THE FRUITS OF TANTALUS
Betty Gordon had glanced hastily at her wrist watch as she went out of the
little store. It was very near the minute appointed for her to meet Carter
at the square. And she had forgotten to ask that girl, Ida Bellethorne
(such an Englishy name!), how to find her rendezvous with the Littells'
chauffeur.
She hesitated, tempted to run back. Had she done so she would have been in
time to see Ida pick up the little locket that Uncle Dick had given Betty
that very Christmas and which she carried in her bag because it seemed the
safest place to treasure it while she was visiting. Her trunk was at
Shadyside.
So it is that the very strangest threads of romance are woven in this
world. And Betty Gordon had found before this that her life, at least, was
patterned in a very wonderful way. Since she had been left an orphan and
had found her only living relative, Mr. Richard Gordon, her father's
brother, such a really delightful guardian the girl had been to so many
places and her adventures had been so exciting that her head was
sometimes quite in a whirl when she tried to think of all the happenings.
Uncle Dick's contracts with certain oil promotion companies made it
impossible as yet for him to have what Betty thought of as "a real,
sure-enough home." He traveled here, there and everywhere. Betty loved to
travel too; but Uncle Dick was forced to go to such rough and wild places
that at first he could not see how Betty, a twelve year old, gently bred
girl, could go with him.
Therefore he had to find a home for his little ward for a few months, and
remembering that an old school friend of his was married to the owner of a
big and beautiful farm, he arranged for Betty to stay with the Peabodys at
Bramble Farm. Her adventures as a "paying guest" in the Peabody household
are fully related in the first book of the series, entitled "Betty Gordon
at Bramble Farm," and a very exciting experience it was.
In spite, however, of the disagreeable and miserly Joseph Peabody, Betty
would not have missed her adventures at the farm for anything. In the
first place, she met Bob Henderson there, and a better boy-chum a girl
never had than Bob. Although Bob had been born and brought up in a
poorhouse, and at first knew very little about himself and his relatives,
even a girl like Betty could see that this "poorhouse rat" as he was
slurringly called by Joseph Peabody, possessed natural refinement and a
very bright mind.
Betty and Bob became loyal friends, and when Betty, in the second volume,
called "Betty Gordon in Washington," had fairly to run away from Bramble
Farm to meet her Uncle Dick in the national capital, badly treated Bob ran
away likewise, on the track of somebody who knew about his mother's
relatives. Betty's adventures in Washington began with a most astonishing
confusion of identities through which she met the Littells--a charming
family consisting of a Mr. Littell, who was likewise an "Uncle Dick"; a
motherly Mrs. Littell, who never found young people--either boys or
girls--troublesome; three delightful sisters named Louise, Roberta, and
Esther Littell; and a Cousin Elizabeth Littell, who good-naturedly becomes
"Libbie" instead of "Betty" so as not to conflict in anybody's mind with
"Betty" Gordon.
The fun they all had in Washington while Betty waited for the appearance
of her real Uncle Dick, especially after Bob Henderson turned up and was
likewise adopted for the time being by the Littell family, is detailed to
the full in that second story. And at last both Betty and Bob got news
from Oklahoma, where Mr. Richard Gordon was engaged, which set them
traveling westward in a great hurry--Betty to meet Uncle Dick at Flame
City and her boy chum hard on the trace of two elusive aunts of his, his
mother's sisters, who appeared to be the only relatives he had in the
world.
Betty and Bob discovered the aunts just in time to save them from selling
their valuable but unsuspected oil holdings to sharpers, and in "Betty
Gordon in the Land of Oil" one of the most satisfactory results that Betty
saw accomplished was the selling of the old farm for Bob and his aunts for
ninety thousand dollars.
Uncle Dick decided that Betty must go to a good school in the fall, and
they chose Shadyside because the Littells and their friends were going
there. Bob, now on a satisfactory financial plane, arranged to attend the
Salsette Military Academy which was right across the lake from the girls'
boarding school, Uncle Dick, who was now Bob's guardian, having advised
this.
Hastening back from Oklahoma, while Uncle Dick was called to Canada to
examine a promising oil field there, Betty and Bob met the girls and boys
they previously got acquainted with in Washington and some other friends,
and Betty at least began her boarding school experience with considerable
confidence as well as delight.
It was not all plain sailing as subsequent events prove; yet in "Betty
Gordon at Boarding School," the fourth volume of the series, Betty had
many; pleasant adventures as well as school trials. She was particularly
interested in the fortunes of Norma and Alice Guerin, who had been Betty's
friends when she was living at Bramble Farm; and it was through Betty's
good offices that great happiness came to the Guerin girls and their
parents.
The hospitable Littells had invited their daughters' school friends (and,
to quote Bob, there was a raft of them!) to come to Fairfields for the
Christmas holidays, and at the close of the first term they bade good-bye
to Shadyside and Salsette and took the train for Washington.
Fairfields, which was over the river in Virginia, was one of the most
delightful homes Betty Gordon had ever seen. It was closer to Georgetown
than to the nation's capital, and that is why Betty on this brisk morning
was shopping in the old-fashioned town and had come across the orange silk
over-blouse in the window of the neighborhood shop.
It was really too bad that Betty did not run back to the shop to ask for
directions to the soldiers' monument square. She would have been just in
season to interrupt the scene between Ida Bellethorne and Mrs. Staples and
before the latter had threatened Ida with dismissal if she told Betty
about the tiny locket. When she came to find it out, this loss of Uncle
Dick's present, was going to trouble Betty Gordon very much.
"Where in the world can that soldiers' monument be?" murmured Betty to
herself as, after hurrying on for a distance and having turned two
corners, she found herself in a neighborhood that looked stranger than
ever to her.
Not a soul was in sight at that moment, but presently she saw a small
negro boy shuffling along, drawing a piece of chalk on the various houses
and stoops as he passed.
"Boy, come here!" called Betty to the little fellow.
At once the colored boy stopped the use of his piece of chalk and stared
at her with wide-open eyes.
"I ain't done nuffin, lady, 'deed I ain't," he mumbled, and then began to
back away.
"I only want to know where the soldiers' monument is," she returned. "Do
you know?"
"Soldiers' monument am over that way," and the boy waved his hand to one
side, where there was a hilly street, and then hurried out of sight.
"Oh, dear! that's not very definite," sighed Betty.
But now she ran down the hilly street at a chance, turned a crooked corner
and came plump upon the square and the soldiers' monument. There was the
Littells' big, closed car just turning into the square from another
street.
"What luck! Fancy!" gasped Betty, running swiftly to the place where the
big car stopped.
"You're better than prompt, Miss Betty," said the driver of the car. "I am
glad I hadn't to wait for you, for Mister Bob told me particular to get
you home for luncheon. You'll be wanted."
"What for? Do tell me what for, Carter!" Betty cried. "I thought Bob
Henderson was awfully mysterious this morning at breakfast. Do you know
what is in the wind, Carter?"
"Not me, Miss Betty," said the chauffeur, and having tucked the robes
about her he shut the door and got into his own place. But before he
started the car he said through the open window: "I have to delay a
little, Miss. Must drive around by the bank and pick up Mr. Gordon. But I
will hurry home after that."
"Oh! Uncle Dick did go to the bank here," murmured Betty, nestling back
into the cushions and robes. "I wonder if he is going to stop off at
Mountain Camp on his way back to Canada. Oh!" and she sighed more deeply,
"if we could only go up there with him----"
The car stopped before the gray stone bank building. Uncle Dick seemed to
have been on the watch for them, he came out so promptly. Although his
hair was graying, especially about the temples, Mr. Richard Gordon was by
no means an old looking man. He lived much out of doors and spent such
physical energy only as his out-of-door life yielded, instead of living on
his reserve strength as so many office-confined men do. Betty had learned
all about that in physics. She was thoroughly an out-of-door girl herself!
"Oh, Uncle Dick!" she cried when he stepped into the car, "are you really
and truly getting ready to go north again?"
"Must, my dear. Have still some work to do in spite of the ice and snow in
Canada. And, as I told you, I mean to stop and see Jonathan Canary."
"That is what I mean, Uncle Dick," she cried. "Will you go to that lovely
Mountain Camp all alo-o-one?"
"Mercy me, child, you never saw it--and in winter! You do not know whether
it is lovely or not."
"It must be," said Betty warmly, "You have explained it all so beautifully
to us. The lovely lake surrounded by hills, and the long toboggan slide,
and the skating, and fishing for pickerel through the ice, and--Oh, dear
me! if we can't go----"
"If who can't go?" demanded her uncle in considerable amazement.
"Why, me. And Bob. And Bobby Littell and Louise, and the Tucker
twins, and all the rest. We were talking about it last night.
It--would--be--won--der--ful!"
"Well, of all the--Why, Betty!" exclaimed Mr. Gordon, "you know you must
go right back to school."
"Yes, I know," sighed Betty. "It is like the fruits of Tantalus, isn't it?
We read about him in Greek mythology--poor fellow! He stood up to his chin
in water and over his head hung the loveliest fruits. But when he stooped
to get a drink the water receded, and when he stood on tiptoe to reach the
fruit, they receded too. It was dreadful! And Mountain Camp, where your
friend Mr. Canary lives, is just like that. Uncle Dick. For us it is the
fruits of Tantalus."
Uncle Dick stared at her for a moment, then he burst out laughing. But
Betty Gordon remained perfectly serious until they arrived at Fairfields.