next to sister Sarah's, where Betty and Serena and the freight
+were to be left while Jonathan went off about his business.
+
+It almost seemed as if up-country existed for the sake of its market
+town of Tideshead. Betty had been there once or twice in her childhood,
+but her memories even of sister Sarah were rather indistinct. She had
+taken a long nap once on the patchwork quilt in the bedroom, and had
+waked to find four or five women hooking a large rug in the kitchen,
+all talking together, which had made an impression upon her young mind.
+It was strawberry-time too on that last visit. But sister Sarah
+remembered a great deal more about it than this, and was delighted to
+see Betty once more. There was the very rug on the floor, already
+beginning to look worn. One could remember it by a white, or rather a
+gray, rabbit under some large green leaves which made part of the
+design. It was impossible to say how many rugs there were in the house,
+as if life went on for the sole purpose of making hooked and braided
+rugs. Those in the kitchen at Aunt Barbara's were evidently the work of
+sister Sarah's industrious fingers. Serena might have left the place of
+her birth the week before instead of nearly forty years, if one might
+judge by the manner in which she hung her bonnet and shawl on a nail
+behind the door and put her gray thread gloves into the table drawer.
+
+Sister Sarah looked like a neat little nun, and limped painfully as she
+went about the room. Sometimes she used a crutch, but she seemed as lame
+with it as without it, and she was such a brisk little creature in
+spirit, and was so little depressed by her misfortune that one felt it
+would be unwelcome to express any pity. Betty knew that sometimes the
+poor woman suffered a great deal of pain and could not move at all, and
+that a neighbor who also lived alone came at those times and stayed with
+her for a few weeks. "Sister Sarah ain't one mite lame in her mind,"
+Serena said proudly one day, and Betty found this to be the truth. She
+did not like to read, however, and told Betty that it was never anything
+but a task, except to study geography, and she only had one old
+geography, fairly worn to pieces, which she knew by heart, with all its
+lists of towns and countries and rivers, the productions and boundaries
+and capitals and climatic conditions and wild animals were at her
+tongue's end for anybody who cared to hear them. "The old folks used to
+think she'd better exercise her memory learning hymns, and Sister Sarah
+favored geography," Serena once explained; "but she knows what other
+folks knows, and has got a head crammed full o' learning. She never
+forgets nothing, whilst I leak by the way, myself, and do' know whether
+I know anything or not," she ended triumphantly.
+
+Serena's mind was full of plans that day, and after resting a little
+while and hearing the news, she asked Betty whether she would go with
+her to a cousin's about a mile away by a pasture path, or whether she
+would stay where she was. The path sounded very pleasant, but from the
+tone of the invitation it seemed best to remain behind, so she quickly
+decided and Serena set forth alone. It was only about eleven o'clock and
+she meant to be back by twelve, and dinner was put off half an hour.
+Then Serena would have the afternoon clear until it was time to go. The
+cousin had seen trouble since the last visit, so it never would do to go
+home without seeing her. Sister Sarah and Betty sat by the front windows
+of the living-room, and Betty obeyed a parting charge to tell her
+companion "about seeing the Queen and the times when she used to go and
+see the Prince o' Wales's girls," so that the last of the morning was
+soon gone.
+
+"Such folks has their aches an' pains just like us," commented sister
+Sarah at last. "I expected, though, they was more pompous-behaved than
+you seem to describe. Well, they have to think o' their example, and so
+does others, for that matter. I wonder'f'mongst all they've learned to
+do, anybody ever showed 'em how to braid or hook 'em a nice mat. I
+s'pose not, but with all their hired help an' all their rags that must
+come of a year's wear, 't would be a shame for them to buy."
+
+"I never saw any rugs just like these," said Betty, turning quickly to
+look out of the window. "I don't believe people make them except in
+America. But the princesses know how to do a good many things." It was
+very funny to Betty to think of their hooking rugs for themselves,
+however, but Serena's sister did not appear to suspect it.
+
+"Land, won't I have a good time picking over those big full bags!" said
+she, looking at Aunt Barbara's rag-bags with delight, and forgetting the
+employments of royalty. "Your aunt's real generous, she is so! I sort
+out everything into heaps on the spare floor and if I have too much
+white I just reach for the dyepot. I do enjoy myself over them
+piece-bags."
+
+"I don't know what would become of Aunt Barbara and Aunt Mary without
+Serena," said Betty, "but I don't see how you can spare her all the
+time."
+
+"She wouldn't be spared by them," said sister Sarah, putting her head on
+one side like a bird. "When I was first left alone after marm's decease,
+folks thought she'd ought to come back, but I says No. She wouldn't be
+contented now same's she was before she went, and I should get wuss and
+wuss if I was waited on stiddy. 'No!' says I to every one, 'let me be
+and let her be. She's free to come, and she's puttin' by her good
+earnin's. I wept all night when she first went off to Tideshead,
+seventeen year old, to be maid to Madam Leicester, but I knew from that
+day she was set to go her way same's I was mine. But she's be'n a good
+sister to me; we never passed an hour unfriendly, and 't ain't all can
+say the same."
+
+"No, indeed," said Betty cheerfully.
+
+"Queen Victori' knows what it is to be alone," continued the little
+sister. "I always read how she was a real mourner. Now I seem to enter
+into her feelin's, bein' left by myself, though not a widow-woman."
+
+Betty thought of the contrast between the Queen's life, with its
+formality and crowded households, and its retinues and solemn pageantry
+and this empty little New England farm-house on a long hillside that
+sloped eastward. It was so funny to hear the Queen discussed and to find
+her a familiar personage, just as one might in old England, where one
+was always hearing about "our dear Queen." But to sister Sarah the Queen
+was only another woman who lived alone, and had many responsibilities.
+
+"I expect you're a regular little Britisher by this time, ain't you,
+Miss Betty?"
+
+"Indeed, I'm not," answered our friend with spirit. "Papa would be
+ashamed of me. I'm a great American. What made you think so?" Sister
+Sarah looked pleased, but did not have anything more to offer on the
+subject. "We're all English to start with, but with the glory of America
+added on," said Betty with girlish enthusiasm. "You can't take away our
+English inheritance. I used to be always insisting upon that with the
+girls, that Shakespeare and King Arthur were just as much ours as
+theirs."
+
+"I expect you know a sight o' things I never dreamt of," said sister
+Sarah, "but to me what takes place in this neighborhood is just as
+interesting as foreign parts. Folks is folks, I tell 'em. There ain't
+but a few kinds, neither, but they're put into all sorts of places,
+ain't they?"
+
+Betty found that her hostess had a great many entertaining things to
+say, but presently there was a fear expressed lest Serena might be
+beguiled into staying too long at the cousin's, and so delay the dinner.
+
+"Let me begin; oh please let me," said Betty, springing up. She had a
+sudden delighted instinct that it would be charming to wait upon Serena
+to-day and sister Sarah, and take her turn at making them comfortable.
+As quick as thought she turned up her skirt and pinned it behind her and
+said, "What next, if you please, ma'm," in a funny little tone copied
+from that of a precise London damsel in Mrs. Duncan's employ, who always
+amused the family very much.
+
+Sister Sarah was fond of a joke, and to tell the truth this was one of
+her aching days and she had been dreading to take so many steps. She saw
+how pleased Betty was with her kind little plan.
+
+"To lay the table and step lively," she answered, shaking with laughter.
+And Betty followed her directions until the square dinner-table stood in
+the middle of the floor, covered with a nice homespun linen cloth of
+which the history had to be told; and the old blue crockery; and Betty
+had cut just so many slices of bread, and brought just so many spiced
+pears from the brown jar in the cellar-way, and found the nice little
+square piece of cold corned beef which the hostess was so glad to have
+on hand, and had looked at the potatoes two or three times where they
+were baking in the stove oven in the shed-room where sister Sarah did
+her summer cooking; all these and other things were done when Serena,
+out of breath, and heated with hurrying, came in at the door.
+
+"I'm going to finish since I have begun," said Betty proudly. "Now
+please use this fan, Serena, and rest yourself, and I shall be ready in
+a few minutes. I'm having a beautiful good time. Which pitcher shall I
+take for the fresh water?" and out she went to the cool old well under
+the apple-tree.
+
+"Now was there ever such a darlin' gal," said sister Sarah, and Serena
+nodded her head. "I dare say she does like to take holt. Miss Barb'ra
+never was one that shirked at nothing," she had time to reply before
+Betty came back and filled the tumblers and called the sisters to their
+dinner.
+
+"Sarah," said Serena decisively, as she saw how hard it was for sister
+Sarah to move, "you've got to get Ann Sparks, ain't ye?"
+
+And the lame woman answered Yes.
+
+"I hate to give up, as you know, but one of my poor times is coming on,"
+she said sadly.
+
+The dinner was a great pleasure; Betty would do all the waiting, and
+there was an unexpected dessert of a jelly cake which Serena had brought
+with her, being mindful of her sister's fondness for it. Betty was
+touched with the sisters' delight in being together, for in spite of
+what Miss Sarah had said about their being contented apart, she knew
+that the family had seen trouble in earlier times, and that Serena's
+wages had been the main dependence while sister Sarah could not be happy
+any where but in her own home.
+
+There never were such delicious baked potatoes, and Betty humbly waited
+until she was perfectly sure neither of the sisters wanted the last one
+before she eagerly took it. It was delightful to be so hungry, as hungry
+as one could be on shipboard! And when the gay little dinner was over
+Betty made the hostess still play guest, and put on her apron again and
+carried the plates to the shed kitchen, and found the dish pan and the
+soap, and in spite of what anybody could say she washed them every one
+and only let Serena wipe them and put them away. Serena entered into the
+spirit of the thing and was so funny and nice--making believe to be
+afraid they were not doing things right and that "sister Sarah would
+turn to and do 'em over again, being amazing particular."
+
+Then when the flies were whisked out by two efficient aprons, Betty left
+the sisters to themselves for a good talk and rest, and wandered out
+along the hillsides by the path Serena had taken, and there she sat and
+thought and looked off at the green country and at the sky. A little
+black and white dog came trotting along the path on some errand of his
+own, and when he saw Betty he held up one paw and looked at her and then
+came to be patted and to snuggle down by her side as if she were an old
+friend. Betty was touched by this expression of confidence and sympathy,
+as indeed she might be, and was sorry to say good-by to the little dog
+when it was time to go back to the house. He licked her fingers
+affectionately as she gave him a last patting, and seemed disappointed
+because she left him so soon, as if he had gone trotting about the world
+all his life to find her and now she was going away again. He did not
+offer to follow her, but whenever she looked back there he was, sitting
+quite still and watching.
+
+Jonathan was already at the house, impatient to be on his way home, and
+Serena's bonnet was just being taken down from its nail as Betty came
+in. It seemed too bad to leave sister Sarah behind, but then she had all
+the piece-bags for company, as Serena said.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE TWO FRIENDS.
+
+
+THE Leicester household had been so long drifting into a staid and
+ceremonious fashion of life that this visit of Betty's threatened at
+times to be disturbing. If Aunt Barbara's heart had not been kept young,
+under all her austere look and manners, Betty might have felt
+constrained more than once, but there always was an excuse to give Aunt
+Mary, who sometimes complained of too much chattering on the front door
+steps, or too much scurrying up and down stairs from Betty's room. It
+was impossible to count the number of times that important secrets had
+to be considered in the course of a week, or to understand why there
+were so many flurries of excitement among the girls of Betty's set,
+while the general course of events in Tideshead flowed so smoothly. Miss
+Barbara Leicester was always a frank and outspoken person, and the young
+people were sure to hear her opinion whenever they asked for it; but
+she herself seemed to grow younger, in these days, and Betty pleased her
+immensely one day, when it was mentioned that a certain person who wore
+caps, and was what Betty called "poky," was about Miss Barbara's age:
+"Aunt Barbara, you are always the same age as anybody except a baby!"
+
+"I must acknowledge that I feel younger than my grandniece, sometimes,"
+said Aunt Barbara, with a funny little laugh; but Betty was puzzled to
+know exactly what she meant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In one corner of the upper story of the large old house there was a
+delightful little place by one of the dormer-windows. It lighted the
+crooked stairway which came up to the open garret-floor, and the way to
+some bedrooms which were finished off in a row. Betty remembered playing
+with her dolls in this pleasant little corner on rainy days, years
+before, and revived its old name of the "cubby-house." Her father had
+kept his guns and a collection of minerals there, in his boyhood. It was
+over Betty's own room, and noises made there did not affect Aunt Mary's
+nerves, while it was a great relief from the dignity of the east
+bedroom, or, still more, the lower rooms of the house, to betake one's
+self with one's friend to this queer-shaped, brown-raftered little
+corner of the world. There was a great sea-chest under the eaves, and an
+astounding fireboard, with a picture of Apollo in his chariot. There was
+a shelf with some old brown books that everybody had forgotten, an old
+guitar, and a comfortable wooden rocking-chair, beside Betty's favorite
+perch in the broad window-seat that looked out into the tops of the
+trees. Her father's boyish trophies of rose-quartz and beryl crystals
+and mica were still scattered along on the narrow ledges of the old
+beams, and hanging to a nail overhead were two dusty bunches of
+pennyroyal, which had left a mild fragrance behind them as they
+withered.
+
+Betty had added to this array a toppling light-stand from another part
+of the garret and a china mug which she kept full of fresh wild flowers.
+She pinned "London Graphic" pictures here and there, to make a little
+brightness, and there were some of her favorite artist's (Caldecott's)
+sketches of country squires and dames, reproduced in faint bright
+colors, which looked delightfully in keeping with their surroundings. As
+midsummer came on the cubby-house grew too hot for comfort, but one
+afternoon, when rain had been falling all the morning to cool the high
+roof, Mary Beck and Betty sat there together in great comfort and peace.
+See for yourself Mary in the rocking-chair, and Betty in the
+window-seat; they were deep in thought of girlish problems, and, as
+usual, taking nearly opposite sides. They had been discussing their
+plans for the future. Mary Beck had confessed that she wished to learn
+to be a splendid singer and sing in a great church or even in public
+concerts. She knew that she could, if she were only well taught; but
+there was nobody to give her lessons in Tideshead, and her mother would
+not hear of her going to Riverport twice a week.
+
+"She says that I can keep up with my singing at home, and she wants me
+to go into the choir, and I can't bear it. I hate to hear 'we can't
+afford it,' and I am sure to, if I set my heart on anything. Mother says
+that it will be time enough to learn to sing when I am through school.
+Oh, dear me!" and poor Mary looked disappointed and fretful.
+
+A disheartening picture of the present Becky on the concert-stage
+flashed through Betty's usually hopeful mind. She felt a heartache, as
+she thought of her friend's unfitness and inevitable disappointment.
+Becky--plain, ungainly, honest Becky--felt it in her to do great things,
+yet she hardly knew what great things were. Persons of Betty's age never
+count upon having years of time in which to make themselves better.
+Everything must be finally decided by the state of things at the moment.
+Years of patient study were sure to develop the wonderful gift of
+Becky's strong, sweet voice.
+
+"Why don't you sing in the choir, Becky?" asked Betty suddenly. "It
+would make the singing so much better. I should love to do it, if I
+could, and it would help to make Sunday so pleasant for everybody, to
+hear you sing. Poor Miss Fedge's voice sounds funny, doesn't it? Sing me
+something now, Becky dear; sing 'Bonny Doon'!"
+
+But Becky took no notice of the request. "What do you mean to be,
+yourself?" she asked her companion, with great interest.
+
+"You know that I can't sing or paint or do any of those things,"
+answered Betty humbly. "I used to wish that I could write books when I
+grew up, or at any rate help papa to write his. I am almost discouraged,
+though papa says I must keep on trying to do the things I really wish to
+do." And a bright flush covered Betty's eager face.
+
+"Oh, Becky dear!" she said suddenly. "You have something that I envy you
+more than even your singing: just living at home in one place and having
+your mother and the boys. I am always wishing and wishing, and telling
+myself stories about living somewhere in the same house all the time,
+with papa, and having a real home and taking care of him. You don't know
+how good it would feel! Papa says the best we can do now is to make a
+home wherever we are, for ourselves and others--but I think it is pretty
+hard, sometimes."
+
+"Well, I think the nicest thing would be to see the world, as you do,"
+insisted Mary Beck. "I just _hate_ dusting and keeping things to rights,
+and I never _shall_ learn to cook! I like to do fancy work pretty well.
+You would think Tideshead was perfectly awful, in winter!"
+
+"Why should it be?" asked Betty innocently. "Winter is house-time. I
+save things to do in winter, and"--
+
+"Oh, you are so preachy, you are so good-natured, you believe all the
+prim things that grown people say!" exclaimed Becky. "What would you say
+if you never went to Boston but once, and then had the toothache all the
+time? You have been everywhere, and you think it's great fun to stay a
+little while in poky old Tideshead, this one summer!"
+
+"Why, it is because I have seen so many other places that I know just
+how pleasant Tideshead is."
+
+"Well, I want to see other places, too," maintained the dissatisfied
+Becky.
+
+"Papa says that we ourselves are the places we live in," said Betty, as
+if it took a great deal of courage to tell Mary Beck so unwelcome a
+truth. "I like to remember just what he says, for sometimes, when I
+haven't understood at first, something will happen, may be a year after,
+to make it flash right into my mind. Once I heard a girl say London was
+stupid; just think! _London!_"
+
+Mary Beck was rocking steadily, but Betty sat still, with her feet on
+the window-seat and her hands clasped about her knees. She could look
+down into the green yard below, and watch some birds that were
+fluttering near by in the wet trees. The wind blew in very soft and
+sweet after the rain.
+
+"I used to think, when I was a little bit of a girl, that I would be a
+missionary, but I should perfectly hate it now!" said Mary, with great
+vehemence. "I just hate to go to Sunday-school and be asked the
+questions; it makes me prickle all over. I always feel sorry when I wake
+up and find it is Sunday morning. I suppose you think that's heathen and
+horrid."
+
+"I always have my Sunday lessons with papa; he reads to me, and gives me
+something to learn by heart,--a hymn or some lovely verses of poetry. I
+suppose that his telling me what things in the Bible really mean keeps
+me from being 'prickly' when other people talk about it. What made you
+wish to be a missionary?" Betty inquired, with interest.
+
+"Oh, there used to be some who came here and talked in the vestry Sunday
+evenings about riding on donkeys and camels. Sometimes they would dress
+up in Syrian costumes, and I used to look grandpa's 'Missionary Herald'
+all through, to find their names afterward. It was so nice to hear about
+their travels and the natives; but that was a long while ago," and Becky
+rocked angrily, so that the boards creaked underneath.
+
+"Last summer I used to go to such a dear old church, in the Isle of
+Wight," said Betty. "You could look out of the open door by our pew and
+see the old churchyard, and look away over the green downs and the blue
+sea. You could see the red poppies in the fields, and hear the larks,
+too."
+
+"What kind of a church was it?" asked Mary, with suspicion. "Episcopal?"
+
+"Yes," answered Betty. "Church of England, people say there."
+
+"I heard somebody say once that your father was very lax in religious
+matters," said Becky seriously.
+
+"I'd rather be very lax and love my Sundays," said Betty severely. "I
+don't think it makes any difference, really, about what one does in
+church. I want to be good, and it helps me to be in church and think and
+hear about it. Oh, dear! my foot's getting asleep," said Betty,
+beginning to pound it up and down. The two girls did not like to look at
+each other; they were considering questions that were very hard to talk
+about.
+
+"I suppose it's being good that made you run after Nelly Foster. I
+wished that I had gone to see her more, when you went; but she used to
+act hatefully sometimes before you came. She used to cry in school,
+though," confessed Becky.
+
+"I didn't 'run after' her. You do call things such dreadful names, Mary
+Beck! There, I'm getting cross, my foot is all stinging."
+
+"Turn it just the other way," advised Mary eagerly. "Let me pound it for
+you," and she briskly went to the rescue. Betty wondered afresh why she
+liked this friend herself so much, and yet disliked so many things that
+she said and did.
+
+Serena always said that Betty had a won't-you-please-like-me sort of way
+with her, and Mary Beck felt it more than ever as she returned to her
+rocking-chair and jogged on again, but she could not bend from her high
+sense of disapproval immediately. "What do you think the unjust steward
+parable means, then?" she asked, not exactly returning to the fray, but
+with an injured manner. "It is in the Sunday-school lesson to-morrow,
+and I can't understand it a bit,--I never could."
+
+"Nor I," said Betty, in a most cheerful tone. "See here, Becky, it
+doesn't rain, and we can go and ask Mr. Grant to tell us about it."
+
+"Go ask the minister!" exclaimed Mary Beck, much shocked. "Why, would
+you dare to?"
+
+"That's what ministers are for," answered Betty simply. "We can stay a
+little while and see the girls, if he is busy. Come now, Becky," and
+Becky reluctantly came. She was to think a great many times afterward of
+that talk in the garret. She was beginning to doubt whether she had
+really succeeded in settling all the questions of life, at the age of
+fifteen.
+
+The two friends went along arm-in-arm under the still-dripping trees.
+The parsonage was some distance up the long Tideshead street, and the
+sun was coming out as they stood on the doorsteps. The minister was
+amazed when he found that these parishioners had come to have a talk
+with him in the study, and to ask something directly at his willing
+hands. He preached the better for it, next day, and the two girls
+listened the better. As for Mary Beck, the revelation to her honest
+heart of having a right in the minister, and the welcome convenience of
+his fund of knowledge and his desire to be of use to her personally, was
+an immense surprise. Kind Mr. Grant had been a part of the dreaded
+Sundays, a fixture of the day and the church and the pulpit, before
+that; he was, indirectly, a reproach, and, until this day, had never
+seemed like other people exactly, or an every-day friend. Perhaps the
+good man wondered if it were not his own fault, a little. He tried to be
+very gay and friendly with his own girls at supper-time, and said
+afterward that they must have Mary Beck and Betty Leicester to take tea
+with them some time during the next week.
+
+"But there are others in the parish who will feel hurt," urged Mrs.
+Grant anxiously; and Mr. Grant only answered that there must be a dozen
+tea-parties, then, as if there were no such things as sponge-cake and
+ceremony in the world!
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+BETTY AT HOME.
+
+
+EVERYBODY was as kind as possible when Betty Leicester first came to
+Tideshead, and best company manners prevailed toward her; but as the
+girls got used to having a new friend and playmate, some of them proved
+disappointing. Nothing could shake her deep affection for honest-hearted
+Mary Beck, but in some directions Mary had made up her inexperienced and
+narrow mind, and would listen to none of Betty's kindly persuasions. The
+Fosters' father had done some very dishonest deeds, and had run away
+from justice after defrauding some of the most trustful of his
+neighbors. Mary Beck's mother had lost some money in this way, and old
+Captain Beck even more, so that the girl had heard sharp comments and
+indignant blame at home; and she shocked Miss Barbara Leicester and
+Betty one morning by wondering how Henry and Nelly Foster could have
+had the face to go to church the very Sunday after their father was sent
+to jail. She did not believe that they cared a bit what people thought.
+
+"Poor children," said Miss Leicester, with quiet compassion, "the sight
+of their pitiful young faces was enough for me. When should one go to
+church if not in bitter trouble? That boy and girl look years older than
+the rest of you young folks."
+
+"It never seemed to me that they thought any less of themselves," said
+Mary Beck, in a disagreeable tone; "and I wouldn't ask them to my party,
+if I had one."
+
+"But they have worked so hard," said Betty. "Jonathan said yesterday
+that Harry Foster told him this spring, when he was working here, that
+he was going to pay every cent that his father owed, if he lived long
+enough. He is studying hard, too; you know that he hoped to go to
+college before this happened. They always look as if they were grateful
+for just being spoken to."
+
+"Plenty of people have made everything of them and turned their heads,"
+said Mary Beck, as if she were repeating something that had been said
+at home. "I think I should pity some people whose father had behaved so,
+but I don't like the Fosters a bit."
+
+"They are carrying a heavy load on their young shoulders," said Miss
+Barbara Leicester. "You will feel differently by and by, about them.
+Help them all you can, Mary!"
+
+Mary Beck went home that morning much displeased. She didn't mean to be
+hard-hearted, but it had seemed to her like proper condemnation of
+wrong-doing to treat the Fosters loftily. Now that Betty's eyes had
+filled with tears as she listened, and Miss Leicester evidently thought
+less of her for what had been said, Mary began to feel doubtful about
+the matter. Yes, what if her father had been like theirs,--could she be
+shut up like a prisoner, and behave as she expected the Fosters to
+behave? By the time she reached her own house she was ashamed of what
+she had said. Miss Leicester was at that moment telling Betty that she
+was astonished at such bitter feeling in their young neighbor. "She has
+never really thought about it. I dare say she only needs a sensible word
+or two to change her mind. You children have such tremendous opinions,"
+and Aunt Barbara smiled.
+
+"Once when I was staying in the Isle of Wight," said Betty, "I belonged
+to such a nice out-of-door club, Aunt Barbara."
+
+"Did you? What was it like?"
+
+"Oh, not really like anything that I can think of, only we had great fun
+together. We used to walk miles and miles, and carry some buns or buy
+them, and get milk or ginger-beer at the farms. There are so many ruins
+to go to see, and old churches, and homes of eminent persons of the time
+of Elizabeth, and we would read from their works; and it was so pleasant
+coming home by the foot-paths afterward," announced Betty with
+satisfaction. "The governesses used to go, too, but we could outrun all
+but one of them, the Barry's, and my Miss Winter, who was as dear as
+could be. I had my lessons with the Duncans, you know. Oh, it was such
+fun!--the others would let us go on as fast as we liked, and come poking
+along together, and have their own quiet pleasures." Betty was much
+diverted with her recollections. "I mean to begin an out-of-door club
+here, Aunt Barbara."
+
+"In my time," said Aunt Barbara, "girls were expected to know how to
+sew, and to learn to be good housekeepers."
+
+"You would join the club, wouldn't you?" asked Betty anxiously.
+
+"And be run away from, like the stout governesses, I dare say."
+
+There was an attempt at a serious expression, but Miss Leicester could
+not help laughing a little. Down came Miss Mary at this moment, with
+Letty behind her, carrying cushions, and Betty sprang up to help make
+the couch ready.
+
+"I wish that you would belong, too, and come with us on wheels," said
+she, returning to the subject that had been interrupted. "You could
+drive to the meetings and be head-member, Aunt Mary." But Aunt Mary was
+tired that day, and wished to have no demands made upon her. There were
+days when Betty had a plan for every half-hour, remarked Aunt Barbara
+indulgently.
+
+"Suppose you come out to the garden with me to pick some raspberries?"
+and Betty was quietly removed from the weak nerves of Aunt Mary, who
+plaintively said that Betty had almost too much life.
+
+"Too much life! Not a bit of it," said Serena, who was the grandniece's
+chief upholder and champion. "We did need waking up, 't was a fact, Miss
+Leicester; now, wa'n't it? It seemed just like old times, that night of
+the tea-party. Trouble is, we've all got to bein' too master
+comfortable, and thought we couldn't step one foot out o' the beaten
+rut. 'T is the misfortune o' livin' in a little place."
+
+And Serena marched back to the kitchen, carrying the empty glass from
+which Miss Mary Leicester had taken some milk, as if it were the banner
+of liberty.
+
+She put it down on the clean kitchen-table. "Too much life!" the good
+woman repeated scornfully. "I'd like to see a gal that had too much life
+for me. I was that kind myself, and right up an' doin'. All these
+Tideshead gals behave as slow as the everlastin' month o' March. Fussin'
+about their clothes, and fussin' about '_you_ do this' and '_I_ can't do
+that,' an' lettin' folks that know something ride right by 'em. See this
+little Betty, now, sweet as white laylocks, I do declare. There she goes
+'long o' Miss Barbary, out into the ros'berry bushes."
+
+"Aunt Barbara," Betty was saying a few minutes later, as one knelt each
+side of the row of white raspberries,--"Aunt Barbara, do you like best
+being grown up or being about as old as I am?"
+
+"Being grown up, I'm sure, dear," replied the aunt, after serious
+reflection.
+
+"I'm so glad. I don't believe people ever have such hard times with
+themselves afterward as they do growing up."
+
+"What is the matter now, Betty?"
+
+"Mary Beck, Aunt Barbara. I thought that I liked her ever and ever so
+much, but I have days when I want to shake her. It's my fault, because I
+wake up and think about her and feel cross before I even look at her,
+and then I can't get on all day. Then some days I can hardly wait to get
+over to see her, and we have such a good time. But you can't change her
+mind about anything."
+
+"I thought that you wouldn't be so unreasonable all summer," said Aunt
+Barbara, picking very fast. "You see that you expect Mary Beck to be
+perfect, and the poor child isn't. You made up a Mary Beck in your own
+mind, who was perfect at all points and just the kind of a girl you
+would like best to spend all your time with. Be thankful for all you do
+like in her; that's the best way."
+
+"I just fell in love with a girl in the Isle of Wight, last summer,"
+said Betty sorrowfully. "We wished to be together all the time, and we
+wrote notes and always went about together. She was older than I. But
+one day she said things that made me forget I ever liked her a bit. She
+wanted to make up afterward, but I _couldn't_; and she writes and writes
+me letters, but I never wish to see her again. I am sorry I ever liked
+her." Betty's eyes flashed, and her cheeks were very red.
+
+"I suppose it has been hard for her too," said Aunt Barbara; "but we
+must like different friends for different reasons. Just try to remember
+that you cannot find perfection. I used to know a great many girls when
+I was growing up, and some of them are my friends still, the few who are
+left. To find one true-hearted friend is worth living through a great
+many disappointments."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two or three weeks went over before Betty ceased to have the feeling
+that she was a stranger and foreigner in Tideshead. At first she said
+"you" and "I" when she was talking with the girls, but soon it became
+easier to say "we." She took great pleasure in doing whatever the rest
+did, from joining a class in Sunday-school to carrying round one of the
+subscription-papers to pay for some Fourth of July fireworks, which went
+up in a blaze of splendor on the evening of that glorious day.
+
+After the garden tea-party, nothing happened, of a social nature, for
+some time, although several of the boys and girls gave fine hints that
+something might be expected to happen at their own houses. There was a
+cheerful running to and fro about the Leicester house, and the high
+white gate next the street was heard to creak and clack at least once in
+every half-hour. Nelly Foster came seldom, but she was the brightest and
+merriest of all the girls when she grew a little excited, and lost the
+frightened look that had made lines on her forehead much too soon. Harry
+was not seen very often, but Betty wondered a great deal about him, and
+fancied him hunting and fishing in all sorts of dangerous places. The
+Picknell girls came into the village on Sundays always, and often once
+or twice in the week; but it was haying time now, and they were very
+busy at the farm. Betty liked them dearly, and so did Mary Beck, who did
+not get on with the minister's daughters at all, and had a prejudice, as
+we know, against Nelly Foster. These made the little company which
+seemed most closely allied, especially after the Sin Book Club became a
+thing of the past as an active society. Betty had proposed the
+out-of-door club, and had started a tennis-court, and devoted much time
+to it; but nobody knew how to play very well yet, except Harry Foster
+and Julia Picknell, and they were the most difficult ones to catch for
+an idle afternoon. George Max could play, and one or two others could
+stumble through a game and like it pretty well; but as for Mary Beck,
+her shoes were too small for much agility, and she liked to wear her
+clothes so tight that she was very clumsy with a racket. Betty's light
+little gowns looked prim and plain to the Tideshead girls, who thought
+their colors very strange, to begin with, and had not the sense to be
+envious when their wearer went by, as light-footed and graceful as they
+were awkward. They could not understand the simplicity that was natural
+to Betty, but everybody liked her, and felt as much interested as if she
+were an altogether new variety of human being. Perhaps we shall
+understand the situation better if we read a letter which our heroine
+wrote just then:--
+
+          MY DEAR PAPA,--This is from your Betty, who
+          intended to take a long walk with Mary Beck this
+          afternoon, but is now prevented by a
+          thunder-shower. It makes me wonder what you do
+          when you get wet, and who sees that you take off
+          your wet clothes and tries not to let you have a
+          cold. Isn't it almost time for you to come home
+          now, papa? I do miss taking care of you so very
+          much. You will be tired hearing about Mary Beck,
+          and you can't stop it, can you? as if you laughed
+          and then talked about something else when we were
+          walking together. You must remember that you said
+          we must be always fighting an enemy in ourselves,
+          and my enemy just now is making little funs of
+          Mary, and seeing that she doesn't know so much as
+          she thinks she does. I like too well to show her
+          that she is mistaken when she tells about things;
+          but it makes me sorry afterward, because, in spite
+          of myself, I like her better than I do anybody. I
+          truly love her, papa; indeed, I do, but I like to
+          tease her better than to help her, when she puts
+          on airs about the very places where I have been
+          and things I have done. Aunt Barbara speaks of her
+          manners, and wishes I would "play with" Nelly
+          Foster and the minister's girls: but Nelly is like
+          anybody grown up,--I suppose it is because she has
+          seen trouble, as people say here; and the
+          minister's girls are _little 'fraid cats_. That is
+          what Serena says, and is sure to make you laugh.
+          "Try and make 'em hop 'round," Serena told me at
+          the party, and I did try; but they aren't good
+          hoppers, and that's all there is to say. I sent
+          down to Riverport and bought Seth a book of violin
+          airs, and he practiced until two o'clock one
+          morning, so that Serena and Jonathan were saying
+          dreadful things. Aunt Mary is about the same, and
+          so is Aunt Barbara, and they send their love.
+          Papa, you must never tell, but I hate the one and
+          love the other. Mary Beck isn't half so bad as I
+          am to say that, but now it is a black mark and
+          must stay. There is one awful piece of news. The
+          Fosters' father has broken out of jail and
+          escaped, and they are offering a great reward, and
+          it is in all the papers. I ought to go to see
+          Nelly, but I dread it. I am writing this last page
+          another day, for yesterday the sun came out after
+          the shower and I went out with Aunt Barbara. She
+          is letting Mrs. Foster do some sewing for me. She
+          says that my clothes were in ruins; she did
+          indeed, and that they had been badly washed. I
+          hope that yours are not the same. Mrs. Foster
+          looked terribly frightened and pale, and asked
+          Aunt B. to come into the other room, and told her
+          about Mr. Foster. Then it was in the paper last
+          night. Papa, dear, I do remember what you said in
+          one of your letters about being a Tideshead girl
+          myself for this summer, and not standing off and
+          finding fault. I feel more like a Tideshead girl
+          lately, but I wish they wouldn't keep saying how
+          slow it is and nothing going on. We might do so
+          many nice things, but they make such great fusses
+          first, instead of just going and doing them, the
+          way you and I do. _They think of every reason why
+          you can't do things that you can do._ The currants
+          are all gone. You can't have a currant pie this
+          year. I thought those by the fence, under the
+          cherry-tree, might last until you came, because it
+          is shady, but they all spoiled in the rain. Now I
+          am going to read in "Walton's Lives" to Aunt Mary.
+          She says it is a book everybody ought to know, and
+          that I run wild more than I ought at my age. I
+          like to read aloud, as you know, so good-by, but
+          my age is _such_ a trouble. If you were here, we
+          would have the best good time.
+
+                     Your own child,               BETTY.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+A GREAT EXCITEMENT.
+
+
+THAT afternoon Betty's lively young voice grew droning and dull after a
+while, as she read the life of Dr. Donne, and at last she stopped
+altogether.
+
+"Aunt Mary, I can't help thinking about the Fosters' father. Do you
+suppose he will come home and frighten them some night?"
+
+"No, he would hardly dare to come where they are sure to be looking for
+him," said Aunt Mary. "Dear me, the thought makes me so nervous."
+
+"When I have read to the end of this page I will just run down to see
+Nelly a few minutes, if you can spare me. I keep dreading to see her
+until I am almost afraid to go."
+
+Miss Mary sighed and said yes. Somehow she didn't get hold of Betty's
+love,--only her duty.
+
+Betty lingered in the garden and picked some mignonette before she
+started, and a bright carnation or two from Aunt Barbara's special
+plants. The Fosters' house was farther down the street on the same side,
+and Nelly's blinds were shut, but if Betty had only known it, poor Nelly
+was looking out wistfully through them, and wishing with all her heart
+that her young neighbor would come in. She dreaded the meeting, too, but
+there was such a simple, frank friendliness about Betty Leicester that
+it did not hurt as if one of the other girls had come.
+
+There came the sound of the gate-latch, and Nelly went eagerly down.
+"Come up to my room; I was sitting there sewing," she said, blushing
+very red, and Betty felt her own cheeks burn. How dreadful it must be
+not to have such a comforting dear father as hers! She put her arms
+round Nelly's neck and kissed her, and Nelly could hardly keep from
+crying; but up-stairs they went to the bedroom, where Betty had never
+happened to go before. She felt suddenly, as she never had before, how
+pinched and poor the Fosters must be. Nelly was determined to be brave
+and cheerful, and took up her sewing again. It happened to be a little
+waist of Betty's own. Betty tried to talk gayly about being very tired
+of reading "Walton's Lives." She had come to a dull place in Dr. Donne's
+memoirs, though she thought them delightful at first. She was just
+reading "The Village on the Cliff," on her own account, with perfect
+delight.
+
+"Harry reads 'Walton's Angler,'" said Nelly. "That's the same man, isn't
+he? It is a stupid-looking old brown book that belonged to my
+grandfather."
+
+"Papa reads it, too," said Betty, nodding her head wisely. "I am in such
+a hurry to have him come, when I think of Harry. I am sure that he will
+help him to be a naturalist or something like that. Mr. Buckland would
+have just loved Harry. I knew him when I was a little bit of a thing.
+Papa used to take me to see him in London, and all his dreadful beasts
+and snakes used to frighten me, but I do so like to remember him now.
+Harry makes me think of Robinson Crusoe and Mayne Reid's books, and
+those story-book boys who used to do such wild things fishing and
+hunting."
+
+"We used to think that Harry never would get on because he spent so
+much time in the woods, but somehow he always learned his lessons too,"
+said Nelly proudly; "and now his fishing brings in so much money that I
+don't know how we shall live when winter comes. We are so anxious about
+winter. Oh, Betty, it is easy to tell you, but I can't bear to have
+other people even look at me;" and she burst into tears and hid her face
+in her hands.
+
+"Let us go out-doors, just down through the garden and across into the
+woods a little while," pleaded Betty. "Do, Nelly, dear!" and presently
+they were on their way. The fresh summer air and the sunshine were much
+better than the close-shaded room, where Nelly was startled by every
+sound about the house, and they soon lost their first feeling of
+constraint as they sat under a pine-tree whipping two of Miss Barbara
+Leicester's new tea-napkins. Betty had many things to say about her
+English life and her friends. Mary Beck never cared to hear much about
+England, and it was always delightful to have an interested listener. At
+last the sewing was finished, and Nelly proposed that they should go a
+little way farther, and come out on the river bank. Harry would be
+coming up about this time with his fare of fish, if he had had good
+luck. It would be fun to shout to him as he went by.
+
+They pushed on together through the open pasture, where the sweet-fern
+and bayberry bushes grew tall and thick; there was another strip of
+woods between them and the river, and just this side was a deserted
+house, which had not been lived in for many years and was gray and
+crumbling. The fields that belonged to it had been made part of a great
+sheep pasture, and two or three sheep were standing by the half-opened
+door, as if they were quite at home there in windy or wet weather. Betty
+had seen the old house before, and thought it was most picturesque. She
+now proposed that they should have a picnic party by and by, and make a
+fire in the old fireplace; but Nelly Foster thought there would be great
+danger of burning the house down.
+
+"Suppose we go and look in?" pleaded Betty. "Mary Beck and I saw it not
+long after I came, but she thought it was going to rain, so that we
+didn't stop. I like to go into an empty old ruin, and make up stories
+about it, and wonder who used to live there. Don't stop to pick these
+blackberries; you know they aren't half ripe," she teased Nelly; and so
+they went over to the old house, frightening away the sheep as they
+crossed the doorstep boldly. It was all in ruins; the roof was broken
+about the chimney, so that the sun shone through upon the floor, and the
+light-red bricks were softened and sifting down. In one corner there was
+a heap of withes for mending fences, which had been pulled about by the
+sheep, and there were some mud nests of swallows high against the walls,
+but the birds seemed to have already left them. This room had been the
+kitchen, and behind it was a dark, small place which must have been a
+bedroom when people lived there, dismal as it looked now.
+
+"I am going to look in here and all about the place," said Betty
+cheerfully, and stepped in to see what she could find.
+
+"Oh, go back, Nelly!" she screamed, in a great fright, the next moment;
+and they fled out of the house into the warm sunshine. They had had time
+to see that a man was lying on the floor as if he were dead. Betty's
+heart was beating so that she could hardly speak.
+
+"We must get somebody to come," she panted, trying to stop Nelly. "Was
+it somebody dead?"
+
+But Nelly sank down as pale as ashes into the sweet-fern bushes, and
+looked at her strangely. "Oh, Betty Leicester, it will kill mother, it
+will kill her! I believe it was my father; what shall I do?"
+
+"Your father," faltered Betty,--"your father? We must go and tell." Then
+she remembered that he was a hunted man, a fugitive from justice.
+
+They looked fearfully at the house; the sheep had come back and stood
+again near the doorway. There was something more horrible than the two
+girls had ever known in the silence of the place. It would have been
+less awful if there had been a face at the broken door or windows.
+
+"Henry--we must try to stop Henry," said poor pale Nelly, and they
+hurried toward the river shore. They could not help looking anxiously
+behind them as they passed the belt of pine; a terrible fear possessed
+them as they ran. "He is afraid that somebody will see him. I wonder if
+he will come home to-night."
+
+"He must be ill there," said Betty, but she did not dare to say anything
+else. What an unendurable thing to be afraid and ashamed of one's own
+father!
+
+They looked down the river with eager eyes. Yes, there was Harry
+Foster's boat coming up slowly, with the three-cornered sail spread to
+catch the light breeze. Nelly gave a long sigh and sank down on the
+turf, and covered her face as she cried bitterly. Betty thought, with
+cowardly longing, of the quiet and safety of Aunt Mary's room, and the
+brown-covered volume of "Walton's Lives." Then she summoned all her
+courage. These two might never have sorer need of a friend than in this
+summer afternoon.
+
+Henry Foster's boat sailed but slowly. It was heavily laden, and the
+wind was so light that from time to time he urged it with the oars. He
+did not see the two girls waiting on the bank until he was close to
+them, for the sun was in his eyes and his thoughts were busy. His
+father's escape from jail was worse than any sorrow yet; nobody knew
+what might come of it. Harry felt very old and careworn for a boy of
+seventeen. He had determined to go to see Miss Barbara Leicester that
+evening, and to talk over his troubles with her. He had been able to
+save a little money, and he feared that it might be demanded. He had
+already paid off the smaller debts that were owed in the village; but he
+knew his father too well not to be afraid of getting some menacing
+letters presently. If his father had only fled the country! But how
+could that be done without money? He would not work his passage; Harry
+was certain enough of that. Would it not be better to let him have the
+money and go to the farthest limit to which it could carry him?
+
+Something made the young man shade his eyes with his hand and look
+toward the shore; then he took the oars and pulled quickly in. That was
+surely his sister Nelly, and the girl beside her, who wore a grayish
+dress with a white blouse waist, was Betty Leicester. It was just like
+kind-hearted little Betty to have teased poor Nelly out into the woods.
+He would carry them home in his boat; he could rub it clean with some
+handfuls of hemlock twigs or river grass. Then he saw how strangely they
+looked, as he pushed the boat in and pulled it far ashore. What in the
+world had happened?
+
+Nelly tried to speak again and again, but her voice could not make
+itself heard. "Oh, don't cry any more, Nelly, dear," said Betty,
+trembling from head to foot, and very pale. "We went into the old house
+up there by the pasture, and found--Nelly said it was your father, and
+we thought he was very ill."
+
+"I'll take you both home, then," said Harry Foster, speaking quickly and
+with a hard voice. "Get in, both of you,--this is the shortest
+way,--then I'll come back by myself."
+
+"Oh, no, no!" sobbed Nelly. "He looked as if he were dying, Harry; he
+was lying on the floor. We will go, too; he couldn't hurt us, could he?"
+And the three turned back into the woods. Betty's heart almost failed
+her. She felt like a soldier going into battle. Oh, could she muster
+bravery enough to go into that house again? Yet she loved her father so
+much that doing this for another girl's father was a great comfort, in
+all her fear.
+
+The young man hurried ahead when they came near the house, and it was
+only a few minutes before he reappeared.
+
+"You must go and tell mother to come as quick as she can, and hurry to
+find the doctor and tell him; he will know what to do. Father has been
+dreadfully hurt somehow. Perhaps Miss Leicester will let Jonathan come
+to help us get him home." Harry Foster's face looked old and strange; he
+never would seem like a boy any more, Betty thought, with a heart full
+of sympathy. She hurried away with Nelly; they could not bring help fast
+enough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the great excitement was over, Betty felt very tired and unhappy.
+That night she could be comforted only by Aunt Barbara's taking her into
+her own bed, and being more affectionate and sympathetic than ever
+before, even talking late, like a girl, about the Out-of-Door Club
+plans. In spite of this attempt to return to every-day thoughts, Betty
+waked next morning to much annoyance and trouble. She felt as if the sad
+affairs of yesterday related only to the poor Fosters and herself, but
+as she went down the street, early, she was stopped and questioned by
+eager groups of people who were trying to find out something more about
+the discovery of Mr. Foster in the old house. It proved that he had
+leaped from a high window, hurting himself badly by the fall, when he
+made his escape from prison, and that he had been wandering in the woods
+for days. The officers had come at once, and there was a group of men
+outside the Fosters' house. This had a terrible look to Betty. Everybody
+said that the doctor believed there was only a slight chance for Mr.
+Foster's life, and that they were not going to try to take him back to
+jail. He had been delirious all night. One or two kindly disposed
+persons said that they pitied his poor family more than ever, but most
+of the neighbors insisted that "it served Foster just right." Betty did
+her errand as quickly as possible, and hastily brushed by some curious
+friends who tried to detain her. She felt as if it were unkind and
+disloyal to speak of her neighbor's trouble to everybody, and the
+excitement and public concern of the little village astonished her very
+much. She did not know, until then, how the joy or trouble of one home
+could affect the town as if it were one household. Everybody spoke very
+kindly to her, and most people called her "Betty," and seemed to know
+her very well, whether they had ever spoken to her before or not. The
+women were standing at their front doors or their gates, to hear
+whatever could be told, and our friend looked down the long street and
+felt that it was like running the gauntlet to get home again. Just then
+she met the doctor, looking gray and troubled, as if he had been awake
+all night, but when he saw Betty his face brightened.
+
+"Well done, my little lady," he said, in a cheerful voice, which made
+her feel steady again, and then he put his hand on Betty's shoulder and
+looked at her very kindly.
+
+"Oh, doctor! may I walk along with you a little way?" she faltered.
+"Everybody asks me to tell"--
+
+"Yes, yes, I know all about it," said the doctor; and he turned and took
+Betty's hand as if she were a child, and they walked away together. It
+was well known in Tideshead that Dr. Prince did not like to be
+questioned about his patients.
+
+"I was wondering whether I ought to go to see Nelly," said Betty, as
+they came near the house. "I haven't seen her since I came home with her
+yesterday. I--didn't quite dare to go in as I came by."
+
+"Wait until to-morrow, perhaps," said the doctor. "The poor man will be
+gone then, and you will be a greater comfort. Go over through the
+garden. You can climb the fences, I dare say," and he looked at Betty
+with a queer little smile. Perhaps he had seen her sometimes crossing
+the fields with Mary Beck.
+
+"Do you mean that he is going to die to-day?" asked Betty, with great
+awe. "Ought I to go then?"
+
+"Love may go where common kindness is shut out," said Dr. Prince. "You
+have done a great deal to make those poor children happy, this summer.
+They had been treated in a very narrow-minded way. It was not like
+Tideshead, I must say," he added, "but people are shy sometimes, and
+Mrs. Foster herself could not bear to see the pity in her neighbors'
+faces. It will be easier for her now."
+
+"I keep thinking, what if it were my own papa?" said Betty softly. "He
+couldn't be so wicked, but he might be ill, and I not there."
+
+"Dear me, no!" said the doctor heartily, and giving Betty's hand a tight
+grasp and a little swing to and fro. "I suppose he's having a capital
+good time up among his glaciers. I wish that I were with him for a
+month's holiday;" and at this Betty was quite cheerful again.
+
+Now they stopped at Betty's own gate. "You must take your Aunt Mary in
+hand a little, before you go away. There's nothing serious the matter
+now, only lack of exercise and thinking too much about herself."
+
+"She did come to my tea-party in the garden," responded Betty, with a
+faint smile, "and I think sometimes she almost gets enough courage to go
+to walk. She didn't sleep at all last night, Serena said this morning."
+
+"You see, she doesn't need sleep," explained Dr. Prince, quite
+professionally. "We are all made to run about the world and to work.
+Your aunt is always making blood and muscle with such a good appetite,
+and then she never uses them, and nature is clever at revenges. Let her
+hunt the fields, as you do, and she would sleep like a top. I call it a
+disease of _too-wellness_, and I only know how to doctor sick people.
+Now there's a lesson for you to reflect upon," and the busy doctor went
+hurrying back to where he had left his horse standing, when he first
+caught sight of Betty's white and anxious face.
+
+As she entered the house Aunt Barbara was just coming out. "I am going
+to see poor Mrs. Foster, my dear, or to ask for her at the door," she
+said, and Serena and Letty and Jonathan all came forward to ask whether
+Betty knew any later news. Seth Pond had been loitering up the street
+most of the morning, with feelings of great excitement, but he presently
+came back with instructions from Aunt Barbara to weed the long
+box-borders behind the house, which he somewhat unwillingly obeyed.
+
+A few days later the excitement was at an end, the sad funeral was over,
+and on Sunday the Fosters were at church in their appealing black
+clothes. Everybody had been as kind as they knew how to be, but there
+were no faces so welcome to the sad family as our little Betty's and the
+doctor's.
+
+"It comes of simply following her instinct to be kind and do right,"
+said the doctor to Aunt Barbara, next day. "The child doesn't think
+twice about it, as most of us do. We Tideshead people are terribly
+afraid of one another, and have to go through just so much before we can
+take the next step. There's no way to get right things done but to
+simply _do_ them. But it isn't so much what your Betty does as what she
+is."
+
+"She has grown into my old heart," said Aunt Barbara. "I cannot bear to
+think of her going away and taking the sunshine with her!--and yet she
+has her faults, of course," added the sensible old lady.
+
+"Oh, by the way!" said Dr. Prince, turning back. "My wife told me to ask
+you to come over to tea to-night and bring the little girl; I nearly
+forgot to give the message."
+
+"I shall be very happy to come," answered Miss Leicester, and the doctor
+nodded and went his busy way. Betty was very fond of going to drive with
+him, and he looked about the neighborhood as he drove along, hoping to
+catch sight of her; but Betty was at that moment deeply engaged in
+helping Letty shell some peas for dinner, at the other side of the
+house, in the garden doorway of the kitchen. She had spent an hour
+before that with Mrs. Beck, while they tried together with more or less
+success to trim a new sailor hat for Mary Beck like one of Betty's own.
+Mrs. Beck was as friendly as possible in these days, but whenever the
+Fosters were mentioned her face grew dark. She did not like Mrs. Foster;
+she did not exactly blame her for all that had happened, but she did not
+pity her either, or feel a true compassion for such a troubled neighbor.
+Betty never could understand it. At any rate, she had been saved by her
+unsettled life from taking a great interest in her own or other people's
+dislikes.
+
+That evening, just as the tea-party was in full progress, somebody came
+for Dr. Prince; and when he returned from his study he announced that he
+must go at once down the river road to see one of his patients who was
+worse. Perhaps he saw an eager look in Betty's eyes, for he asked
+gravely if Miss Leicester had a niece to lend, it being a moonlight
+evening and not too long a drive. Aunt Barbara made no objection, and
+our friend went skipping off to the doctor's stable in high glee.
+
+"Oh, that's nice!" she exclaimed. "I'm so glad that you're going to take
+Pepper; she's such a dear little horse."
+
+"Pepper is getting old," said the doctor, "but she really likes to go
+out in the evening. You can see how fast she will scurry home. Get me a
+whip from the rack, will you, child? I am anxious to be off."
+
+Mrs. Prince and Aunt Barbara were busy talking in the parlor, and were
+taking great pleasure in their social occasion, but Betty was so glad
+that she need not stay to listen, instead of going down the town street
+and out among the quiet farms behind brisk old Pepper. The wise, kind
+doctor at her side was silent as he thought about his patient, yet he
+felt much pleasure in Betty's companionship. They could smell the new
+marsh hay and hear the tree-toads; it was a most beautiful summer night.
+Betty felt very grateful and happy, she did not exactly know why; it was
+not altogether the effect of Mrs. Prince's tea and cakes, or even
+because she was driving with the doctor, but the restlessness and
+uncertainty that make so great a part of a girl's life seemed to have
+gone away out of her heart. Instead of the excitement there was a
+pleasant quietness and sense of security, no matter what might be going
+to happen.
+
+Presently the doctor appeared to have thought enough about his patient.
+"You don't feel chilly, do you?" he asked kindly. "I find it damp and
+cold, sometimes, after a hot day, crossing this low land."
+
+"Oh, no, I'm as warm as toast," answered Betty. "Whom are you going to
+see, Dr. Prince? Old Mr. Duff?"
+
+"No, he is out-of-doors again. I saw him in the hayfield this morning.
+You haven't been keeping up with my practice as well as usual, of late,"
+said the doctor, laughing a little. "I am going to see a girl about your
+own age. I am afraid that I am going to lose her, too."
+
+"Is it that pretty Lizzie Edwards who sits behind the Becks' pew? I
+heard that she had a fever. I saw her the last Sunday that she was at
+church." Betty's heart was filled with dismay, and the doctor did not
+speak again. They were near the house now, and could see some lights
+flitting about; and as they stopped the sick girl's father stole
+silently from behind the bushes and began to fasten the horse, so that
+Dr. Prince could go in directly. Betty could hear the ominous word
+"_sinking_," as they whispered together; then she was left alone. It
+seemed so sad that this other girl should be near the door of death, and
+so close to the great change that must come to every one. Betty had
+never known so direct a consciousness of the inevitableness of death,
+but she was full of life herself, and so eager and ready for whatever
+might be coming. What if this other girl had felt so, too? She watched
+the upper windows where the dim light shone, and now and then a shadow
+crossed the curtain. Everything out-of-doors was quiet and sweet; the
+moon went higher and higher, and the wind rustled among the apple-trees.
+Some white petunias in a little plot near by looked strangely white, and
+Betty thought that perhaps the other girl had planted them, and there
+they were growing on. Now she was going to die. Betty wondered what it
+would be like, and if the other girl knew, and if she minded so very
+much. After a few minutes she found herself saying an eager prayer that
+the doctor might still cure her, and keep her alive. If she must die,
+Betty hoped that she herself might do some of the things that Lizzie
+Edwards would have done, and take her place. When old people had to go,
+who had done all they wished to do, and got tired, and could not help
+thinking about having a new life, that was one thing; but to go now and
+leave all your hopes and plans behind,--indeed, it seemed too hard. But
+Betty had a sense of the difference between what things could be helped
+and what were in God's hands, and when she had said her prayer she
+waited again hopefully for a long time in the moonlight.
+
+At last there seemed to be more movement in the house and she could hear
+voices; then she heard somebody sobbing, and the light in the upper room
+went quickly out.
+
+The doctor came after a few minutes more, which seemed very long and
+miserable. Pepper had fallen asleep, good old horse! and Betty did not
+dare to ask any questions.
+
+"Well, well," said the doctor, in a surprisingly cheerful voice, "I
+forgot all about you, Miss Betty Leicester. I hope that you're not cold
+this time, and I don't know what the aunts will have to say about us; it
+is nearly eleven o'clock."
+
+"I'm not cold, but I did get frightened," acknowledged Betty faintly;
+then she felt surprisingly light-hearted. Dr. Prince could not be in
+such good spirits if he had just seen his poor young patient die!
+
+"We got here just in time," he said, tucking the light blanket closer
+about Betty. "We've pulled the child through, but she was almost gone
+when I first saw her; there was just a spark of life left,--a spark of
+life," repeated the doctor.
+
+"Who was it crying?" Betty asked.
+
+"The mother," said the doctor. "I had just told her that she was going
+to keep the little girl. Why, here's a good sound sassafras lozenge in
+my pocket. Now we'll have a handsome entertainment."
+
+Betty, who had just felt as if she were going to cry for nobody knew how
+long, began to laugh instead, as Dr. Prince broke his unexpected lozenge
+into honest halves and presented her solemnly with one of them. There
+was never such a good sassafras lozenge before or since, and Pepper
+trotted steadily home to her stall and the last end of her supper. "Only
+think, if the doctor hadn't known just what to do," said Betty later to
+Aunt Barbara, "and how he goes all the time to people's houses! Every
+day we see him going by to do things to help people. This might have
+been a freezing, blowing night, and he would have gone just the same."
+
+"Dear child, run up to your bed now," said Aunt Barbara, kissing her
+good-night; for Betty was very wide awake, and still had so many things
+to say. She never would forget that drive at night. She had been taught
+a great lesson of the good doctor's helpfulness, but Aunt Barbara had
+learned it long ago.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+THE OUT-OF-DOOR CLUB.
+
+
+THE Out-of-Door Club in Tideshead was slow in getting under way, but it
+was a great success at last. Its first expedition was to the Picknell
+farm, to see the place where there had been a great battle with the
+French and Indians, in old times, and the relics of a beaver-dam were to
+be inspected besides. Mr. Picknell came to talk about the plan with Miss
+Barbara Leicester, who was going to drive out to the farm in the
+afternoon, and then walk back with the club, as besought by Betty. She
+was highly pleased with the eagerness of her young neighbors, who had
+discovered in her an unsuspected sympathy and good-fellowship at the
+time of Betty's June tea-party. It had been a pity to make believe old
+in all these late years, and to become more and more a stranger to the
+young people. Perhaps, if the club proved a success, it would be a good
+thing to have winter meetings too, and read together.
+
+Somehow Miss Barbara had never before known exactly what to do for the
+young folks. She could have a little supper for them in the evening, and
+ask them to come and read with her; or perhaps she might propose to read
+some good story to them, and some poetry. They ought to know something
+of the great poets. Miss Mary Leicester was taken up with the important
+business of her own invalidism, but it might be a very good thing for
+her to take some part in such pleasant plans. Under all Aunt Barbara's
+shyness and habit of formality Betty had discovered her warm and
+generous heart. They had become fast friends, and, to tell the truth,
+Aunt Mary was beginning to have an uneasy and wistful consciousness that
+she was causing herself to be left out of many pleasures.
+
+The gloom and general concern at the time of the Fosters' sorrow had
+caused the first club meeting to be postponed until early in August; and
+then, though August weather would not seem so good for out-of-door
+expeditions, this one Wednesday dawned like a cool, clear June day, and
+at three o'clock the fresh easterly wind had not ceased to blow and yet
+had not brought in any seaward clouds. There were eleven boys and girls,
+and Miss Barbara Leicester made twelve, while with the two Picknells the
+club counted fourteen. The Fosters promised to come later in the summer,
+but they did not feel in the least hurt because some of their friends
+urged them to join in cheerful company this very day. It seemed to Betty
+as if Nelly looked brighter and somehow unafraid, now that the first
+miserable weeks had gone. It may have been that poor Nelly was
+lighter-hearted already than she often had been in her father's
+lifetime.
+
+Betty and Mary Beck walked together, at first; but George Max asked Mary
+to walk with him, so they parted. Betty liked Harry Foster better than
+any other of the boys, and really missed him to-day. She was brimful of
+plans about persuading her father to help Harry to study natural
+history. While the club was getting ready to walk two by two, Betty
+suddenly remembered that she was an odd one, and hastily took her place
+between the Grants, insisting that they three must lead the procession.
+The timid Grants were full of fun that day, for a wonder, and a merry
+head to the procession they were with Betty, walking fast and walking
+slowly, and leading the way by short cuts across-country with great
+spirit. They called a halt to pick huckleberries, and they dared the
+club to cross a wide brook on insecure stepping-stones. Everybody made
+fun for everybody else whenever they saw an opportunity, and when they
+reached the Picknell farm, quite warm and excited, they were announced
+politely by George Max as "the Out-of-Breath Club." The shy Picknells
+wore their best white Sunday dresses, and the long white farm-house with
+its gambrel roof seemed a delightfully shady place as the club sat still
+a while to cool and rest itself and drink some lemonade. Mrs. Picknell
+was a thin, bright-eyed little woman, who had the reputation of being
+the best housekeeper in town. She was particularly kind to Betty
+Leicester, who was after all no more a stranger to her than were some of
+the others who came. It was lovely to see that Mrs. Picknell and Julia
+were so proud of Mary's gift drawing, and evidently managed that she
+should have time for it. Mary had begun to go to Riverport every week
+for a lesson.
+
+"She heard that Mr. Clinturn, the famous artist, was spending the summer
+there, and started out by herself one day to ask him to give her
+lessons," Mrs. Picknell told Betty proudly. "He said at first that he
+couldn't spare the time; but I had asked Mary to take two or three of
+her sketches with her, and when he saw them he said that it would be a
+pleasure to help her all that he could."
+
+"I do think this picture of the old packet-boat coming up the river is
+the prettiest of all. Oh, here's Aunt Barbara; do come and see this,
+Aunty!" said Betty, with great enthusiasm. "It makes me think of the
+afternoon I came to you."
+
+Miss Leicester took out her eyeglasses and looked as she was bidden. "It
+is a charming little water-color," she said, with delighted surprise.
+"Did you really teach yourself until this summer?"
+
+"I only had my play paint-box until last winter," said Mary Picknell. "I
+am so glad you like it, Miss Leicester;" for Miss Leicester had many
+really beautiful pictures of her own, and her praise was worth having.
+
+Then Mr. Picknell took his stick from behind the door, and led the
+company of guests out across the fields to a sloping rough piece of
+pasture land, with a noisy brook at the bottom, where a terrible battle
+had been fought in the old French and Indian war. He read them an
+account of it from Mr. Parkman's history, and told all the neighborhood
+traditions of the frightened settlers, and burnt houses, and murdered
+children and very old people, and the terrible march of a few captives
+through the winter woods to Canada. How his own great-great grandfather
+and grandmother were driven away from home, and each believed the other
+dead for three years, until the man escaped, and then went, hearing that
+his wife was alive, to buy her freedom. They came to the farm again, and
+were buried in the old burying-lot, side by side.
+
+"There was a part of the story which you left out," Mrs. Picknell said.
+"When they killed the little baby, the Indians told its poor mother not
+to cry about it or they would kill her too; and when her tears would
+fall, a kind-hearted squaw was quick enough to throw some water in the
+poor woman's face, so that the men only laughed and thought it was a
+taunt, and not done to hide tears at all."
+
+"I have not heard these old town stories for years. We ought to thank
+you heartily," said Miss Barbara, when the battle-ground had been shown
+and the club had heard all the interesting things that were known about
+the great fight. Then they came back by way of the old family
+burying-place and read the quaint epitaphs, which Mr. Picknell himself
+had cut deeper and kept from wearing away. It seemed that they never
+could forget the old farm's history.
+
+"I maintain that every old place in town ought to have its history
+kept," said Mr. Picknell. "Now, you boys and girls, what do you know
+about the places where you live? Why don't you make town clerks of
+yourselves? Take the edges of almanacs, if you can't get courage to
+begin a blank-book, and make notes of things, so that dates will be kept
+for those who come after you. Most of you live where your
+great-grandfathers did, and you ought to know about the old folks. Most
+of what I've kept alive about this old farm I learned from my
+great-grandmother, who lived to be a very old woman, and liked to tell
+me stories in the long winter evenings, when I was a boy. Now we'll go
+and see where the beavers used to build, down here where the salt water
+makes up into the outlet of the brook. Plenty of their logs lay there
+moss-covered, when I was a grown man."
+
+Somehow the getting acquainted with each other in a new way was the best
+part of the club, after all. It was quite another thing from even
+sitting side by side in school, to walk these two or three miles
+together. Betty Leicester had taught her Tideshead cronies something of
+her own lucky secret of taking and making the pleasures that were close
+at hand. It was great good fortune to get hold of a common wealth of
+interest and association by means of the club; and as Mr. Picknell and
+Miss Leicester talked about the founders and pioneers of the earliest
+Tideshead farms, there was not a boy nor girl who did not have a sense
+of pride in belonging to so valiant an old town. They could plan a dozen
+expeditions to places of historic interest. There had been even witches
+in Tideshead, and soldiers and scholars to find out about and remember.
+There was no better way of learning American history (as Miss Leicester
+said) than to study thoroughly the history of a single New England
+village. As for newer towns in the West, they were all children of some
+earlier settlements, and nobody could tell how far back a little careful
+study would lead.
+
+There was time for a good game of tennis after the stories were told,
+and the play was watched with great excitement, but some of the club
+girls strayed about the old house, part of which had been a
+garrison-house. The doors stood open, and the sunshine fell pleasantly
+across the floors of the old rooms. Usually they meant to go picnicking,
+but to-day the Picknells had asked their friends to tea, and a delicious
+country supper it was. Then they all sang, and Mary Beck's clear voice,
+as usual, led all the rest. It was seven o'clock before the party was
+over. The evening was cooler than August evenings usually are, and after
+many leave-takings the club set off afoot toward the town.
+
+"What a good time!" said Betty to the Grants and Aunt Barbara, for she
+had claimed one Grant and let Aunt Barbara walk with the other; and
+everybody said "What a good time!" at least twice, as they walked down
+the lane to the road. There they stopped for a minute to sing another
+verse of "Good-night, ladies," and indeed went away singing along the
+road, until at last the steepness of the hill made them quiet. The
+Picknells, in their doorway, listened as long as they could.
+
+At the top of the long hill the club stopped for a minute, and kept very
+still to hear the hermit-thrushes singing, and did not notice at first
+that three persons were coming toward them, a tall man and a boy and
+girl. Suddenly Betty's heart gave a great beat. The taller figure was
+swinging a stick to and fro, in a way that she knew well; the boy was
+Harry Foster, and the girl was Nelly. Surely--but the other? Oh, _yes_,
+it was papa! "Oh, _papa_!" and Betty gave a strange little laugh and
+flew before the rest of the club, who were still walking slowly and
+sedately, and threw herself into her father's arms. Then Miss Leicester
+hurried, too, and the rest of the club broke ranks, and felt for a
+minute as if their peace of mind was troubled.
+
+But Betty's papa was equal to this emergency. "This must be Becky, but
+how grown!" he said to Mary Beck, holding out his hand cordially; "and
+George Max, and the Grants, and--Frank Crane, is it? I used to play with
+your father;" and so Mr. Leicester, pioneered by Betty, shook hands with
+everybody and was made most welcome.
+
+"You see that I know you all very well through Betty! So nobody believed
+that I could come on the next train after my letter, and get here almost
+as soon?" he said, holding Betty's hand tighter than ever, and looking
+at her as if he wished to kiss her again. He did kiss her again, it
+being his own Betty. They were very fond of each other, these two; but
+some of their friends agreed with Aunt Barbara, who always said that her
+nephew was much too young to have the responsibility of so tall a girl
+as Betty Leicester.
+
+Nobody noticed that Harry and Nelly Foster were there too, in the first
+moment of excitement, and so the first awkwardness of taking up
+every-day life again with their friends was passed over easily. As for
+our Betty, she fairly danced along the road as they went homeward, and
+could not bear to let go her hold of her father's hand. It was even more
+dear and delightful than she had dreamed to have him back again.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THE STARLIGHT COMES IN.
+
+
+THERE was a most joyful evening in the old Leicester house. Everybody
+forgot to speak about Betty's going to bed, and even Aunt Mary was in
+high spirits. It was wonderful how much good a little excitement did for
+her, and Betty had learned that an effort to be entertaining always
+brought the pleasant reward of saving Aunt Mary from a miserable,
+tedious morning or afternoon. When she waked next morning, her first
+thought was about papa, and her next that Aunt Mary was likely to have a
+headache after sitting up so late. Betty herself was tired, and felt as
+if it were the day after the fair; but when she hurried down to
+breakfast she found Aunt Barbara alone, and was told that papa had risen
+at four o'clock, and, as she expressed it to Aunt Mary a little later,
+stolen his breakfast from Serena and gone down to Riverport on the
+packet, the tide having served at that early hour.
+
+"I heard a clacketing in the kitchen closet," said Serena, "and I just
+got my skirt an' a cape on to me an' flew down to see what 't was. I
+expected somebody was took with fits; an' there was y'r father with both
+his hands full o' somethin' he'd collected to stay himself with, an' he
+looked 's much o' a boy's ever he did, and I so remarked, an' he told me
+he was goin' to Riverport. 'Want a little change, I s'pose?' says I, an'
+he laughed good an' clipped it out o' the door and down towards the
+landin'."
+
+"I wonder what he's after now, Serena?" said Betty sagely, but Serena
+shook her head absently. It was evident to Betty's mind that papa had
+shaken off all thought of care, and was taking steps towards some
+desired form of enjoyment. He had been disappointed the evening before
+to find that there were hardly any boats to be had. Very likely he meant
+to bring one up on the packet that afternoon; but Betty was disappointed
+not to find him in the house, and thought that he might have called her
+to go down on the packet with him. She felt as if she were going to
+have a long and dull morning.
+
+However, she found that Aunt Mary was awake and in a cheerful frame, so
+she brought her boots in, and sat by the garden window while she put
+some new buttons on with the delightful little clamps that save so many
+difficult stitches. Aunt Mary was already dressed, though it was only
+nine o'clock, and was seated before an open bureau drawer, which her
+grandniece had learned to recognize as a good sign. Aunt Mary had
+endless treasures of the past carefully tucked away in little bundles
+and boxes, and she liked to look these over, and to show them to Betty,
+and tell their history. She listened with great eagerness to Betty's
+account of papa's departure.
+
+"I was afraid that you would feel tired this morning," said the girl,
+turning a bright face toward her aunt.
+
+"I am sure I expected it myself," replied Aunt Mary plaintively, "but it
+isn't neuralgia weather, perhaps. At any rate, I am none the worse."
+
+"I believe that a good frolic is the very best thing for you," insisted
+Betty, feeling very bold; but Aunt Mary received this news amiably,
+though she made no reply. Betty had recovered by this time from her
+sense of bitter wrong at her father's departure, and after she had
+talked with Aunt Mary a little while about the grand success of the
+Out-of-Door Club, she went her ways to find Becky.
+
+Becky was in a very friendly mood, and admired Mr. Leicester, and
+wondered too at ever having been afraid of him in other years, when she
+used to see him walking sedately down the street.
+
+"Papa is very sober sometimes when he is hard at work," explained Betty
+with eagerness. "He gets very tired, and then--oh, I don't mean that
+papa is ever aggravating, but for days and days I know that he is
+working hard and can't stop to hear about my troubles, so I try not to
+talk to him; but he always makes up for it after a while. I don't mind
+now, but when I was a little girl and first went away from here I used
+to be lonely, and even cry sometimes, and of course I didn't understand.
+We get on beautifully now, and I like to read so much that I can always
+cover up the dull times with a nice book."
+
+"Do they last long,--the dull times?" asked Mary Beck in an unusually
+sympathetic voice. Betty had spoken sadly, and it dawned upon her
+friend's mind that life was not all a holiday even to Betty Leicester.
+
+"Ever so long," answered Betty briskly; "but you see I have my mending
+and housekeeping when we are in lodgings. We are masters of the
+situation now, papa always says; but when I was too small to look after
+him, we used to have to depend upon old lodging-house women, and they
+made us miserable, though I love them all for the sake of the good ones
+who will let you go into the kitchen yourself and make a cup of tea for
+papa just right, and be honest and good, and cry when you go away
+instead of slamming the door. Oh, I could tell you stories, Mary Eliza
+Beck!" and Betty took one or two frisky steps along the sidewalk as if
+she meant to dance. Mary Beck felt as if she were looking out of a very
+small and high garret window at a vast and surprising world. She was not
+sure that she should not like to keep house in country lodgings, though,
+and order the dinner, and have a housekeeping purse, as Betty had done
+these three or four years. They had often talked about these
+experiences; but Becky's heart always faltered when she thought of being
+alone in strange houses and walking alone in strange streets. Sometimes
+Betty had delightful visits, and excellent town lodgings, and
+diversified hotel life of the most entertaining sort. She seemed to be
+thinking about all this and reflecting upon it deeply. "I wish that papa
+and I were going to be here a year," she said. "I love Tideshead."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Leicester did not wait to come back with the packet boat, but
+appeared by the stage from the railway station in good season for
+dinner. He was very hungry, and looked well satisfied with his morning's
+work, and he told Betty that she should know toward the end of the
+afternoon the reason of his going to Riverport, so that there was
+nothing to do but to wait. She was disappointed, because she had fancied
+that he meant to bring home a new row-boat; perhaps, after all, he had
+made some arrangements about it. Why, yes! it might be coming up by the
+packet, and they would go out together that very evening. Betty could
+hardly wait for the hour to come.
+
+When dinner was over, papa was enticed up to see the cubby-house, while
+the aunts took their nap. There was a little roast pig for dinner, and
+Aunt Barbara had been disappointed to find that her guest had gone away,
+as it was his favorite dinner; but his unexpected return made up for
+everything, and they had a great deal of good fun. Papa was in the best
+of spirits, and went out to speak to Serena about the batter pudding as
+soon as Aunt Barbara rose from her chair.
+
+"Now don't you tell me you don't get them batter puddings a sight better
+in the dwellings of the rich and great," insisted Serena, with great
+complacency. "Setting down to feast with lords and dukes, same's you do,
+you must eat of the best the year round. We do season the sauce well, I
+will allow. Miss Barbara, she always thinks it may need a drop more."
+
+"Serena," said Betty's father solemnly, "I assure you that I have eaten
+a slice of bacon between two tough pieces of hard tack for my dinner
+many a day this summer, and I haven't had such a batter pudding since
+the last one you made yourself."
+
+"You don't tell me they're goin' out o' fashion," said Serena, much
+shocked. "I know some ain't got the knack o' makin' 'em."
+
+Betty stood by, enjoying the conversation. Serena always said proudly
+that a great light of intellect would have been lost to the world if she
+had not rescued Mr. Leicester from the duck-pond when he was a boy, and
+they were indeed the best of friends. Serena's heart rejoiced when
+anybody praised her cooking, and she turned away now toward the pantry
+with a beaming smile, while the father and daughter went up to the
+garret.
+
+It was hot there at this time of day; still the great elms outside kept
+the sun from shining directly on the roof, and a light breeze was
+blowing in at the dormer window.
+
+Mr. Leicester sat down in the high-backed wooden rocking-chair, and
+looked about the quaint little place with evident pleasure. Betty was
+perched on the window-sill. She had looked forward eagerly to this
+moment.
+
+"There is my old butterfly-net," he exclaimed, "and my minerals,
+and--why, all the old traps! Where did you find them? I remember that
+once I came up here and found everything cleared away but the
+gun,--they were afraid to touch that."
+
+"I looked in the boxes under the eaves," explained Betty. "Your little
+Fourth of July cannon is there in the dark corner. I had it out at
+first, but Becky tumbled over it three times, and once Aunt Mary heard
+the noise and had a palpitation of the heart, so I pushed it back again
+out of the way. I did so wish that you were here to fire it. I had
+almost forgotten what fun the Fourth is. I wrote you all about it,
+didn't I?"
+
+"Some day we will come to Tideshead and have a great celebration, to
+make up for losing that," said papa. "Betty, my child, I'm sleepy. I
+don't know whether it is this rocking-chair or Serena's dinner."
+
+"Perhaps it was getting up so early in the morning," suggested Betty.
+"Go to sleep, papa. I'll say some of my new pieces of poetry. I learned
+all you gave me, and some others beside."
+
+"Not the 'Scholar Gypsy,' I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Betty. "The last of it was hard, but all those
+verses about the fields are lovely, and make me remember that spring
+when we lived in Oxford. That was the only long one you gave me. I am
+not sure that I can say it without the book. I always play that I am in
+the 'high field corner' looking down at the meadows, and I can remember
+the first pages beautifully."
+
+Papa's eyes were already shut, and by the time Betty had said
+
+          "All the live murmur of a summer's day"
+
+she found that he was fast asleep. She stole a glance at him now and
+then, and a little pang went through her heart as she saw that his hair
+was really growing gray. Aunt Mary and Aunt Barbara appeared to believe
+that he was hardly more than a boy, but to Betty thirty-nine years was a
+long lifetime, and indeed her father had achieved much more than most
+men of his age. She was afraid of waking him and kept very still, so
+that a sparrow lit on the window-sill and looked at her a moment or two
+before he flew away again. She could even hear the pigeons walking on
+the roof overhead and hopping on the shingles, with a tap, from the
+little fence that went about the house-top. When Mr. Leicester waked he
+still wished to hear the "Scholar Gypsy," which was accordingly begun
+again, and repeated with only two or three stops. Sometimes they said a
+verse together, and then they fell to talking about some of the people
+whom they both loved in Oxford, and had a delightful hour together. At
+first Betty had not liked to learn long poems, and thought her father
+was stern and inconsiderate in choosing such old and sober ones; but she
+was already beginning to see a reason for it, and was glad, if for
+nothing else, to know the poems papa himself liked best, even if she did
+not wholly understand them. It was easy now to remember a new one, for
+she had learned so many. Aunt Barbara was much pleased with this
+accomplishment, for she had learned a great many herself in her
+lifetime. It seemed to be an old custom in the Leicester family, and
+Betty thought one day that she could let this gift stand in the place of
+singing as Becky could; one's own friends were not apt to care so much
+for poetry, but older people liked to be "repeated" to. One night,
+however, she had said Tennyson's ballad of "The Revenge" to Harry Foster
+and Nelly as they came up the river, and they liked it surprisingly.
+
+Papa reached for the old guitar presently and after mending the broken
+strings he began to sing a delightful little Italian song, a great
+favorite of Betty's. Then there was a step on the stairs, Aunt Barbara's
+dignified head appeared behind the railing, and they called her to come
+up and join them.
+
+"I felt as if there must be ghosts walking in daylight when I heard the
+old guitar," she said a little wistfully. When she was seated in the
+rocking-chair and Betty's father had pulled forward a flowered tea-chest
+for himself, he went on with his singing, and then played a Spanish
+dancing tune, with a nod to Betty, so that she skipped at once to the
+open garret-floor and took the pretty steps with much gayety. Aunt
+Barbara smiled and kept time with her foot; then she left the prim
+rocking-chair and began to follow the dance too, soberly chasing Betty
+and receding and even twirling her about, until they were both out of
+breath and came back to their places very warm and excited. They looked
+strangely alike as they danced. Betty was almost as tall and only a
+little more quick and graceful than her grandaunt.
+
+"It is such fun to be just the same age as you and papa," insisted
+Betty. "We do everything together now." She took on a pretty grown-up
+air, and looked at Aunt Barbara admiringly. It was only this summer that
+she had begun to understand how young grown people really are. Aunt Mary
+seemed much older because she had stopped doing so many pleasant things.
+This garret dance was a thing to remember. Betty liked Aunt Barbara
+better every day, but it had never occurred to her that she knew that
+particular Spanish dance. An army officer's wife had taught it to Betty
+and some of her friends the summer she was in the Isle of Wight. Becky
+had been brought up to be very doubtful about dancing, which was a great
+pity, for she was apt to be stiff and awkward when she walked or tried
+to move about in the room. Somehow she moved her feet as if they had
+been made too heavy for her, but she learned a good deal from trying to
+keep step as she walked with Betty, who was naturally light-footed.
+
+Mr. Leicester put down the guitar at last, and said that he had an
+errand to do, and that Betty had better come along.
+
+"Can't you sit still five minutes, either of you?" maliciously asked
+Aunt Barbara, who had quite regained her breath. "I really did not know
+how cozy this corner was. I must say that I had forgot to associate it
+with anything but Serena's and my putting away blankets in the spring. I
+used to like to sit by the window and read when I was your age, Betty.
+In those days I could look over this nearest elm and see way down the
+river, just as you can now in winter when the leaves are gone. I dare
+say the three generations before me have played here too. I am so glad
+that we could have Betty this summer; it is time she began to strike her
+roots a little deeper here."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Leicester, "but I _can't_ do without her, my only
+Betsey!" and they all laughed, but Betty had a sudden suspicion that
+Aunt Barbara would try to keep her altogether now. This frightened our
+friend a little, for though she loved the old home dearly, she must take
+care of papa. It was her place to take care of him now; she had been
+looking over his damaged wardrobe most anxiously that morning, as if her
+own had never known ruin. His outside clothes were well enough, but
+alas for his pocket handkerchiefs and stockings! He looked a little
+pale, too, and as if he had on the whole been badly neglected in minor
+ways.
+
+But there never was a more cheerful and contented papa, as they walked
+toward the river together hand-in-hand, in the fashion of Betty's
+childhood. They found that the packet had come in, and there was a group
+of spectators on the old wharf, who were looking eagerly at something
+which proved to be a large cat-boat which the packet had in tow. Mr.
+Leicester left Betty suddenly and went to the wharf's edge.
+
+"Did you have any trouble bringing her up?" he asked.
+
+"Bless ye, no, sir," said the packet's skipper; "didn't hinder us one
+grain; had a clever little breeze right astern all the way up."
+
+"Look here, Betty," said papa, returning presently. "I went down this
+morning to hunt for a dory with a sail, and I saw this cat-boat which
+somebody was willing to let, and I have hired it for a while. I wish to
+look up the river shell-fish a bit; it's not altogether play, I mean you
+to understand."
+
+"Oh, _papa_!" cried Betty joyfully. "The only thing we needed was a nice
+boat. But you can't have clutters in pots and pans at Aunt Barbara's,
+can you, and your works going on? Serena won't like it, and she can be
+quite terrible, you know!"
+
+"Come on board and look at her," said Mr. Leicester, regardless of the
+terrors of Serena's disapproval. The cat-boat carried a jib beside a
+good-sized mainsail, and had a comfortable little cabin with a tiny
+stove and two berths and plenty of lockers. Two young men had just spent
+their vacation in her, coasting eastward, and one of them told Mr.
+Leicester that she was the quickest and steadiest boat he ever saw,
+sailing close to the wind and answering her rudder capitally. They had
+lived on board altogether and made themselves very comfortable indeed.
+There was a light little flat-bottomed boat for tender, and the white
+cat-boat itself had been newly painted with gilt lettering across the
+stern, _Starlight, Riverport_.
+
+"I can ask the Out-of-Door Club one day next week," announced Betty,
+with great enthusiasm. "Isn't she clean and pretty? _Won't_ Aunt Barbara
+like her, papa?"
+
+"I must look about for some one to help me to sail her," said Mr.
+Leicester, with uncommon gravity. "What do you think of young Foster? He
+must know the river well, and his fishing may be falling off a little
+now. It would be a good way to help him, don't you think so?"
+
+Betty's eyes shone with joy. "Oh, yes," she said; "they do have such a
+hard time now. Nelly told me so yesterday morning. It has cost them so
+much lately. Harry has been trying to get something to do in Riverport."
+
+They were busy anchoring the Starlight out in the stream, and now Mr.
+Leicester helped Betty over the side into the tender and sculled her
+ashore. Some of the men on the wharf had disappeared, but others were
+still there, and there was a great bustle of unloading some bags of
+grain from the packet. Mr. Leicester invited one of his old
+acquaintances who asked many questions to come out and see the cat-boat,
+and as Betty hurried up the street to the house she saw over her
+shoulder that a large company in small leaky crafts had surrounded the
+pretty Starlight like pirates. It was apt to be very dull in Tideshead
+for many of the idle citizens, and Mr. Leicester's return was always
+hailed with delight. It was nearly tea-time, so that Betty could not go
+over to tell Mary Beck the good news; but one white handkerchief,
+meaning _Come over_, was quickly displayed on the pear-tree branch, and
+while Betty was getting dressed in a much-needed fresh gown for tea
+Becky kindly appeared, and was delighted with the good news. She had
+seen the Starlight already from a distance.
+
+"My father used to have a splendid sailboat," said fatherless Becky with
+much wistfulness, and Betty put her arms round her and gave her a warm
+kiss. Sometimes it seemed that whatever one had the other lacked.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+DOWN THE RIVER.
+
+
+THERE was a great stirring about and opening and shutting of kitchen
+doors early the next morning but one. Betty had been anxious the day
+before to set forth on what she was pleased to call a long cruise in the
+Starlight, but Mr. Leicester said that he must give up the morning to
+his letters, and after that came a long business talk with Aunt Barbara
+in the library, where she sat before her capacious secretary and
+produced some neat packages of papers from a little red morocco trunk
+which Betty had never seen before. To say truth, Aunt Barbara was a
+famous business woman and quite the superior of her nephew in financial
+matters, but she deferred to him meekly, and in fact gained some
+long-desired information about a northwestern city in which Mr.
+Leicester had lately been obliged to linger for two or three days.
+
+It was a day of clear hot sunshine and light breeze, not in the least a
+good day for sailing; but Betty was just as much disappointed to be kept
+at home as if it had been, and after breakfast she loitered about in
+idleness, with a look of dark disapproval, until papa suddenly faced
+about and held her before him by her two shoulders, looking gravely into
+her eyes, which fell at once.
+
+"Don't be cross, Betty," he said quietly; "we shall play all the better
+if we don't forget our work. What is there to do first? Where's 'Things
+to be Done'?"
+
+Betty dipped into her pocket and pulled out a bit of paper with the
+above heading, and held it up to him. Papa's eyes began to twinkle and
+she felt her cheeks grow red, but good humor was restored. "1. Ask Seth
+to sharpen my knife. 2. Find Aunt Mary's old 'Evenings at Home' and read
+her the Transmigrations of Indur. 3. Find out what 'hedonism' means in
+the dictionary. 4. Sew on papa's buttons."
+
+"Those were all the things I could think of last night," explained Betty
+apologetically. "I was so sleepy."
+
+"It strikes me that the most important duty happened to be set down
+last," said Mr. Leicester, beginning to laugh. "If you will look after
+the buttons, I will tell you the meaning of 'hedonism' and sharpen the
+jack-knife, and I am not sure that I won't read the Transmigrations to
+Aunt Mary beside, for the sake of old times. I know where those little
+old brown books are, too, unless they have been moved from their old
+places. I am willing to make a good offer, for I have hardly a button to
+my back, you know. And this evening we will have a row, if not a sail.
+The sky looks as if the wind were rising, and you can ask Mary Beck to
+go with us to-morrow down the river, if you like. I am going to see
+young Foster the first time I go down the street. Now good-by until
+dinner-time, dear child."
+
+"Good-by, dear papa!" and Betty ran up-stairs two steps at a time. She
+had already looked to see if there were plenty of ink in his ink-bottle,
+and some water in a tiny vase on his writing-table for the quill pens.
+It was almost the only thing she had done that morning, but it was one
+of her special cares when they were together. She gathered an armful of
+his clothes, and finding that Aunt Mary was in a hospitable frame went
+into her room for advice and society, and sat busily sewing by the
+favorite cool western window nearly all the morning.
+
+In the evening, when the tide was high, Betty and Mr. Leicester went out
+for a little row by themselves, floating under some overhanging
+oak-boughs and talking about things that had happened when they were
+apart.
+
+Now we come back to where we began this chapter,--the early morning of
+the next day, and Serena's and Letty's bustling in the pantry to have a
+basket of luncheon ready, so that the boating party need not lose the
+tide; the boating party itself at breakfast in the dining-room; Mary
+Beck in a transport of delight sitting by her window at the other side
+of the street, all ready to rush out the minute she saw Betty appear. As
+for Harry Foster and Seth, they had already gone down to the shore.
+
+On the wide sofa in the hall was a funny old-fashioned leather satchel
+with a strong strap-handle. It seemed full to overflowing, and beside it
+lay a warm shawl neatly folded, and, not to make too long a story, Aunt
+Barbara's third-best bonnet was close at hand, and these were her
+provisions for spending the day on the river. Mr. Leicester had insisted
+that she should go with them, and that if she found it tiresome there
+was nothing to prevent her coming back by train from Riverport in the
+afternoon. Aunt Barbara felt as if she were being a little adventurous,
+and packed her small portmanteau with a secret foreboding that she might
+be kept out over night; still she had always been very fond of boating,
+and had seen almost none of it for many years, in fact since Betty's
+father had been at home sometimes, in his college vacations. There was a
+fine breeze blowing already in the elms and making the tall hollyhocks
+bow in the garden, and when they reached the wharf and put down the
+creaking wicker basket on the very edge the tide was still high, and
+Harry Foster had already hoisted the Starlight's sail with one careful
+reef in it, and was waiting to row them out two at a time in the
+tag-boat. Nelly Foster could not go, as she and her mother were very
+busy that day, but Harry's face looked brighter than Betty had ever seen
+it, and she was sure that papa must have been very good, and, to use a
+favorite phrase of his, opened a new gate for him. Mary Beck was
+strangely full of fears, considering that she was the granddaughter of a
+brave old sailor; but after she was out of the unsteady smaller boat,
+and had been decoyed by Betty to the bows of the Starlight, and shown
+how to stow herself away so that she hindered neither jib nor boom, she
+began to enjoy herself highly. Aunt Barbara sat under her every-day
+parasol, looking quite elegant and unseaworthy, but very happy. Harry
+Foster was steering just beside her, and Mr. Leicester, with Seth's
+assistance, was shaking out the reef; for the wind was quieter just now,
+and they wished to get farther down river as soon as possible, since
+here, where the banks were often high and wooded and the stream narrow,
+it was gusty and uncertain sailing for so large a boat. They slipped
+down fast with the wind and tide, and passed the packet, which had
+started out ahead of them. She carried an unusual number of passengers,
+and was loaded deep with early potatoes. The girls waved their
+handkerchiefs and the men on board the packet gave a cheer, while Mr.
+Leicester saluted with the Starlight's flag, and it was altogether a
+ceremonious occasion. Seth said that he "guessed folks would think old
+Tideshead was waking up." Of all the pleasure-boat's company Seth was
+perhaps the best satisfied. He had been in a state of torture lest he
+might not be asked to make one of the crew, and it being divulged that
+although of up-country origin he had once gone to the Georges Banks
+fishing with a seafaring uncle, Mr. Leicester considerately asked for
+his services. Seth had put on the great rubber-boots and a heavy red
+woolen shirt that he wore on shipboard in March weather. He was already
+obliged to fan himself incessantly with his straw hat, as they were
+running before the wind, and presently, after much suffering, made an
+excuse to go into the little cabin, whence he reappeared, much abashed,
+in his stocking feet and a faded calico shirt, which had been luckily
+put on under the red one. Aunt Barbara held her parasol so that it
+covered her face for a few minutes, and there was a considerate silence,
+until Seth mentioned that he "had thought he knew before what it was to
+be het up, but you never knew what kind of weather 't was to be on the
+water."
+
+At the next bend of the river the wind made them much cooler, while the
+boat sailed even better than before. There had been plenty of rain, so
+that the shore was as green as in June and the old farm-houses looked
+very pleasant. Betty had not been so far down as this since the day she
+came to Tideshead, and was looking eagerly for certain places that she
+remembered. Aunt Barbara and papa were talking about John Paul Jones and
+his famous river crew, some of whom Aunt Barbara had known in their old
+age, while she was a girl. Harry Foster was listening with great
+interest. Betty and even Becky felt proud of Harry as he steered,
+looking along the river with quick, sure eyes. They did not feel so
+familiar with him as usual; somehow, he looked a good deal older since
+the trouble about his father, and there was a new manliness and dignity
+about him, as if he knew that his mother and Nelly had no one but
+himself to depend upon. It was plain to see that his early burden of
+shame and sorrow had developed a strong character in the lad. There was
+none of the listlessness and awkward incapacity and self-admiration that
+made some of the other Tideshead boys so unattractive, but Harry Foster
+had a simple way of speaking and of doing whatever had to be done.
+
+There was a group of wooden pails on the boat, and a queer apparatus for
+dredging which Mr. Leicester had made the afternoon before with Seth's
+and Jonathan's help. They had implored a flat-iron from Serena for one
+of the weights, and she had also contributed a tin pail, which was
+curiously weighted also with small pieces of iron, so that it would sink
+in a particular way. It was believed that a certain uncommon little
+creature would be found in the flats farther down the river, and Mr.
+Leicester told the ship's company certain interesting facts about its
+life and behavior which made everybody eager to join the search. "I have
+been meaning to hunt for it for years," he said. "Professor Agassiz told
+me about it when I was in college; but then he always roused one's
+enthusiasm as no one else could, and made whatever he was interested in
+seem the one thing in the world that was of very first importance."
+Betty's heart glowed as she listened; she thought the same thing of
+papa. "He was such an inspirer of others to do good work," said Mr.
+Leicester, still thinking lovingly of his great teacher.
+
+Sometimes the river was narrow and deep and the Starlight's course lay
+near the shore, so that the children came running down to the water's
+edge to see the pretty boat go by, and envy Betty and Mary Beck in the
+shadow of her great white sail. Some of them shouted Hollo! and the two
+girls answered again and again, until the little voices sounded small
+and piping and were lost in the distance. Halfway to Riverport, where
+the houses were a good way from any village, it seemed as if these old
+homes had remained the same for many years; none of them had
+bay-windows, and the paint was worn away by wind and weather. It was
+like stepping back twenty or thirty years in the rural history. Aunt
+Barbara said that everything looked almost exactly the same along one
+reach of the river as it did when she could first remember it. The
+shores were green with pines and ferns and gray with ledges. It was salt
+water here, so that they could smell the seaweed and the woods, and
+could hear the song-sparrows and the children's voices as they passed
+the lonely farm-houses standing high and fog-free above the water. From
+one of these they heard the sound of women's voices singing.
+
+"They're havin' a meetin' in there, I expect," explained Seth. "Yes, I
+hear 'Liza Loomis's voice too. You know, Miss Leicester, she used to
+live up to Tideshead and sing in the Methodist choir. She's got a lovely
+voice to sing. She's married down this way. They like to git together in
+these scattered places, but 't is more customary up where I come from to
+have them neighborhood meetin's of an afternoon." Betty watched the
+small gray house with deep interest, and thought she should like to go
+in. There were little children playing about the door, as if they had
+been brought and left outside to amuse themselves. It was very touching
+to hear the old hymn as they sailed by, and Aunt Barbara and Betty's
+father looked at each other significantly as they listened. "Becky, you
+ought to be there to help sing," Betty whispered, as they sat side by
+side, but Becky thought it was very stupid to be having a prayer-meeting
+that lovely morning.
+
+Seth Pond had celebrated the Fourth of July by going down to Riverport
+on the packet, and he had gathered much information about the river
+which he was glad to give now for everybody's pleasure and
+enlightenment.
+
+"There's a bo't layin' up in that cove that's drowned two men," he said
+solemnly. "There was a lady with 'em, but she was saved. I understand
+they'd been drinking heavy."
+
+Betty looked at the boat with awe where it lay with the stern under
+water and the bows ashore and all warped apart. "Isn't she good for
+anything?" she asked.
+
+"Nobody'll ever touch _her_," said Seth contemptuously,--"she's drowned
+two men."
+
+But Miss Leicester smiled, and said that it appeared to have been their
+own fault.
+
+They could see into the low ruined cabin from the deck of the Starlight,
+and, after they passed, the cabin port-hole seemed to watch them like an
+eye until it was far astern.
+
+"I suppose she will lie there until she breaks up in a high tide, and
+then the women will gather her wreck wood to burn," said Mr. Leicester,
+watching the warped mast, and Harry Foster said that no fishermen on
+the river would ever touch a boat that they believed to be unlucky.
+Just then they came round a point and passed a little house close by the
+water, where there were flakes for drying fish and a collection of
+little weather-beaten boxes shaped like roofs which were used to cover
+the fish in wet weather. Betty thought they looked like a village of
+baby-houses. At this moment a woman darted out of the house door,
+screaming to some one inside, "I've lost Georgie and Idy both!" and off
+the anxious mother hurried along the steep path to the fish flakes, as
+if that were where she usually found the runaways. Presently they heard
+a child's shrill voice, and a pink pinafore emerged from among the
+little roofs. Ida was deposited angrily in the lane, while the mother
+went back to hunt for the other one. It was very droll to see and hear
+it all from the river, but it was some minutes before loud shrieks
+announced the adventurous Georgie's capture.
+
+"Georgie must ha' been hull down on the horizon," remarked Seth blandly,
+trying to be very nautical, and everybody laughed; but Betty and Mary
+thought the woman very cross, when it was such a pretty place to play
+out there among the bayberry, and perhaps there were ripe blackberries.
+Harry Foster said that children did mischief in pulling off bits of the
+dry fish and spoiling them for market; but there was no end of fish, and
+everybody felt a sympathy for "Idy and Georgie both" in their sad
+captivity.
+
+Before long the houses were nearer together, and even clustered in
+little groups close by the river, and sometimes the Starlight passed
+some schooners going up or down, or being laden with bricks or hay or
+firewood at small wharves. Then they came in sight of the Riverport
+steeples, only a few miles below. The wind was not so gusty now and blew
+steadily, but it was very light, and the Starlight moved slowly. Harry
+and Seth had already hoisted a topsail, and while Mr. Leicester steered
+Harry came and stood by the masts, looking out ahead and talking with
+the two girls. But Harry felt responsible for the boat, and could not
+give himself up to pleasuring until, as he said, he understood the
+tricks and manners of the Starlight a little better. It was toward noon,
+now, for they had come slowly the last third of the way; and Mr.
+Leicester, after a word with Aunt Barbara, proposed that they should go
+ashore for a while, for there was a beautiful piece of pine woods close
+at hand, and the flats which he was going to investigate were also
+within rowing distance. So down came the sails and alongside came the
+tag-boat; and Aunt Barbara was landed first, parasol and all, and the
+others followed her. The tide was running out fast, and it was not easy
+to find a landing-place along the muddy shores. Betty thought the
+Starlight looked much smaller from the shore than she seemed when they
+were on board. Harry and Seth made everything trig and came in last,
+leaving the cat-boat at anchor far out.
+
+Even after the joy of sailing it was very pleasant ashore under the
+shady pines, and Mr. Leicester found a delightfully comfortable place
+for Aunt Barbara to sit in, while the girls were near by. "What an
+interesting morning we have had!" Betty heard Aunt Barbara say. "Sailing
+down the river brings to mind so many things in the past. The beginnings
+of history in this part of the country always have to do with the river.
+I wish that I could remember all the stories of the early settlements
+that I used to hear old people tell in my childhood."
+
+"See that little green farm in the middle of the sunburnt pastures
+across the river," said Mr. Leicester, who had been looking that way
+intently. "Look, Betty! what a small green spot it makes with its
+orchard and fields among the woods and brown pastures, and yet what toil
+has been spent there year after year!"
+
+Betty looked with great interest. She had seen the green farm, but she
+had not thought about it, and neither had Mary Beck, who could not tell
+why she kept looking that way again and again, and somehow could not
+help thinking how good it would be to make a green place like that by
+one's own life among dull and difficult surroundings. Betty was her
+green place; by and by she could do the same thing for somebody else,
+perhaps.
+
+"What a lovely place this is!" said Aunt Barbara, still enthusiastic.
+"There is such sweet air here among the pines, and I delight in the wide
+outlook over the river. I begin to feel as young as ever. I thought that
+I was almost too old to enjoy myself any more, last winter. It is such
+a mistake to let one's self make great things out of little ones, as I
+did, and carry life too heavily," she added.
+
+"You must feel ever so much older inside than you look outside," said
+Betty, who was in famous spirits.
+
+Mr. Leicester laughed with the rest, and then looked over his shoulder
+with a droll expression, as if something was causing him great
+apprehension. "Aunt Barbara!" he began, and then hid his face with his
+arm, as if he were about to be well whipped.
+
+"What mischief now?" said she.
+
+"I have played you a trick: you are not leaving your home and friends
+for one day, but for two."
+
+Miss Leicester looked puzzled.
+
+"You were very good not to say that I was foolish to carry two extra
+sails."
+
+"I did think it was nonsense, Tom," he was promptly assured, "but then I
+remembered that you had only hired the boat, and thought perhaps the
+sails went with it. Of course they take up too much room in the cabin.
+You can't mean that you are going on a longer voyage?"
+
+"_Tents!_" shouted Betty, jumping up and dancing about in great
+excitement. "_Tents!_ don't you see, Aunt Barbara? and we're going to
+camp out." It was a very anxious moment, for if Aunt Barbara said, "We
+must go home to-night," there would be nothing to do but obey.
+
+"But your Aunt Mary will be worried, won't she?" asked Miss Leicester,
+whose quick wit suspected a deep-laid plot. She was already filled with
+a spirit of adventure; she really looked pleased, but was not without a
+sense of responsibility.
+
+"I thought you would like it," explained Mr. Leicester, in a
+matter-of-fact way; "and there was no need of telling you beforehand, so
+that you would make your will and pay your taxes and get in all the
+winter supplies and have the minister to tea before you started. Aunt
+Mary knows, and so does Serena; you will see that Serena contemplated
+the situation by the way she filled these big baskets."
+
+"I saw that they were amused with something that I didn't quite
+understand. And Mary Beck's mother will not feel anxious?" she asked,
+for a final assurance. "I never expected to turn myself into a wild
+Indian at my age, even to please foolish children like you and Betty,
+but I have always wished that I could sleep one night under the pine
+woods."
+
+"You said so when we were reading Mr. Stevenson's 'Travels with a
+Donkey' aloud to Aunt Mary," Betty stated eagerly, as if the others
+would find it hard to believe her grandaunt. Somehow, a stranger would
+have found it difficult to believe that Miss Leicester had unsatisfied
+desires about gypsying.
+
+Mary Beck was deeply astonished; she had a huge admiration for her
+dignified neighbor across the way, and yet it was always a little
+perilous to her ease of mind and self-possession to find herself in Miss
+Leicester's company. Many a time, in the days before Betty came to
+Tideshead, she had walked to and fro before the old house hoping to be
+spoken to or called in for a visit, and yet was too shy to properly
+answer a kind good-morning when they met. Aunt Barbara used to think
+that Becky was a dull girl, but they were already better friends. It
+took a long time to rouse Becky's enthusiasm, but when roused it burned
+with steady flame. To think that she should be camping out with Miss
+Leicester!
+
+But Mr. Leicester and Betty and Becky were soon at work making their
+camp, and the novices took their first lesson in woodcraft. The young
+men, Harry Foster and Seth, came ashore bringing the tender loaded deep
+with tents and blankets, some of them from Jonathan's carefully kept
+chests in the carriage-house, and Miss Leicester wondered again how
+anybody had contrived to get so many things from the house to the boat
+without her knowledge. There were two sharp hatchets, and presently Seth
+and Harry were dispatched to gather some dry wood for the fire, though
+until near evening the tents need not be put up nor the last
+arrangements made for sleeping. By and by everybody could help either to
+cut or carry hemlock and spruce boughs for the beds.
+
+Betty helped her father to roll some stones together for a fireplace
+just at the edge of the river beach, and pleased him very much by
+rolling a heavy one up to the top of the heap on a piece of board which
+had washed ashore, just as she had seen farmers do in building a stone
+wall. Mary Beck, in a trepidation of delight, was helping Miss Barbara
+Leicester unpack the baskets, to see what should be eaten for dinner
+and what should be kept for future meals, when Mr. Leicester called
+them.
+
+"Aunt Barbara," he proclaimed, "I am not going to let you keep tent; you
+only know how to keep house; and beside, you mustn't do what you always
+do at home. Let the girls manage dinner and you come with me, now that
+the fire is started. I have thought of an errand."
+
+Miss Leicester meekly obeyed; she was ready for anything, having once
+cast off, as she said, all obligation to society, and with a few parting
+charges to Betty about the provisions she disappeared among the pines
+with her nephew.
+
+"Isn't it fun?" said Mary Beck, and she put on such a comical face when
+Betty sedately quoted,
+
+          "What is that, mother?
+                         A lark, my child,"
+
+that Betty fell into a fit of laughter, and Becky caught it, and they
+were gasping for breath before they could stop. "Oh, think of Aunt
+Barbara camping out and setting herself up for a gypsy!" said Betty.
+"This is just the way papa does now and then. I always told you so,
+didn't I?--only you never know when to watch for his tricks. He doesn't
+always catch me like this, I can tell you. Think of Aunt Barbara! I hope
+the dear thing will pass a good night; she isn't a bit older than we are
+in her dear heart. How will she ever have the face to walk into church
+so grandly Sunday morning!" and so the merry girls chattered on, while
+they spread the cloth and Betty put a decoration of leaves round the
+edge and a handful of flowers in the middle. "You have such a way of
+prettifying things," said Mary Beck; "there, the chocolate pot is
+beginning to boil already."
+
+"We ought to have some fresh water; it is time papa came back," said
+Betty anxiously; and just then appeared papa and smiling Aunt Barbara,
+and a small tin pail which had to be borrowed at a farm-house half a
+mile away because it was forgotten.
+
+The wind blew cool across the river, and more and more boats went
+gliding up and down in the channel, though the tide was very low.
+Everybody was hungrier than ever, because the sea wind is famous for
+helping on an appetite, and the hot chocolate was none too hot after
+all, though Aunt Barbara's bonnet was hanging on a branch and she did
+not seem to miss the shelter of it. Becky was forced to change her
+opinion about cooking; she had always disliked to have anything to do
+with it; it seemed to her a thing to be ignored and concealed in polite
+society, and yet Betty was openly proud of having had a few
+cooking-school lessons, and of knowing the right way to do things. Becky
+suddenly began to parade her own knowledge, and found herself of great
+use to the party. Instead of being unwilling when her mother asked for
+help again, she meant to learn a great many more things. She was
+overjoyed when she found a tin box of coffee, and remembered that Betty
+had said it was her father's chief delight. She would make a good cup
+for him in the morning. Betty was always saying how nice it was to know
+how to do things. She never expected to like to wash dinner dishes, but
+the time had come, though a hot sun was somehow pleasanter than a hot
+stove, and it had been a gypsy dinner, with potatoes in the ashes and
+buns toasted on a hot stone, and no end of good things beside.
+
+"We must have some oysters to roast for our supper. I know a place just
+below here where they are very salt and good," said Mr. Leicester; "and
+one of you young men might go fishing, and bring us in a string of
+flounders, or anything you can get. We have breakfast to look out for,
+you remember."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said Harry Foster, sailor fashion, but with uncommon
+heartiness. Harry had been very quiet and care-taking on the boat, and
+had not said much, either, since he came ashore, but his eyes had been
+growing brighter, and as Miss Leicester looked up at him she was touched
+at the change in his face. How boyish and almost gay he was again! She
+caught his eye, and gave him a kind reassuring little nod, as if nobody
+could be more pleased to have him happy than herself.
+
+The Starlight was now aground in the bright green river grass and the
+flats were bare for a long distance beyond, so that there was no more
+boating for the present. There were plenty of comfortable hollows to
+rest in farther back on the soft carpet under the pines, and so the
+dining-room nearer the shore was abandoned and the provisions cached, as
+Mr. Leicester called it, under an oak-tree. Certain things had been
+forgotten, but just round the point the steeples of Riverport were in
+full view; and when everybody had rested enough and the tide was
+creeping in, Mr. Leicester first sent Harry out in the small boat and
+his long-legged fishing-boots to get two buckets of river mud, and after
+he had seated himself beside them with his magnifying-glasses and a
+paraphernalia of tools familiar to Betty, Harry was given orders to take
+Seth Pond and the two girls and go down to Riverport shopping, as soon
+as the Starlight floated again.
+
+Harry was hovering over the scientific enterprise and looked sorry for a
+minute, but it seemed to the girls as if the tide had stopped rising. At
+last they got on board by going down the shore a little way to be taken
+off the sooner from some rock. Aunt Barbara announced that she meant to
+go too; indeed, she was not tired; what had there been to tire her? So
+off they all went, and left Mr. Leicester to his investigations. It took
+some time to go to Riverport, for the wind was light and the tide
+against them. Everybody, and Betty in particular, thought it great fun
+to make fast to the wharf and go ashore up into the town shopping. Aunt
+Barbara gayly stepped off first, to see an old friend who lived a little
+way above the business part of the town, and, asked to be called for, as
+they went back, at the friend's river gate. Harry knew it?--the high
+house with the lookout on top and the gate at the garden-foot. Betty
+went first to find her early friend, the woman who kept the bake-house,
+and was recognized at once and provided with fresh buns and crisp
+molasses cookies which had hardly cooled. Then Betty and Becky walked
+about the narrow streets for an hour, enjoying themselves highly and
+collecting ship's stores at two or three fruit shops; also laying in a
+good store of chocolate, which Betty proclaimed to be very nourishing.
+She got two pots of her favorite orange marmalade too, in case they made
+toast for supper.
+
+"All the old ladies are looking out of their windows, just as they were
+the day I was coming to Tideshead," she said; and Becky replied that
+their faces were always at just the same pane of glass. The fences were
+very high and had their tops cut in points, and over them here and there
+drooped the heavy bough of a fruit-tree or a long tendril of grapevine,
+as if there were delightful gardens inside. The sidewalks were very
+narrow underneath these fences, so that Betty often walked in the street
+to be alongside her companion. There were pretty old knockers on the
+front doors, and sometimes a parrot hung out under the porch, and
+shouted saucily at the passers-by. Riverport was a delightful old town.
+Betty was sure that if she did not love Tideshead best she should like
+to belong in Riverport, and have a garden with a river gate, and a great
+square house of three stories and a lookout on top.
+
+The stores were put on board, and Seth Pond came back from researches
+which had been rewarded by a half-bushel basket full of clams. Then they
+swung out into the stream again, and ever so many little boys with four
+grown men on the wharf gave them a cheer. It was great fun stopping for
+Aunt Barbara, who was in the garden watching for them, and was escorted
+by a charming white-haired old gentleman who teased her a little upon
+her youthful escapade, and a younger lady who walked sedately under an
+antique Chinese parasol. Betty sprang ashore to greet this latter
+personage, who had lately paid a visit to Miss Barbara at Tideshead. She
+was fond of Miss Marcia Drummond.
+
+"It seems like old times to have you going home by boat," said Miss
+Marcia, kissing Aunt Barbara good-by. "It is much pleasanter than a car
+journey. Betty, my dear, you know that your aunt is a very rash and
+heedless person; I hope you will hold her in check. I have been trying
+to persuade her that she will be much safer to-night in one of our old
+four-posters;" and so they said good-by merrily and were off again,
+while the young people in the boat looked back as long as they could see
+the old garden with its hollyhocks and lilies, and the two figures of
+the courtly old gentleman and the lady with the parasol going up the
+broad walk.
+
+"What a good thing it was in Tom Leicester to send his daughter to
+Tideshead this summer!" said the old gentleman. "I think that Barbara
+is renewing her youth. Tom is a man of distinction, and yet keeps to his
+queer wild ways. You are sure that Barbara quite understands about our
+wishing them to dine here? I think this camping business is positively
+foolish conduct in a person of her age."
+
+But Miss Marcia Drummond looked wistfully over her shoulder at the
+cat-boat's lessening sail, and wished that she too were going to spend a
+night under the pines.
+
+A little way up the river they passed the packet boat, a little belated
+and heavily laden, but moving steadily.
+
+"Look at old Step-an'-fetch-it," said Seth. "She spears all the little
+winds with that peaked sail o' hern. Ain't one on 'em can git by her."
+They kept company for a while, until in the broad river bay above
+Riverport bridge the Starlight skimmed far ahead, like a great white
+moth. Seth mentioned that folks would think they was settin' up a navy
+up to Tideshead, and just then the Starlight yawed, and the boom threw
+Seth off his balance and nearly overboard, as much to his own amusement
+as the rest of the ship's company's. Betty and Mary Beck stowed
+themselves away before the mast, and wished that the sail were longer.
+The sun was low, and the light made the river and the green shores look
+most beautiful. Miss Leicester suggested that they should sail a little
+farther before going in, and so they went as far as the next reach, a
+mile above the camp, on the accommodating west wind. It was a last puff
+before sundown, and by the time Harry had anchored the Starlight in
+deeper water than before, her sail drooped in the perfectly still
+evening air.
+
+Once on shore everybody was busy; the spruce and hemlock boughs must be
+arranged carefully for the beds and the tents pitched over them before
+the August dew began to fall. Mr. Leicester was chief of this part of
+camp duty, and Miss Barbara, who seemed to enjoy herself more every
+moment, was allowed by the girls to help, just that once, about getting
+supper. It was growing cool and the fire was not unwelcome, but by and
+by a gentle wind began to blow and kept away the midges. Betty began to
+think that there would be nothing left for breakfast by the time supper
+was half through, but she managed to secrete part of her cherished buns,
+and reflected that it would be easy to send to Riverport for further
+supplies even if breakfast were a little late. Betty felt a certain care
+and responsibility over the whole expedition, it was so delightful to be
+looking after papa again; and she was obliged to tell him that he must
+not touch the river mud any more, or he would not be fit to go through
+the streets of Riverport next day, at which Mr. Leicester, though deeply
+attached to his old friends in that town, looked very distressed and
+unwilling.
+
+The darkness fell fast, and the supper dishes had to be put under some
+bayberry bushes until morning. The salt air was very sweet and fresh,
+and it was just warm enough and just cool enough, as Betty said. The
+stars were bright; in fact, the last few days had been much more like
+June than August, and it was what English people call Queen's weather.
+Mary Beck said sagely that it must be because Miss Leicester came, and
+then was quite ashamed, dear little soul, not understanding that nothing
+is so pleasant to an older woman as to find herself interesting and
+companionable to a girl. People do not always grow away from their
+youth; they add to it experiences and traits of different sorts; and it
+is easy sometimes to throw off all these, and find the boy or the girl
+again, eager and fresh and ready for simple pleasures, and to make new
+beginnings.
+
+Seth Pond had stolen out to the cat-boat on some errand of his own which
+nobody questioned, and now there suddenly resounded the surprising notes
+of his violin. It was very pretty to hear his familiar old tunes over
+the water, and everybody respected Seth's amiable desire to afford
+entertainment, even if he failed a little now and then in time or tone.
+He had mastered several old Scottish and English airs in the book Betty
+had given him, and already had become proficient in some lively jigs and
+dancing tunes, as we knew at the time of Betty's first party in the
+garden. The clumsy fellow had a real gift for music. Some stray fairy
+must have passed his way and left an unexpected gift. The little
+audience on the shore were ready to applaud, and two or three boats came
+near, while some young people in one began to sing "Bonny Doon," softly,
+while Seth played, and, encouraged by the applause, went on more boldly,
+and took up the strain again when Seth changed suddenly to "Lochaber no
+more." Miss Leicester was overjoyed when she heard such fresh young
+voices sing the plaintive old air so readily. It had always been a great
+favorite of hers, and she said so with enthusiasm. Mary Beck was sorry
+that she never had learned it, but by the time the last verse came she
+began to join in as best she could.
+
+          "I'll bring thee a heart with love running o'er,
+           And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more,"
+
+the words ended. Nobody who heard it that summer night in the starlight
+by the river shore would ever forget the old song.
+
+"You must have influenced Seth's choice of music," Betty's father said
+to Aunt Barbara, who confessed that the droning of the violin over cheap
+music was more than she could bear at first, and she had been compelled
+to suggest something in the place of "The Sweet By-and-By" and "Golden
+Slippers." Luckily, Seth seemed to abandon these without regret.
+
+At last the boats all disappeared into the darkness, and the little camp
+was made ready for night. The open air made every one sleepy but Miss
+Barbara, who consoled herself by thinking that if she did not sleep it
+would be little matter; she had been awake many a night in her life and
+felt none the worse. But in fact the sound of rippling water against the
+bank and the sea-like sound of the pine boughs overhead sent her to
+sleep before she had half time to properly enjoy them. She and Betty
+declared that their thick-set evergreen boughs and warm blankets made
+the best of beds. They could see the stars through the open end of the
+tent. One was so bright that it let fall a slender golden track of light
+on the river. Mary Beck thought that she had never been so happy.
+Camping-out had always been such a far-off thing, and belonged to summer
+tourists and the remote unsettled parts of country; but here she was,
+close to her own home, with all the delights of gypsy life suddenly made
+her own. Betty and Betty's friends had such a way of enjoying every-day
+things. Becky was learning to be happy in simple ways she never had
+before. She went to sleep too, and the stars shone on, and late in the
+night the waning moon came up, strange and red; then the dawn came
+creeping into the morning sky, and one wild creature after another, in
+the crevices of rocks or branches of trees, waked and went its ways
+silently or gay with song.
+
+When Betty's eyes first opened she could not remember where she was, for
+a moment. Then she was filled with a sense of great contentment, and lay
+still, looking out through the open end of the tent across the wide
+still river down which some birds were flying seaward. It was most
+beautiful in that early morning of a new day, and from beyond the water
+on the opposite shore came the far sweet sound of a woman's voice
+singing as she worked, as if a long-looked-for day had come and held
+great joy for her. She was singing just as the birds sing, and Betty
+tried to fancy how she looked as she went to and fro so busily in one of
+the farm-houses.
+
+Aunt Barbara did not wake until after Betty, which was a great joy, and
+there was a peal of delighted laughter from the girls when she waked and
+found their bright young eyes watching her. She complained of nothing,
+except a moment of fright when she saw her own bonnet at the top of a
+lopped fir which had been stuck into the ground at the foot of the bed,
+to hang her raiment on. Her wrap had been put neatly round the tree's
+shoulders by Betty, so that it looked like a queer sort of skeleton
+creature with every sort of garment on its sharp pegs of bones. Nobody
+had taken the least bit of cold, and everybody was as cheerful as
+possible, and so the day began. Seth Pond had trudged off to get some
+milk at one of the farm-houses, and had lighted a fire before he went
+and covered it with bits of dry turf, which served to keep it in as well
+as peat. Mr. Leicester complained that he had found the tent too warm,
+and so had rolled himself in his blanket and spent the night in the open
+air. Evidently he and Harry Foster had been awake some time, and they
+were having a famous talk about one of the treasured creatures in the
+muddy wooden pail. Harry had managed to learn a great deal by spending
+an hour now and then in a famous old library in Riverport, in which Miss
+Leicester had given him the use of her share; and Betty knew that her
+father was delighted and surprised with the young man's interest in his
+own favorite studies. She had felt sure all summer that papa would know
+just how to help Harry Foster on, and as she watched them she could not
+help thinking that she wished Harry were her brother. But then she would
+no longer have entire right to papa.
+
+"Come, Elizabeth Leicester!" said papa, in high spirits. "I never had
+such a dilatory damsel to make my first tent breakfast!" So Betty
+hastened, and poked the fire nearly to death in her desire for
+promptness with the morning meal. After it was over Miss Leicester sat
+in the shade with a book, while all the rest went fishing and took a
+long sail seaward beside.
+
+That evening they went home with the tide, in great delight, every one.
+Aunt Barbara was unduly proud of her exploits and a sunburnt nose, and
+the younger members of the party were a little subdued from their first
+enthusiasm by all sorts of exciting pleasures. As for Harry Foster, the
+lad felt as if a door had been kindly opened in the solid wall of
+hindrance which had closed about him, and as if he could look through
+now into a new life.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+GOING AWAY.
+
+
+MISS LEICESTER and her nephew, Betty's father, were sitting together in
+the library. Betty had gone to bed. It was her last night in Tideshead,
+and the summer which had been so long to look forward to was spent and
+gone. She had felt very sorry before she went to sleep, and thought of
+many things which might have been better, but after all one could not
+help being very rich and happy with so many pleasures to remember. When
+she thought how many new friends she had made, and how dear all the old
+ones had been, and that she had become very friendly even with Mrs.
+Beck, it was a great satisfaction. And now in less than a fortnight she
+was to be with Ada and Bessie Duncan and their delightful mother in
+London again. She certainly had a great deal to look forward to; still
+there was a wistful feeling in her heart at leaving Tideshead.
+
+There had been a fire in the library fireplace, for the evening was
+cool, and papa and Aunt Barbara sat opposite each other. Papa was
+smoking, as he always did before he went to bed; and happily Miss
+Leicester liked the odor of tobacco, so that they were comfortable
+together. They were talking most affectionately about Betty.
+
+"I think you have done wonderfully with her, Tom," said the aunt.
+"Nobody knows how anxious your Aunt Mary and I have felt at the thought
+of your carrying her hither and yon, and spoiling her because she
+couldn't settle down to regular habits of life."
+
+"The only way is not to let one's habits become irregular," answered
+Betty's papa. "I found out long ago that I could have my hours for work
+and for exercise, and could go on with my reading as well in one place
+as in another. I have tried not to let Betty see too many people in town
+life, yet pretty soon she will be sixteen. She has always seemed to look
+at life from a child's point of view until last spring. I don't mean
+that she doesn't still have many days when she only considers the
+world's relation to herself; but on the whole she begins to be very
+serious about her own relation to the world, and is constantly made to
+think more of what she can give than of what she can get. This is a very
+trying season in many ways, the first really hard time that comes into a
+boy's or a girl's life."
+
+"Yes, and one is constantly learning those lessons in one way and
+another during all the rest of one's life," sighed Aunt Barbara. Then
+her face lighted up, and she added, "Just in proportion as she thinks
+that she does things for other people she is making steps upward for
+herself."
+
+"I always think that Betty looks like Bewick's picture of the robin
+redbreast; you remember it? There is an expression to its little beak
+which always reminds me of my girl."
+
+Aunt Barbara was much amused, but confessed that she remembered it, and
+that Betty and the bird really resembled each other. "I think there is a
+very good print of it in the large White's 'Selborne' which you sent
+me," she said, going to one of the bookshelves and taking it down. "Yes,
+they are certainly like one another," she repeated. "You see that this
+copy has been used? I lent it for a long time to my young neighbor,
+Henry Foster."
+
+"I am very much interested in that lad!" exclaimed Mr. Leicester. "I
+don't know that among all the students I can remember I have seen one
+who strikes me as being so intent and so really promising. Betty has
+written about him, but I imagined that he interested her because he had
+a boat and could take her out on the river. I supposed that he was one
+of the idle fellows who evade their honest work, and, with a smattering
+of pretty tastes which give them plenty of conceit, come to no sort of
+use in the end. Betty knows enough of my hobbies to talk about his fish
+a little, and I thought it was all girlish nonsense; the truth is that
+she has shown real discernment of character,--young Foster is a fine
+fellow."
+
+"Can you do anything for him?" asked Miss Leicester. "I pity his poor
+mother with all my heart. She is very ambitious for her son. I wish that
+he could earn enough for their needs, and still be able to go on with
+some serious study. Mrs. Foster and the daughter would make any
+sacrifice, but they must have something to eat and to wear. I cannot see
+how they can absolutely do without him even if his own expenses are
+paid. They will not accept charity."
+
+"I could learn by talking with him this evening that he is able already
+to take some minor post in a museum. He would very soon make up what he
+lacks in fitness, if we could put him where he could get hold of the
+proper books. He must be put under the right influences, for though he
+seems to have energy, many a boy with an unusual gift gets stranded in a
+small town like this, and becomes less useful in the end than if he were
+like everybody else."
+
+"I think it has been a great thing for him to be developed on the
+every-day side, and to have care and even trouble," said Miss Leicester.
+"Now I wish to see the exceptional side of him have a chance. I stand
+ready to help at any point, you must remember."
+
+"I can give him some work at once, with the understanding that he is to
+study at Cambridge this winter. I have plans for next summer in which he
+could be of great service. We will not say too much, but keep our own
+counsel until we watch him a little longer."
+
+Aunt Barbara nodded emphatically, but for her part she felt no doubt of
+Harry Foster's power of keeping at his work; then she proposed another
+subject of personal concern, and they talked a long time in the pleasant
+old library, among the familiar books and pictures, until the fire had
+given its last flicker and settled quietly down into a few red coals
+among the gray ashes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every one was glad to know that Harry's collection of fishes and insects
+and his scientific tastes had won great approval from a man of Mr.
+Leicester's fame, and that the boy was to be forwarded in his studies as
+fast as possible.
+
+Who shall tell the wonder of the town over a phonograph which Mr.
+Leicester brought with him? In fact, the last of the summer seemed
+altogether the pleasantest, and papa and Betty had a rare holiday
+together. Aunt Mary and Aunt Barbara, Serena and Letty, and Seth and
+Jonathan were all in a whirl from morning until night. Serena thought
+that the phonograph was an invention of the devil, and after hearing the
+uncanny little machine repeat that very uncomplimentary remark which
+she had just made about it, she was surer than before. Serena did not
+relish being called an invention of the evil one, herself, but it does
+not do to call names at a phonograph.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It was lonely when I first came," said Betty, the evening before she
+was to go away, as she walked to and fro between the box-borders with
+her father, "but I like everybody better and better,--even poor Aunt
+Mary," she added in a whisper. "It is lovely to live in Tideshead.
+Sometimes one gets cross, though, and it is so provoking about the
+left-out ones, and the won't-play ones, and the ones that want
+everything done some other way, and then let you do it after all. But I
+thought at first it was going to be so stupid, and that nobody would
+like any of the things I did; and here is Mary Picknell, who can paint
+beautifully, and Harry Foster knows so many of the things you do, and
+George Max is going to be a sea-captain, and so is Jim Beck, and poor
+dear Becky can sing like a bird when she feels good-natured. Why, papa,
+dear, I do believe that there is one person in Tideshead of every kind
+in the world. And Aunt Barbara is a duchess!"
+
+"I never saw so grand a duchess as your Aunt Barbara in her very best
+gown," said Betty's papa, "but I haven't seen all the duchesses there
+are in existence."
+
+"Oh, papa, do let us come and live here together," pleaded the girl,
+with shining eyes. "Must you go back to England for very long? After I
+see Mrs. Duncan and the rest of the people in London, I am so afraid I
+shall be homesick. You can keep on having the cubby-house for a very
+private study, and I know you could write beautifully on the rainy days,
+when the elm branches make such a nice noise on the roof. Oh, papa, do
+let us come some time!"
+
+"Some time," repeated Mr. Leicester, with great assurance. "How would
+next summer do, for instance? I have been talking with Aunt Barbara
+about it, and we have a grand plan for the writing of a new book, and
+having some friends of mine come here too, and for the doing of great
+works. I shall need a stenographer, and we are"--
+
+"Those other people could live at the Fosters' and Becks'," Betty
+interrupted, delightedly entering into the plans. She was used to the
+busy little colonies of students who gathered round her father. "Here
+comes Mr. Marsh, the teacher of the academy, to see you," and she danced
+away on the tips of her toes.
+
+"Serena and Letty! I am coming back to stay all next summer, and papa
+too," she said, when she reached the middle of the kitchen.
+
+"Thank the goodness!" said Serena. "Only don't let your pa bring his
+talking-machine to save up everybody's foolish speeches. Your aunt said
+this morning that what I ought to ha' said into it was, 'Miss Leicester,
+we're all out o' sugar.' But the sugar's goin' to last longer when
+you're gone. I expect we shall miss you," said the good woman, with
+great feeling.
+
+Now, everything was to be done next summer: all the things that Betty
+had forgotten and all that she had planned and could not carry out. It
+was very sad to go away, when the time came. Poor Aunt Mary fairly
+cried, and said that she was going to try hard to be better in health,
+so that she could do more for Betty when she came next year, and she
+should miss their reading together, sadly; and Aunt Barbara held Betty
+very close for a minute, and said, "God bless you, my darling," though
+she had never called her "my darling" before.
+
+And Captain Beck came over to say good-by, and wished that they could
+have gone down by the packet boat, as Betty came, and gave our friend a
+little brass pocket-compass, which he had carried to sea many years. The
+minister came to call in the evening, with his girls; and the dear old
+doctor came in next morning, though he was always in a hurry, and kissed
+Betty most kindly, and held her hand in both his, while he said that he
+had lost a good deal of practice, lately, because she kept the young
+folks stirring, and he did not know about letting her come back another
+summer.
+
+But when poor Mrs. Foster came, with Nelly, and thanked Betty for
+bringing a ray of sunshine into her sad home, it was almost too much to
+bear; and good-by must be said to Becky, and that was harder than
+anything, until they tried to talk about what they would do next
+summer, and how often they must write to each other in the winter months
+between.
+
+"Why, sometimes I have been afraid that you didn't like me," said Betty,
+as her friend's tears again began to fall.
+
+"It was only because I didn't like myself," said dear Becky forlornly.
+It was a most sad and affectionate leave-taking, but there were many
+things that Becky would like to think over when her new old friend had
+fairly gone.
+
+"I never felt as if I really belonged to any place, until now. You must
+always say that I am Betty Leicester of Tideshead," said Betty to her
+father, after she had looked back in silence from the car window for a
+long time. Aunt Barbara had come to the station with them, and was
+taking the long drive home alone, with only Jonathan and the slow
+horses. Betty's thoughts followed her all along the familiar road. Last
+night she had put the little red silk shawl back into her trunk with a
+sorry sigh. Everybody had been so good to her, while she had done so
+little for any one!
+
+But Aunt Barbara was really dreading to go back to the old house, she
+knew that she should miss Betty so much.
+
+Papa was reading already; he always read in the cars himself, but he
+never liked to have Betty do so. He looked up now, and something in his
+daughter's face made him put down his book. She was no longer only a
+playmate; her face was very grave and sweet. "I must try not to scurry
+about the world as I have done," he thought, as he glanced at Betty
+again and again. "We ought to have a home, both of us; her mother would
+have known. A girl should grow up in a home, and get a girl's best life
+out of the cares and pleasures of it."
+
+"I am afraid you won't wish to come down to the hospitalities of
+lodgings this winter," said Mr. Leicester. "Perhaps we had better look
+for a comfortable house of our own near the Duncans."
+
+"Oh, we're sure to have the best of good times!" said Betty cheerfully,
+as if there were danger of his being low-spirited. "We must wait about
+all that, papa, dear, until we are in London."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Page 10, "fee" changed to "feel" (You don't feel)
+
+Page 10, "grand-aunts" changed to "grandaunts" to match rest of usage
+(my grandaunts this summer)
+
+Page 36, "upstairs" changed to "up-stairs" to match rest of usage (Now
+run up-stairs)
+
+Page 124, "something'" changed to "somethin'" (somethin' else that)
+
+Page 124, single quotation mark changed to double (from our house,")
+
+Page 128, period added (Betty herself would.)
+
+Page 134, opening quotation mark added ("But your Aunt Mary)
+
+Page 154, period changed to a comma (a darlin' gal,")
+
+Page 159, "grand-niece" changed to "grandniece" to match rest of usage
+(my grandniece, sometimes)
+
+Page 163, period added (answered Betty humbly.)
+
+Page 287, single quotation mark changed to double (lodgings this
+winter,")
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Betty Leicester, by Sarah Orne Jewett
+
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