AT THE SEASHORE
“What are you making, Betsey?” asked Tom, one hot July day.
“A cottage,” said Betsey.
“Whew! There’s nothing small about you! What do you want of a cottage
when you’ve got a new doll-house?”
“Mrs. Delight has to have a summer home, hasn’t she?” answered Betsey
with dignity. “O Tom, dear! _Could_ I borrow your train of cars? The
Delights want to go to the seashore.”
“You can _have_ it. I don’t want it any more.”
“O thank you, Tom. I don’t suppose you’d want to lend that little
suit-case—that Uncle John gave you full of candy, would you?”
“That,” said Tom, solemnly making a great bow, “you may have, too. What
do _I_ want of a _doll’s_ suit-case?”
“You’re an old dear,” said Betsey affectionately. “Now let me think what
else I need to make before the families can start for the beach.” She
cut a large window in her pasteboard cottage as she spoke.
“How many families are going?” inquired Tom politely.
“Two,” said Betsey, carefully marking her window-sashes. “Mr. and Mrs.
Delight, and Dinah and Dumpling, for one family, and Mr. and Mrs.
Darling for the other. Try to think, Tom, what I ought to make.”
“Are your families going swimming?” asked Tom.
“O yes, indeed, every day.”
“Then I suggest that you make bathing-suits.”
“Of course! How stupid of me! Here I am, planning too much about trains
and cottages, and not at all about clothes!”
And Tom went down-stairs, just as Mr. Betts, the carpenter, finished his
cottage, and changed into Madame Bettina, the French dressmaker.
“O Madame Bettina!” said Mrs. Delight all out of breath. “We want some
bathing-suits made. We’re going to the seashore!”
“That is ver’ good,” said Betsey, with Madame Bettina’s French accent
(just as Mother’s dressmaker talked). “Will you have Alice-blue suits
trimmed with white braid, with charming bath caps to match?”
“That sounds very pretty,” agreed Mrs. Delight. “My sister doesn’t know
yet that she’s going, so hers is a great surprise. Make hers blue and
mine black, so we can tell them apart, and Dinah must have one too.”
“I shall send them tonight, surely,” said Madame Bettina, getting to
work in good earnest, for it is not every dressmaker that can make five
bathing-suits in one day. She cut here and snipped there, and ran her
machine at a great rate.
“Betsey!” called Mother above all the noise. “Come to the head of the
stairs a minute.”
Betsey stopped her noise obediently and opened the door.
“Tom and I are going to Boston at ten o’clock. Norah will take care of
you. And you can ask Mary to come over to play this afternoon, if you
want to.”
“I don’t need Mary, Mother!” cried Betsey laughing. “You see with Mrs.
Delight’s company I have my hands full already.”
“Very well,” said Mother laughing too. “Now what do you want me to bring
you? I’m going to take your gold thimble in to be straightened where the
chair rocked on it.” She held up the tiny blue box.
“O Mother _dear_! If you’ll only take the thimble in something else, and
give me that thimble box, you don’t have to bring me one thing.”
“What do you want it for?” asked Mother in a puzzled tone.
“A camera. It’s _just_ the size. I’ll cover it with black oilcloth and
make a little, black carrying case just to fit, and Mrs. Delight can
take it to the beach.”
“Here is your camera, then,” laughed Mother, tossing it up the stairs
into Betsey’s two hands.
“Good-bye, Mother,” sang Betsey, bustling back into the playroom.
“Ding-ling! Hello! Give me three-five-one, please.” (This in Mr.
Delight’s pleasant deep voice.)
“Hello, Mr. Betts. Can you make me a camera to take with me to the
beach?”
“I can, sir. I will send it up with the suit-case, and bag, and
fish-pole.” And Mr. Betts hastily got out his glue and heavy paper and
thin sticks of wood, and soon finished a gentleman’s hand-bag, lettered
“J. D.” (for John Darling), a tiny black camera, and a long, slender
fish-pole.
“There!” said Betsey to nobody in particular. “_Here_ is where the beach
will be.” (Setting up the new cottage.) “Here is the station.” (Setting
up the train of cars.) “And here are all the new things to be
delivered.”
She packed them into a tiny express cart drawn by a brown horse, took a
last look at the room to see that everything was ready, and went down to
dinner.
“Norah,” she said, settling herself at the table all alone in the big
dining-room, “I’m going to be very busy all the afternoon.”
“Are ye, me darlint!” said Norah with a smile. “And do you want anything
of me?”
Betsey hesitated. “No, I guess not—unless you could find me a big
shingle. Do you think you could?”
“A big shingle! I’m thinking there’s a cellar full! I’ll give ye two for
a kiss!”
But as it turned out, Betsey gave two kisses to kind Norah for one
shingle, and hurried back to her playroom, calling back over her
shoulder, “I want the shingle for a wharf!”
“A wharf,” chuckled Norah to herself. “Bless the dear child! She has a
regular little town up in her room, with her houses, and her cars, and
her seashores!”
Betsey stopped in her mother’s room and looked hard at the washstand.
“Yes, I’ll be very careful,” she said to nobody in particular, and
lifted the pitcher out, and poured the white pond-lily bowl nearly full
of water. “It’s lovely and cold!” she giggled. “How Mr. Delight will
yell!”
Carefully she lifted the basin, and slowly she walked to the back hall.
“However am I going to open the door?” puzzled Betsey. But she got no
farther, for one of her wrists let down suddenly, and splash! went a
great shower of water over the floor, and began running in all
directions.
“I should have called Norah,” said Betsey. But she did not sit down and
watch the water creep down-stairs. She seized a dry mop, and dried the
floor very deftly.
“I’m glad I didn’t break the bowl,” she thought as she squeezed the dry
mop (which was now quite a wet one) out of the window. “It’s lucky the
back hall isn’t carpeted.” And she started out again.
This time she reached the playroom safely, set the “ocean” on the table
by the beach, and knelt down before the big house to help Mrs. Delight
ring her shiny telephone.
“Hello, Prudence. What do you say if we go to the seashore?”
“Why, you take my breath away! John and I haven’t any bathing-suits.”
“But suppose William and I see to that?”
“Well, we haven’t hired a cottage.”
“But suppose we see to that, too?”
“Then we’ll go! Shall we meet you at the station?”
“Meet us at ten, sharp!”
With these words Betsey took Mrs. Delight from the telephone, put on her
prettiest white suit and her hat trimmed with the blue-jay feather that
she had found in the yard. She tied a wide blue ribbon to Dumpling’s
collar, put on Mr. Delight’s gray derby, and packed the suit-case
neatly. Then she hustled the whole crowd to the station, taking three
dolls in one hand and two dolls and a dog in the other. As the little
ladies were kissing each other delightedly, Betsey gave a shrill whistle
and rushed the big, noisy engine swiftly along the track, and brought it
slowly to a standstill. Then she gave several hard puffs (the way an
engine does, you know).
[Illustration: “SOON MR. DELIGHT CAME STRIDING BACK”]
“Woof! Woof!” said Dumpling.
“O here’s a dog,” said the porter, catching hold of Dumpling’s blue
ribbon. “No dogs allowed in de Pullman, sah.”
“Dis yeah dog is!” said Dinah, forgetting herself.
“No, miss; all dogs hab to ride in de baggage car.”
“My dear Edith,” said Mr. Delight calmly, “I’ll go and see my friend,
the President of the Railroad, and see what can be done.”
“De train will go off and leave you, sah!” cried the distressed porter.
“No it won’t, William!” shouted Mr. Darling. “I’m going to stand right
here with my bag, directly on the track, and the engineer won’t dare to
run over me.” And Betsey stood Mr. Darling up, right under the nose of
the steaming engine.
Soon Mr. Delight came striding back. “It’s all right,” he called. “The
President’s Special will be hitched on directly. Here it comes down the
track now.”
Betsey had the biggest passenger car behind her all the time. In fact it
was the only car all the little people could get into all at once, and
now she pushed it down the track at a great rate and bumped it into the
train with a bang quite like a real passenger car.
“It is a shame that it will be too late to bathe when we get there,”
said Mrs. Delight, as Betsey arranged them all in the tiny green velvet
seats.
“It won’t,” corrected Mr. Darling. “Eleven o’clock is the fashionable
hour to bathe. The minute I get there I shall put on my bathing-suit.
And, Dinah, I shall get enough fish for dinner off the wharf before I
touch the water.”
“Better not promise, Mr. John. What if de fishes don’t bite?”
“I promise,” said Mr. Darling more firmly, “that I won’t go into the
water until I get enough fish for dinner.”
Here Betsey slowed up the train, and called out in a conductor’s loud
voice, “Beachwood! Beachwood!”
“Here we are,” cried Mr. Delight. “What a lovely cottage!”
But Betsey couldn’t wait for them all to exclaim over the new cottage,
having four grown-up people to dress in new bathing-suits, so she began
directly with Mr. Delight. She put on his cunning blue bath-robe over
his bathing-suit and tied the tiny cord carefully, because Mr. Delight
was cold-blooded, like Father. Mrs. Delight had a round rubber cap (not
really rubber, though), and Betsey tied Mrs. Darling’s hair up in a
white silk bandana with a funny knot in front, like Cousin Margaret’s.
As for Mr. Darling, he had a scarlet suit, just the color of a boiled
lobster. And Betsey slung the fish-pole over his shoulder, and gave the
new camera to Mrs. Darling.
[Illustration: “REMEMBER DE FISH, MR. JOHN,” CALLED DINAH]
“Remember de fish, Mister John,” called Dinah. “Nebber tech de water
twell you catches enough fo’ dinner!”
“I’ll bring you the fish, sure!” promised Mr. Darling.
“Here’s the wharf,” said Betsey, putting the big shingle across the
bowl. “Mr. Darling can fish while the others try the water.”
“You know the best way to go in, Prudence, I suppose?” said Betsey for
Mrs. Delight, settling herself before the table that held the ocean.
“Yes, you wet your forehead first, like this,” said Mrs. Darling, “and
then you just plunge in all over like this! O-o-eee!” And Betsey laughed
and sputtered just as everyone does at the seashore, giving a monstrous
shout for Mr. Delight when he went in.
“Don’t stir up the water so much down there!” called Mr. Darling from
the wharf. “Scared away a big cod, then.”
“I wonder if I could make Mr. Delight swim,” thought Betsey. She bent
out his tiny arms and lowered him into the water and tried to make him
strike out. But she forgot that she had very carelessly left Mrs.
Darling standing in the water, and Mr. Delight was so very awkward and
made such a huge wave, that the water in the small ocean struck her full
in the face and over she went.
“O her hair! her hair!” cried Betsey in distress, plunging her hand in
after the poor little lady. She hastily dried her in a big towel, and
took off the little silk cap to see what damage was done. “It isn’t so
bad,” she decided, feeling of the yellow braid. “The silk made very good
rubber. Now Mr. Darling can go in.”
And she plunged him in all over. The other dolls were greatly surprised.
“We didn’t know you had caught a fish,” they said.
“Go and look in my fish basket,” said Mr. Darling.
And when they looked in the basket they found two tiny paper blue-fish
that Betsey had secretly cut out and hidden there.
“We must take them to Dinah to cook. I am starved,” said Mrs. Delight,
climbing out.
Betsey had just about time enough to get the family dry and dressed when
Dinah called them to dinner. “It will be all right if Mrs. Darling’s
hair _is_ down to dry,” decided Betsey. “Cousin Margaret has to dry
hers.” And she set them around the table.
“I didn’t know blue-fish grew here,” said Mrs. Delight.
“Pshaw! Don’t let him fool you, honey,” said Dinah scornfully. “I seed
him out on de wharf wid de fish man when you-all was busy in de water.”
“He didn’t catch them at all, then,” said Mrs. Delight.
“No,” said Mr. Darling. “But you know I said I’d _get_ the fish; I
didn’t promise to catch them.”
And Betsey had to laugh herself to see them laugh. And as she laughed
she heard a familiar voice call, “Betsey, dear!”
[Illustration: “DON’T STIR UP THE WATER SO MUCH DOWN THERE,” CALLED MR.
DARLING]
“Why, mother can’t be home,” she cried.
But she opened the door and it surely was Mother who stood on the
landing with her arms out ready for her busy little daughter.
“You may come down and look in my bag,” she said, kissing Betsey.
And when the black bag was opened, Betsey found two tiny boxes for her.
“I know when they’re tiny, they are for Mrs. Delight,” she giggled, as
she unwrapped the tissue papers. Inside she found a beautiful little
gilt cuckoo-clock with a tiny bird who really said “cuckoo” when you
pulled a cord,—and two smooth, silver-framed mirrors.
“Those mirrors,” said Betsey, almost too pleased to speak, “mean that
Mrs. Delight will have to have a new bureau.”
But it really turned out to mean a great deal more,—which is another
story!