MR. DELIGHT’S SURPRISE
“Where is my happy, sunny, good-tempered, busy little daughter Betsey?”
asked Mother playfully, one morning.
“She’s ’way inside of me,” said Betsey, dolefully. “So far I can’t find
her.”
“What drove her in?” inquired Mother, tossing away her duster and
sitting down on the couch.
“I think Mary’s going away to the country drove her in,” replied Betsey,
slowly. “She’s going tomorrow and stay five weeks!”
“Why-e-e!” exclaimed Mother. “If here isn’t a tear! A great, big, round,
wet tear! Whatever shall we do?”
Betsey laughed a little, and wiped her eyes with Mother’s soft
handkerchief. “But you see I won’t have anyone to play with,” she said,
“and I shall be lonesome.”
“What about Mary?” suggested Mother. “Don’t you think she’ll be lonesome
too? Now I think this would be a good plan,—the very first moment you
begin to miss Mary, just begin to make something nice to send her.”
“O I think so, too!” cried Betsey.
“Now I see somebody coming back,” declared Mother. “It’s my happy,
sunny, good-temp—”
But Betsey began kissing Mother so hard that it was impossible for her
to finish.
About a week after this, Mr. Betts sat in his shop making an automobile.
He had made the biggest part out of a candy box, had covered it smoothly
with black oilcloth, and had fastened a fascinating number on the
rear,—the very number that was on Father’s own car. But Mr. Betts was
having rather a hard time with the head-lights. He was almost on the
verge of getting out of patience with the machine, when luckily the mail
came. And there was a little letter from Mary.
“Dear, darling Betsey (it said),
I miss you dreadfully. I play every minute with Mr. and Mrs.
Merrill, and I have made a lovely summer house for them right on the
bank of the really, truly brook. So they go bathing every day. I
wish Edith could make Leslie a visit. Wouldn’t it be great?”
Betsey read the letter through twice. When she came the second time to
the sentence, “I wish Edith could make Leslie a visit,” an idea so
exciting and pleasant came to her that she laughed and danced a little
hornpipe around the room.
“I’ll _send_ her! I’ll put her in a box!” she declared to nobody in
particular. “I’ll pack her clothes in a box, and put her in the center
so she won’t break, and then I’ll write what every dress is for!” And
Betsey dashed down-stairs with the letter to consult with Mother.
Mother liked the exciting idea. She even stopped rolling out pink sugar
jumbles to find a large shoe-box for Betsey, and some heavy paper and
cord. And then what fun it was selecting costumes to send with Mrs.
Delight! For this was really going away, not just Make-Believe, although
Make-Believe does very well, when one hasn’t a real friend in the
country.
Betsey first packed Mrs. Delight’s satin and chiffon evening dresses,
her opera cloak, and her outing clothes; her dainty muslins and her
frilly night-dress and her pink kimono. Then she dressed Mrs. Delight
herself in her green Norfolk suit, settled her in the soft bed, and
packed over her white petticoats by the dozen, a woolen blanket for cold
nights, sofa pillows, and hats. Then she wrote a letter to Mary saying
that Mrs. Delight could stay a week, and mailed them together.
Now, to tell the truth, Betsey had been thinking all this time of how
pleased Mary would be, and she hadn’t yet thought how lonesome she would
be, or how _extremely_ lonesome poor little Mr. Delight would be! And
when at last Mr. Betts came back to finish his automobile, it began to
dawn on him how quiet his shop was. He laid down the little wheel and
looked over at poor Mr. Delight lying on the dining-room floor. And then
the dignified carpenter changed suddenly into a very disconsolate little
girl. Just at this minute, Betsey was very sorry she had sent Mrs.
Delight away.
She ran her fingers through her yellow curls and began to think. She
thought how sad and lonesome Father had been the year Mother had taken
Betsey and Tom on the big ship to England, and how the house looked when
they came home again. Not that it was untidy, O no! There was the new
piazza, and the grand new music room, and Betsey’s own room done over in
soft rose-color and white. And another such brilliant idea popped into
Betsey’s head that she laughed aloud.
Mother heard the laugh down in the pantry and smiled, and Norah heard it
in the kitchen and grinned broadly. And Joe, the gardener, heard it out
in the stables, and laughed too.
“I’ll let Mr. Delight get up a surprise! I can make Mrs. Delight her new
bureau with my new mirror, and he can order two new bedrooms and a
bathroom, if the old bookcase is anywhere near the right size!”
Here Betsey jumped up and ran for the old bookcase as fast as she could
go. It was a funny bookcase. Father had “knocked it together” once, in a
great hurry. The two shelves did not reach the back of the bookcase at
all, which left a space for the books to fall backward in the most
bothersome way. But it was lucky for Betsey that Father had left this
space, or there would have been no doors between Mr. Delight’s new
bedrooms. Betsey laid the bookcase on its side and measured it.
“Did you ever!” she cried. It measured exactly the same as the
doll-house.
“So you wish to surprise your wife?” said Mr. Betts, cheerfully rubbing
his hands as if nothing had happened. He set Mr. Delight comfortably in
a little chair on the table.
“I do,” replied Mr. Delight. “We would like to have company, and really
need a guest room.”
“The first thing, then,” proceeded Mr. Betts, “is to select wall-paper
and clap it on.”
“And for clapping it on,” said Betsey, giggling, “I will need paste.”
She skipped down-stairs to see what Mother would think about making
paste on baking day. And she had a feeling besides that the pink sugar
jumbles _might_ be done.
The jumbles were done, but Mother was nowhere to be seen. “A caller,”
said Norah.
Now, if Norah hadn’t been cross, she would have said, “A caller, me
darlint,” and Betsey knew it. She took a delicate bite out of a jumble
and began cautiously, “Good deal of cooking going on, isn’t there,
Norah?”
“A big sight of it,” agreed Norah. “But it’s me that is equal to it.”
“Norah,” said Betsey suddenly, “do you happen to know how paperhangers
make their paste?”
“Flour,” said Norah, “stirred in cold water; then hot water till it’s
just right. It’s many the time I’ve made it for me brother Terence.”
“I’m thinking,” said Betsey thoughtfully, “of papering a new room.”
Norah stopped wiping a milk bottle, put her hands on her hips, and
laughed heartily.
“You’re the cute darlint! _Will_ I be after making ye some paste? Yes,
and I will, if the pies never get made!” And kind Norah sifted the flour
and stirred and stirred, until she could hand Betsey a bright tin pail
full of hot paste as smooth as cream. And when she saw the smile on
Betsey’s face, she was thanked enough.
Mr. Betts walked into his shop with his pail, and put on a long-sleeved
blue apron. He selected a long paintbrush, and a can of white paint.
“While my paste cools,” he said, “I will begin the marble floor in the
bathroom.”
“A marble floor!” exclaimed Mr. Delight. “How extremely rich!”
“Betsey, Betsey! What on earth do I smell?” called Tom.
“You smell Mr. Delight’s marble floor,” replied Betsey.
“Hum,” said Tom, gazing at the tiny room fast growing white. “Which will
you have, right or left?”
“O I love to guess,” cried Betsey. “Right!”
“Better guess right _and_ left,” said Tom, holding out both hands. In
one was a white china mustard-boat, and in the other, a half a hollow
rubber ball. “I found them out in the rubbish box, and it struck me that
the mustard-boat would make a good bathtub,” said Tom.
“And the ball will make a set-bowl!” cried Betsey.
“Good,” said Tom admiringly. “I never should have thought of a set-bowl.
Paint the inside white and set it in a square of cardboard.”
“And I’ll paint the pipe that holds it up with silver,” said Betsey,
“and hang one of my new mirrors over it!”
The next day when Betsey was happily doing all these things, the mail
came. Such a fat letter as Mary sent! One sheet was from Mrs. Delight to
her busy little husband, only she didn’t know he was busy, and thought
he must be nearly dead from lonesomeness. And she said at the end of her
tiny letter: “I am so afraid that you are lonesome, I have almost
decided to come right home.”
Betsey instantly rushed for her doll’s paper and envelopes with Mr.
Delight’s tiny monogram on them, and wrote as fast as she could, in Mr.
Delight’s bold hand-writing,
“My dearest Edith,
I am not the least bit lonely, and should feel very badly indeed if
you were to cut your visit short. So don’t come until the week is
up.
Your devoted husband,
William.”
Then she read Mary’s letter. “The dolls are just loads of fun,” Mary
wrote. “I have made them a little sleeping-tent beside ours, and they
sleep out doors with me, and you were such an old dear to send Mrs.
Delight. Hasn’t she the loveliest clothes?”
And just at this moment Betsey was very glad indeed that she had sent
Mrs. Delight away. But the letter reminded her that Mrs. Delight would
be away only three days longer, so she fell to work again.
Such a patient little worker was Betsey! She measured the pretty
wall-paper carefully, and pressed out every bubble of paste with a soft
cloth, so that her walls were very workmanlike indeed. She always stood
Mr. Delight up in his shirt-sleeves in the room she was at work in, to
superintend things in general.
Out of a sweet-smelling box that had once held three cakes of soap,
Betsey made Mrs. Delight’s green ruffled bed. Then she drew chickens
with real ink on the pillow-sham of the guest-room bed, and printed
BATH-MAT in bright red, in the center of the dear little rug, to be laid
beside the new tub.
One morning when Betsey was making up the tiny new beds with the fresh
new sheets and embroidered blankets, Tom came up two stairs at a time
with a large shoe-box. “Mrs. Delight arrived on this train!” he cried.
“O don’t undo her yet!” pleaded Betsey in great distress. “The house
isn’t ready for her to see yet.”
So Tom good-naturedly left the box untouched.
Anxious as Betsey was to see her dearest doll again, she kept steadily
at her delightful work arranging furniture, until everything was in
readiness. Then she stood Dinah up in the dining-room with a tiny
pitcher of lemonade, settled Mr. Delight and Dumpling in the new
touring-car, and whizzed them away to the station.
Then she unpacked the shoe-box. “How surprised she will be,” sang
Betsey, as she burrowed for Mrs. Delight. “Oh, oh! What beautiful new
clothes! And Mary made them!” She held up one shimmering dress after
another,—one trimmed with tiny beads, and one with embroidery. “Now Mr.
Delight can be surprised too!”
And at last she came to the pretty little lady herself. Betsey set her
hat straight and stepped her off the train.
“Woof! Woof!” said Dumpling.
“How glad I am,” cried Betsey in Mr. Delight’s deep bass voice.
“O see the new car!” said Mrs. Delight’s silvery voice. And Betsey
laughed as she lifted the little china dog in beside his mistress.
“How cute they look!” she cried, clapping her hands. Then she whizzed
them as fast as she could to the big green house.
“You can go down at once to your room, my dear,” said Mr. Delight.
“You mean _up_,” said Mrs. Delight.
“No, he mean down, honey,” said Dinah with a welcoming grin.
So Mrs. Delight went down-stairs in great astonishment to find the
bright, new rooms. She looked first at her beautiful bed, and then at
the bathroom and the guest chamber.
“O William, this is why you didn’t want me to come home. You are the
very kindest man in all the world!”
[Illustration: “SO MRS. DELIGHT WENT DOWN IN GREAT ASTONISHMENT TO FIND
THE BRIGHT NEW ROOMS”]
And the funniest thing! Although Betsey had done every bit of the work,
and Mr. Delight hadn’t done a single thing, she was not the least bit
jealous when she went down-stairs to dinner!