Understood Betsy

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

  CHAPTER VI

  IF YOU DON'T LIKE CONVERSATION IN A BOOK SKIP THIS CHAPTER!

  Betsy opened the door and was greeted by her kitten, who ran to her,purring and arching her back to be stroked.

  "Well," said Aunt Abigail, looking up from the pan of apples in her lap,"I suppose you're starved, aren't you? Get yourself a piece of bread andbutter, why don't you? and have one of these apples."

  As the little girl sat down by her, munching fast on this provender, sheasked: "What desk did you get?"

  Elizabeth Ann thought for a moment, cuddling Eleanor up to her face. "Ithink it is the third from the front in the second row." She wonderedwhy Aunt Abigail cared. "Oh, I guess that's your Uncle Henry's desk.It's the one his father had, too. Are there a couple of H. P.'s carvedon it?"

  Betsy nodded.

  "His father carved the H. P. on the lid, so Henry had to put his inside.I remember the winter he put it there. It was the first season Motherlet me wear real hoop skirts. I sat in the first seat on the third row."

  Betsy ate her apple more and more slowly, trying to take in what AuntAbigail had said. Uncle Henry and HIS FATHER--why Moses or Alexander theGreat didn't seem any further back in the mists of time to Elizabeth Annthan did Uncle Henry's FATHER! And to think he had been a little boy,right there at that desk! She stopped chewing altogether for a momentand stared into space. Although she was only nine years old, she wasfeeling a little of the same rapt wonder, the same astonished sense ofthe reality of the people who have gone before, which make a first visitto the Roman Forum such a thrilling event for grown-ups. That very desk!

  After a moment she came to herself, and finding some apple still in hermouth, went on chewing meditatively. "Aunt Abigail," she said, "how longago was that?"

  "Let's see," said the old woman, peeling apples with wonderful rapidity."I was born in 1844. And I was six when I first went to school. That'ssixty-six years ago."

  Elizabeth Ann, like all little girls of nine, had very little notion howlong sixty-six years might be. "Was George Washington alive then?" sheasked.

  The wrinkles around Aunt Abigail's eyes deepened mirthfully, but she didnot laugh as she answered, "No, that was long after he died, but theschoolhouse was there when he was alive."

  "It WAS!" said Betsy, staring, with her teeth set deep in an apple.

  "Yes, indeed. It was the first house in the valley built of sawedlumber. You know, when our folks came up here, they had to build alltheir houses of logs to begin with."

  "They DID!" cried Betsy, with her mouth full of apple.

  "Why yes, child, what else did you suppose they had to make houses outof? They had to have something to live in, right off. The sawmills camelater."

  "I didn't know anything about it," said Betsy. "Tell me about it."

  "Why you knew, didn't you--your Aunt Harriet must have told you--abouthow our folks came up here from Connecticut in 1763, on horseback!Connecticut was an old settled place then, compared to Vermont. Therewasn't anything here but trees and bears and wood-pigeons. I've heard'em say that the wood-pigeons were so thick you could go out after darkand club 'em out of the trees, just like hens roosting in a hen-house.There always was cold pigeon-pie in the pantry, just the way we havedoughnuts. And they used bear-grease to grease their boots and theirhair, bears were so plenty. It sounds like good eating, don't it! But ofcourse that was just at first. It got quite settled up before long, andby the time of the Revolution, bears were getting pretty scarce, andsoon the wood-pigeons were all gone."

  "And the schoolhouse--that schoolhouse where I went today--was thatbuilt THEN?" Elizabeth Ann found it hard to believe.

  "Yes, it used to have a great big chimney and fireplace in it. It wasbuilt long before stoves were invented, you know."

  "Why, I thought stoves were ALWAYS invented!" cried Elizabeth Ann. Thiswas the most startling and interesting conversation she had ever takenpart in.

  Aunt Abigail laughed. "Mercy, no, child! Why, _I_ can remember when onlyfolks that were pretty well off had stoves and real poor people stillcooked over a hearth fire. I always thought it a pity they tore down thebig chimney and fireplace out of the schoolhouse and put in that big,ugly stove. But folks are so daft over new-fangled things. Well, anyhow,they couldn't take away the sun-dial on the window-sill. You want to besure to look at that. It's on the sill of the middle window on the righthand as you face the teacher's desk."

  "Sun-dial," repeated Betsy. "What's that?"

  "Why to tell the time by, when--"

  "Why didn't they have a clock?" asked the child.

  Aunt Abigail laughed. "Good gracious, there was only one clock in thevalley for years and years, and that belonged to the Wardons, the richpeople in the village. Everybody had sun-dials cut in theirwindow-sills. There's one on the window-sill of our pantry this minute.Come on, I'll show it to you." She got up heavily with her pan ofapples, and trotted briskly, shaking the floor as she went, over to thestove. "But first just watch me put these on to cook so you'll knowhow." She set the pan on the stove, poured some water from thetea-kettle over the apples, and put on a cover. "Now come on into thepantry."

  They entered a sweet-smelling, spicy little room, all white paint, andshelves which were loaded with dishes and boxes and bags and pans ofmilk and jars of preserves.

  "There!" said Aunt Abigail, opening the window. "That's not so good asthe one at school. This only tells when noon is."

  Elizabeth Ann stared stupidly at the deep scratch on the window-sill.

  "Don't you see?" said Aunt Abigail. "When the shadow got to that mark itwas noon. And the rest of the time you guessed by how far it was fromthe mark. Let's see if I can come anywhere near it now." She looked at ithard and said: "I guess it's half-past four." She glanced back into thekitchen at the clock and said: "Oh pshaw! It's ten minutes past five!Now my grandmother could have told that within five minutes, just by theplace of the shadow. I declare! Sometimes it seems to me that every timea new piece of machinery comes into the door some of our wits fly out atthe window! Now I couldn't any more live without matches than I couldfly! And yet they all used to get along all right before they hadmatches. Makes me feel foolish to think I'm not smart enough to getalong, if I WANTED to, without those little snips of pine and brimstone.Here, Betsy, take a cooky. It's against my principles to let a childleave the pantry without having a cooky. My! it does seem like livingagain to have a young one around to stuff!"

  Betsy took the cooky, but went on with the conversation by exclaiming,"HOW could ANY-body get along without matches? You HAVE to havematches."

  Aunt Abigail didn't answer at first. They were back in the kitchen now.She was looking at the clock again. "See here," she said; "it's time Ibegan getting supper ready. We divide up on the work. Ann gets thedinner and I get the supper. And everybody gets his own breakfast. Whichwould you rather do, help Ann with the dinner, or me with the supper?"

  Elizabeth Ann had not had the slightest idea of helping anybody with anymeal, but, confronted unexpectedly with the alternative offered, shemade up her mind so quickly that she didn't want to help Cousin Ann, anddeclared so loudly, "Oh, help YOU with the supper!" that her promptnessmade her sound quite hearty and willing. "Well, that's fine," said AuntAbigail. "We'll set the table now. But first you would better look atthat apple sauce. I hear it walloping away as though it was boiling toofast. Maybe you'd better push it back where it won't cook so fast. Thereare the holders, on that hook."

  Elizabeth Ann approached the stove with the holder in her hand andhorror in her heart. Nobody had ever dreamed of asking her to handle hotthings. She looked around dismally at Aunt Abigail, but the old womanwas standing with her back turned, doing something at the kitchen table.Very gingerly the little girl took hold of the handle of the saucepan,and very gingerly she shoved it to the back of the stove. And then shestood still a moment to admire herself. She could do that as well asanybody!

  "Why," said Aunt Abigail, as if remembering that Betsy had asked her aquestion. "Any man c
ould strike a spark from his flint and steel that hehad for his gun. And he'd keep striking it till it happened to fly outin the right direction, and you'd catch it in some fluff where it wouldstart a smoulder, and you'd blow on it till you got a little flame, anddrop tiny bits of shaved-up dry pine in it, and so, little by little,you'd build your fire up."

  "But it must have taken forEVER to do that!"

  "Oh, you didn't have to do that more than once in ever so long," saidAunt Abigail, briskly. She interrupted her story to say: "Now you putthe silver around, while I cream the potatoes. It's in that drawer--aknife, a fork, and two spoons for each place--and the plates and cupsare up there behind the glass doors. We're going to have hot cocoa againtonight." And as the little girl, hypnotized by the other's casual,offhand way of issuing instructions, began to fumble with the knives andforks she went on: "Why, you'd start your fire that way, and then you'dnever let it go out. Everybody that amounted to anything knew how tobank the hearth fire with ashes at night so it would be sure to last.And the first thing in the morning, you got down on your knees and pokedthe ashes away very carefully till you got to the hot coals. Then you'dblow with the bellows and drop in pieces of dry pine--don't forget thewater-glasses--and you'd blow gently till they flared up and theshavings caught, and there your fire would be kindled again. The napkinsare in the second drawer."

  Betsy went on setting the table, deep in thought, reconstructing the oldlife. As she put the napkins around she said, "But SOMETIMES it musthave gone out ..."

  "Yes," said Aunt Abigail, "sometimes it went out, and then one of thechildren was sent over to the nearest neighbor to borrow some fire. He'dtake a covered iron pan fastened on to a long hickory stick, and gothrough the woods--everything was woods then--to the next house and waittill they had their fire going and could spare him a pan full of coals;and then--don't forget the salt and pepper--he would leg it home as fastas he could streak it, to get there before the coals went out. Say,Betsy, I think that apple sauce is ready to be sweetened. You do it,will you? I've got my hands in the biscuit dough. The sugar's in theleft-hand drawer in the kitchen cabinet."

  "Oh, MY!" cried Betsy, dismayed. "_I_ don't know how to cook!"

  Aunt Abigail laughed and put back a strand of curly white hair with theback of her floury hand. "You know how to stir sugar into your cup ofcocoa, don't you?"

  "But how MUCH shall I put in?" asked Elizabeth Ann, clamoring for exactinstruction so she wouldn't need to do any thinking for herself.

  "Oh, till it tastes right," said Aunt Abigail, carelessly. "Fix it tosuit yourself, and I guess the rest of us will like it. Take that bigspoon to stir it with."

  Elizabeth Ann took off the lid and began stirring in sugar, ateaspoonful at a time, but she soon saw that that made no impression.She poured in a cupful, stirred it vigorously, and tasted it. Better,but not quite enough. She put in a tablespoonful more and tasted it,staring off into space under bended brows as she concentrated herattention on the taste. It was quite a responsibility to prepare theapple sauce for a family. It was ever so good, too. But maybe a LITTLEmore sugar. She put in a teaspoonful and decided it was just exactlyright!

  "Done?" asked Aunt Abigail. "Take it off, then, and pour it out in thatbig yellow bowl, and put it on the table in front of your place. You'vemade it; you ought to serve it."

  "It isn't done, is it?" asked Betsy. "That isn't all you do to makeapple sauce!"

  "What else could you do?" asked Aunt Abigail.

  "Well...!" said Elizabeth Ann, very much surprised. "I didn't know itwas so easy to cook!"

  "Easiest thing in the world," said Aunt Abigail gravely, with the merrywrinkles around her merry old eyes all creased up with silent fun.

  When Uncle Henry came in from the barn, with old Shep at his heels, andCousin Ann came down from upstairs, where her sewing-machine had beenhumming like a big bee, they were both duly impressed when told thatBetsy had set the table and made the apple sauce. They pronounced itvery good apple sauce indeed, and each sent his saucer back to thelittle girl for a second helping. She herself ate three saucerfuls. Herown private opinion was that it was the very best apple sauce ever made.

  After supper was over and the dishes washed and wiped, Betsy helpingwith the putting-away, the four gathered around the big lamp on thetable with the red cover. Cousin Ann was making some buttonholes in theshirt-waist she had constructed that afternoon, Aunt Abigail was darningsocks, and Uncle Henry was mending a piece of harness. Shep lay on thecouch and snored until he got so noisy they couldn't stand it, andCousin Ann poked him in the ribs and he woke up snorting and gurglingand looking around very sheepishly. Every time this happened it madeBetsy laugh. She held Eleanor, who didn't snore at all, but made theprettiest little tea-kettle-singing purr deep in her throat, and openedand sheathed her needle-like claws in Betsy's dress.

  "Well, how'd you get on at school?" asked Uncle Henry.

  "I've got your desk," said Elizabeth Ann, looking at him curiously, athis gray hair and wrinkled, weather-beaten face, and trying to thinkwhat he must have looked like when he was a little boy like Ralph.

  "So?" said Uncle Henry. "Well, let me tell you that's a mighty gooddesk! Did you notice the deep groove in the top of it?"

  Betsy nodded. She had wondered what that was used for.

  "Well, that was the lead-pencil desk in the old days. When they couldn'trun down to the store to buy things, because there wasn't any store torun to, how do you suppose they got their lead-pencils!" Elizabeth Annshook her head, incapable even of a guess. She had never thought beforebut that lead-pencils grew in glass show-cases in stores.

  "Well, sir," said Uncle Henry, "I'll tell you. They took a piece off thelump of lead they made their bullets of, melted it over the fire in thehearth down at the schoolhouse till it would run like water, and pouredit in that groove. When it cooled off, there was a long streak of solidlead, about as big as one of our lead-pencils nowadays. They'd breakthat up in shorter lengths, and there you'd have your lead-pencils, madewhile you wait. Oh, I tell you in the old days folks knew how to takecare of themselves more than now."

  "Why, weren't there any stores?" asked Elizabeth Ann. She could notimagine living without buying things at stores.

  "Where'd they get the things to put in a store in those days?" askedUncle Henry, argumentatively. "Every single thing had to be lugged clearfrom Albany or from Connecticut on horseback."

  "Why didn't they use wagons?" asked Elizabeth Ann.

  "You can't run a wagon unless you've got a road to run it on, can you?"asked Uncle Henry. "It was a long, long time before they had any roads.It's an awful chore to make roads in a new country all woods and hillsand swamps and rocks. You were lucky if there was a good path from yourhouse to the next settlement."

  "Now, Henry," said Aunt Abigail, "do stop going on about old times longenough to let Betsy answer the question you asked her. You haven't givenher a chance to say how she got on at school."

  "Well, I'm AWFULLY mixed up!" said Betsy, complainingly. "I don't knowwhat I am! I'm second-grade arithmetic and third-grade spelling andseventh-grade reading and I don't know what in writing or composition.We didn't have those."

  Nobody seemed to think this very remarkable, or even very interesting.Uncle Henry, indeed, noted it only to say, "Seventh-grade reading!" Heturned to Aunt Abigail. "Oh, Mother, don't you suppose she could readaloud to us evenings?"

  Aunt Abigail and Cousin Ann both laid down their sewing to laugh! "Yes,yes, Father, and play checkers with you too, like as not!" Theyexplained to Betsy: "Your Uncle Henry is just daft on being read aloudto when he's got something to do in the evening, and when he hasn't he'sas fidgety as a broody hen if he can't play checkers. Ann hates checkersand I haven't got the time, often."

  "Oh, I LOVE to play checkers!" said Betsy.

  "Well, NOW ..." said Uncle Henry, rising instantly and dropping hishalf-mended harness on the table. "Let's have a game."

  "Oh, Father!" said Cousin Ann, in the tone she used for Shep. "How ab
outthat piece of breeching! You know that's not safe. Why don't you finishthat up first?"

  Uncle Henry sat down again, looking as Shep did when Cousin Ann told himto get up on the couch, and took up his needle and awl.

  "But I could read something aloud," said Betsy, feeling very sorry forhim. "At least I think I could. I never did, except at school."

  "What shall we have, Mother?" asked Uncle Henry eagerly.

  "Oh, I don't know. What have we got in this bookcase?" said AuntAbigail. "It's pretty cold to go into the parlor to the other one." Sheleaned forward, ran her fat fore-finger over the worn old volumes, andtook out a battered, blue-covered book. "Scott?"

  "Gosh, yes!" said Uncle Henry, his eyes shining. "The staggit eve!"

  At least that was the way it sounded to Betsy, but when she took thebook and looked where Aunt Abigail pointed she read it correctly, thoughin a timid, uncertain voice. She was very proud to think she couldplease a grown-up so much as she was evidently pleasing Uncle Henry, butthe idea of reading aloud for people to hear, not for a teacher tocorrect, was unheard-of.

  The Stag at eve had drunk his fill Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,

  she began, and it was as though she had stepped into a boat and wasswept off by a strong current. She did not know what all the wordsmeant, and she could not pronounce a good many of the names, but nobodyinterrupted to correct her, and she read on and on, steadied by thestrongly-marked rhythm, drawn forward swiftly from one clanging,sonorous rhyme to another. Uncle Henry nodded his head in time to therise and fall of her voice and now and then stopped his work to look ather with bright, eager, old eyes. He knew some of the places by heartevidently, for once in a while his voice would join the little girl'sfor a couplet or two. They chanted together thus:

  A moment listened to the cry That thickened as the chase drew nigh, Then, as the headmost foes appeared, With one brave bound, the copse he cleared.

  At the last line Uncle Henry flung his arm out wide, and the child feltas though the deer had made his great leap there, before her eyes.

  "I've seen 'em jump just like that," broke in Uncle Henry. "Atwo-three-hundred-pound stag go up over a four-foot fence just like apiece of thistledown in the wind."

  "Uncle Henry," asked Elizabeth Ann, "what is a copse?"

  "I don't know," said Uncle Henry indifferently. "Something in the woods,must be. Underbrush most likely. You can always tell words you don'tknow by the sense of the whole thing. Go on."

  And stretching forward, free and far,

  The child's voice took up the chant again. She read faster and faster asit got more exciting. Uncle Henry joined in on

  For, jaded now and spent with toil, Embossed with foam and dark with soil, While every gasp with sobs he drew, The laboring stag strained full in view.

  The little girl's heart beat fast. She fled along through the nextlines, stumbling desperately over the hard words but seeing the headlongchase through them clearly as through tree-trunks in a forest. UncleHenry broke in in a triumphant shout:

  The wily quarry shunned the shock And TURNED him from the opposing rock; Then dashing down a darksome glen, Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken, In the deep Trossach's wildest nook His solitary refuge took.

  "Oh MY!" cried Elizabeth Ann, laying down the book. "He got away, didn'the? I was so afraid he wouldn't!"

  "I can just hear those dogs yelping, can't you?" said Uncle Henry.

  Yelled on the view the opening pack.

  "Sometimes you hear 'em that way up on the slope of Hemlock Mountainback of us, when they get to running a deer."

  "What say we have some pop-corn!" suggested Aunt Abigail. "Betsy, don'tyou want to pop us some?"

  "I never DID," said the little girl, but in a less doubtful tone thanshe had ever used with that phrase so familiar to her. A dim notion wasgrowing up in her mind that the fact that she had never done a thing wasno proof that she couldn't.

  "I'll show you," said Uncle Henry. He reached down a couple of ears froma big yellow cluster hanging on the wall, and he and Betsy shelled theminto the popper, popped it full of snowy kernels, buttered it, saltedit, and took it back to the table.

  It was just as she was eating her first ambrosial mouthful that the dooropened and a fur-capped head was thrust in. A man's voice said:"Evenin', folks. No, I can't stay. I was down at the village just now,and thought I'd ask for any mail down our way." He tossed a newspaperand a letter on the table and was gone.

  The letter was addressed to Elizabeth Ann and it was from Aunt Frances.She read it to herself while Uncle Henry read the newspaper. AuntFrances wrote that she had been perfectly horrified to learn that CousinMolly had not kept Elizabeth Ann with her, and that she would neverforgive her for that cruelty. And when she thought that her darling wasat Putney Farm...! Her blood ran cold. It positively did! It was toodreadful. But it couldn't be helped, for a time anyhow, because AuntHarriet was really VERY sick. Elizabeth Ann would have to be a dear,brave child and endure it as best she could. And as soon ... oh, as soonas ever she COULD, Aunt Frances would come and take her away from them."Don't cry TOO much, darling ... it breaks my heart to think of you there!TRY to be cheerful, dearest! TRY to bear it for the sake of yourdistracted, loving Aunt Frances."

  Elizabeth Ann looked up from this letter and across the table at AuntAbigail's rosy, wrinkled old face, bent over her darning. Uncle Henrylaid the paper down, took a big mouthful of pop-corn, and beat timesilently with his hand. When he could speak he murmured: An hundred dogsbayed deep and strong, Clattered an hundred steeds along.

  Old Shep woke up with a snort and Aunt Abigail fed him a handful ofpop-corn. Little Eleanor stirred in her sleep, stretched, yawned, andnestled down into a ball again on the little girl's lap. Betsy couldfeel in her own body the rhythmic vibration of the kitten's contentedpurr.

  Aunt Abigail looked up: "Finished your letter? I hope Harriet is noworse. What does Frances say?"

  Elizabeth Ann blushed a deep red and crushed the letter together in herhand. She felt ashamed and she did not know why. "Aunt Francessays, ... Aunt Frances says, ..." she began, hesitating. "She says AuntHarriet is still pretty sick." She stopped, drew a long breath, and wenton, "And she sends her love to you."

  Now Aunt Frances hadn't done anything of the kind, so this was a reallywhopping fib. But Elizabeth Ann didn't care if it was. It made her feelless ashamed, though she did not know why. She took another mouthful ofpop-corn and stroked Eleanor's back. Uncle Henry got up and stretched."It's time to go to bed, folks," he said. As he wound the clock Betsyheard him murmuring:

  But when the sun his beacon red....