CHAPTER IITHE NEW SURROUNDINGS
She sat up and looked out of the window“She sat up and looked out of the window.”
“She sat up and looked out of the window.”
“She sat up and looked out of the window.”
BETSY awoke with a strange feeling of being still in a dream. Instead of opening her eyes on the little attic room of the red house in the Hollow, she was greeted by what seemed to her a palace in a fairy tale. She rubbed her eyes, sat up, and looked out of the window.
Yes, it was true; instead of being in a hollow she was on a hilltop. Stretched out below her laya green valley, and through the trees peeped many, many houses, more than Betsy had ever dreamed of in all her life. It must be a city, she thought, but the pictures in her geography had not prepared her for anything like this. The city seemed to be sitting on a hillside, with its feet dipping in the waters of a broad blue river. She was quite awake now, and beginning to realize what had happened.
Bang, bang, bang! There came a terrifying sound. It might have been a church bell, but it was too near; it might have been somebody pounding on the brass soap-kettle at home, but it was too musical. Betsy was out of bed like a shot, just as Aunt Kate showed her smiling face through a crack in the door.
“My goodness! What was that noise?” cried Betsy.
“Just the rising gong, dear. I intended to have wakened you before it sounded. You’ll have just time to dress before breakfast. What are you going to put on?”
“I got this dress I wore here, for best, and I got a black and white check gingham for every day. I had two blue calicoes and a red merino,but Mrs. Webb said I wasn’t to bring ’em, ’cause they was colored, and I’m wearin’ black things.” Betsy told off the items of her wardrobe in one breath.
“Put on your gingham. It will do for now. Have you some light shoes?”
“Only just these copper-toes. I stub ’em out awful, and Pa didn’t b’lieve in no foolishness, he said. Summertimes I go barefoot, anyway.”
“Dear me! Well, these will do until after breakfast.”
Betsy dressed hurriedly, after having first been introduced to a big porcelain bathtub, where she was told to hop in this morning and every morning thereafter, for a splash.
“Oh my! Can I learn to swim in it?”
“I’m afraid it isn’t wide enough for you.”
“It’s bigger’n where I tried to learn in the brook. There wasn’t room in that pool for the whole of me. I just kicked my legs and held on to the bank, and then I kicked my arms, with my legs on the bank. But I dunno if I really learned.”
Aunt Kate laughed a merry laugh, and left her. Betsy finished off her toilette by tying a rustyblack ribbon on the end of her tight pigtail, and was ready for breakfast.
At the table there was Uncle Ben to meet. He was a tall, grave man, with a gray moustache,—much older-looking than Aunt Kate; but there was a twinkle in his eye as he shook Betsy’s hand.
“Good morning. I suppose this is Miss Betsy Wixon?”
“Yes,” she said simply, and slipped into the chair that Treesa pointed out to her. She contributed nothing more to the conversation for the present, but began to eat with the healthy appetite of a child. Aunt Kate sighed as she saw her bite off the biggest piece possible from her slice of toast, stuff nearly half an egg into her mouth at once, and drink her coffee noisily. If the service impressed Betsy, she gave no sign; only after Treesa had quietly finished her duties and retired to the kitchen, did she offer a remark.
“Aunt Kate,—don’t your hired girl eat to the table with you?”
She received her information on the subject without comment, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, paying no attention to the napkin that Treesa had placed in her lap, pushed back her chair, slippeddown, and, without waiting to be excused, walked out upon the porch.
Uncle Ben’s eyes followed the queer little figure.
“Your time won’t hang idle on your hands, Kate, even if she’s good. Do teach her some table manners, and get that black and white Mother Hubbard thing into the waste basket.”
“Just wait, Ben, until to-night. There will be a transformation on the surface, even so soon as that. I’ve a scheme all worked out,—on a theory that did not entirely originate with me. In fact, I have already begun to work on it. I spent all yesterday morning in the heat, shopping,—that’s where I got my headache. When she begins to connect the idea of self-respect with her appearance, she’ll begin to try to live up to her looks. There is splendid material there, and I’m going to do the utmost with it. I need the child as much as she needs me. I love her already, and this big house will not be empty any more. She’ll respond,—you’ll see.”
“I’ll trust you, Kate, to succeed in whatever you start out to do. Just at present I will say thatI’d rather have her around than forty just like her.”
“You encourage me, Ben. By and by you will applaud me. Watch!”
Later, when Dr. Johns had gone to his office at the Main Building, Aunt Kate called Betsy in, and together they mounted to the third floor, where was a cosy sewing-room, with a high north light. On a couch lay a number of pieces of cloth.
“My, aren’t they pretty!” said Betsy.
“We are going to make some simple frocks for you. Mrs. Allston is coming to-day to help.”
“For me? Why, I’m in mournin’ for Ma.”
“People—little girls—wear white, even when they are in mourning, and we can save the colored ones till a little later, if you prefer.”
“The pink’s the prettiest. It looks like the wild roses in our back lot. But I shall have to wait. Oh, well, I ain’t never had even a white dress before. I can help you sew. I know how.”
“Do you? Why, that’s fine! Now here are some underclothes for you to put on. I want you to be all ready when Mrs. Allston comes to help us sew.”
“These things? They got lace on.”
“Yes.”
“Why, I’d tear ’em to bits, climbin’ trees.”
“If you can sew you’ll know how to mend them, and you will learn to be careful. Now try on these shoes.”
A pair of dainty strap-slippers were chosen, with stockings to match, and soon Betsy was surveying herself in the mirror.
“Have I got to wear ’em always?”
“Most people do, here.”
“Hm! They’ll feel funny. But I’ll get used to ’em. Folks said you would likely ‘doll me up’ some. But I didn’t think there was such pretty things in all the world. I’m afraid—I’m afraid, Aunt Kate, that I won’t mourn so hard as I ought to, with this lace on my petticoat.”
“You must think of how your mother would have liked to see you in these pretty things. She used to wear dainty, lace-trimmed clothes herself, when she was little. And, dearie, she would not want you to mourn. She’s so much happier now. Just enjoy the things, and learn to make your soul and body pretty, like the clothes.”
“Mrs. Webb said I’d prob’ly get vain when youtook me in hand,—but I guess I can resk one small ‘vain.’ I can wear my black hair-ribbin, so my head’ll mourn, anyway, and my feet’ll mourn, too, in these black slippers.”
With this compromise they sat down, as soon as Mrs. Allston had arrived, and Betsy’s nimble little fingers ran with the best. Basting, back-stitching and “over-and-overing” she could do, and she soon learned the mysteries of hemming and felling. So eager was she that her fingers almost learned of themselves.
In the afternoon a tired but excited Betsy beheld her first white frock, ready to wear.
“That will do for a start,” said Aunt Kate. “Now, before you put it on, let us make sure that everything else is all right. Will you let me do your hair for you?”
Betsy submitted, and in a twinkling the tight pigtail was unbraided.
“First we must get rid of the dust of the train. Did you ever have a real shampoo?”
“No’m, I guess not. I never saw one.—Is it side-combs?”
Aunt Kate laughed merrily.
“I’ll show you.”
To Betsy’s surprise she was taken to the bathroom, and introduced to the wonders of a beaten egg, warm water, a delightful, soapy lather, more warm water, then cold, and last, a brisk towel-rubbing and fanning.
Out of it all the brown hair emerged, soft and fluffy, with almost a desire to kink at the ends, and a fresh black ribbon was tied jauntily into the flowing meshes.
Betsy looked at herself critically.
“It seems like I was in a picter. But it’ll snarl like sixty.”
“I’ll show you how to braid it nicely when you are playing, but this is for Uncle Ben to see. Now, just let me get the whole effect:—underwear, stockings, slippers, hair,—all right, and now the frock can go on.... Stop a minute, though; let me look at your finger-nails.—My little Betsy, we’ve some work ahead of us here!”
“What’s the matter with ’em? I washed ’em.”
“Yes, I see, dear. But did no one ever tell you not to bite your nails?”
“No’m. Why, they’d get awful long if I didn’t, and then I’d break ’em, washin’ dishes.”
“Well, I’ll make them look as nice as I can, and you must promise me not to bite them any more.”
Betsy hesitated.—“I’ll try,” she said at last, “but I can’t promise,—not right off,—’cause I bite ’em when I’m thinkin’ things. I couldn’t promise nothin’ ’at I might forget.”
“That’s right, too. But you must do your best to remember. Little girls must be nice in every way.”
That evening, when Uncle Ben came to dinner, he was greeted by an apparition all in white. Betsy stood by her chair with a shy look at him, to observe the effect of her transformation.
“As I live,—a fairy,—out of a story-book! Or was there a fairy godmother somewhere, and is this Cinderella? Where is the Prince?”
Betsy laughed and seated herself, and Aunt Kate noticed that at the end of the meal she reached down shyly, and wiped her mouth on the corner of her napkin.
A week passed, and Betsy was clothed and almost in her right mind once more, when Aunt Kate came in one morning, with a pretty notebook in her hand.
“Now, Betsy dear, this is to be your book, and I have put the word ‘Manners’ and a motto,—‘Manner maketh the Man’, at the top. One of the most important things is the way we eat our meals, and I think it will be easier for you if I do not speak to you at the table. But afterwards we will come up to your room for a minute, all by ourselves, and I will tell you what you have done that is not just right, and you can write it down in this book. Then we will practice with knives and forks and spoons, and make believe eat. At the table I’ll watch you, and you may watch me, and if you see anything that seems queer to you, please ask me about it.”
“Don’t I eat all right?”
“Well,—you have some things to learn.”
“Ma never had time to learn me much. We justet, and that was all they was to it.”
“Have you noticed anything that we do differently here from what you have seen at home?”
“One or two, yes’m. That about the napkin, and, now, Uncle Ben, he don’t never eat his meat with his knife,—he just cuts it and takes it on his fork; and you don’t never turn your coffee in your saucer.”
“Good, Betsy! Why, you’ll learn so fast that it will be simply play.”
As Aunt Kate rose to leave the room her hand rested for a moment on the soft brown hair. At the new touch of tenderness the child looked up and met a glow in Aunt Kate’s eyes—a look of mother-yearning. Something stirred in Betsy’s heart,—an impulse to seize and hold that gentle hand in both her own. But she did not quite dare—yet. Down where Aunt Kate could not see she caught a fold of the muslin gown that brushed past her, and crushed it with timid fingers.
So the lessons in manners began. Grammar could wait a bit. Aunt Kate did not intend to cram Betsy, for a little at a time is easier to digest.
And in the meantime, down in New York City, something was happening that was to color all Betsy’s new life on the Hill-Top.