_BY JOSLYN GRAY_
BOUNCING BET
THE JANUARY GIRL
ROSEMARY GREENAWAY
RUSTY MILLER
ELSIE MARLEY, HONEY
KATHLEEN’S PROBATION
_CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS_
BOUNCING BET
[Illustration: “I shall have to ask you five dollars, which is half the
customary fee” [_Page 112_]
BOUNCING BET
BY
JOSLYN GRAY
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Copyright, 1918, by PERRY, MASON & CO.
[Illustration]
To
NELL
SINGER OF
SWEET, OLD SONGS
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
BY HER SISTER
ILLUSTRATIONS
“I shall have to ask you five dollars, which is half
the customary fee” _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
“Bless my heart! Whatever have you been doing, Betty!” 38
“Am I to conclude that it has been a wilful disregard
of rules?” 162
The famous trick of making an omelet in a gentleman’s
silk hat was heartily applauded 228
BOUNCING BET
CHAPTER I
“P’R’APS I ought to be going,” remarked Tommy suddenly, à propos of
nothing.
“Going! Why, you just came!” exclaimed his host.
“But I was here yesterday, and----”
“Do you mean you want to get off--you have something on hand?” Mr.
Meadowcroft inquired.
Tommy grinned. “No, sir, nothin’ o’ that sort. I’m too comfortable.”
He bounced up and down in the springy easy-chair as if to illustrate
his words. “And, my goodness, I’d a heap drather be here than anywhere
else. Only dad, you know--I was sort of experimenting on you--‘Sorry to
have you go, but here’s your hat’--and all that, you know.”
“Don’t experiment any more, then, for it’s only a waste of time,” Mr.
Meadowcroft rejoined kindly, his unusual voice and the courtesy of his
manner making his words the more impressive to the country lad. “It’s
mighty good of you to drop in on me as you do, and I hardly know how I
should get along without you now. I certainly hope nothing will induce
you to put that to an experiment.”
Humphrey Meadowcroft spoke with sincerity. Three months earlier, he
had come to live with his sister in South Paulding, shortly after the
death of her husband, and Tommy Finnemore had been his first caller and
was now practically his only acquaintance among the village people. The
boy came often, being, in spite of moments of diffidence, pretended or
otherwise, well assured of a warm welcome; but Meadowcroft realized
that his first call had meant real initiative and a special effort
as well as generous friendliness; for the big, handsome house which
stood on the village street with gardens behind had no reputation for
hospitality. Mrs. Phillips had lived here in her husband’s old home for
more than a dozen years, but in all that time she had had nothing to do
with the people or the life of the village.
The boy, who was exceedingly lank and awkward, though in rather
picturesque fashion, colored so deeply that his many and conspicuous
freckles merged and were lost in the flush that extended to the roots
of his ragged fringe of sandy-brown hair. His eyes fell upon his long,
lean fingers, which looked grimy, indeed, though not because he had
just come from school. They were badly stained with acids of various
sorts and dates.
“Well, you see you’re interested in my magic; you really seem to like
to hear about it,” he returned ingenuously. “You never change the
subject, and you let me tell all about the beginning of a trick even if
it doesn’t have any end, you know. Hardly anybody else I know really
and truly cares. Nobody does except Bouncing Bet.”
“Ah, then it’s a sort of utilitarian regard you have for your friends,
Tommy Finnemore?”
Tommy wasn’t given to blushing, but he colored again.
“O, I should like to come anyhow,” he declared. “I like your talk
just as much as you like my magic--I mean, of course, I like it a lot
better. There’s more to it. And I--goodness, but I’m mighty glad to be
back here after being down in Jersey. Everybody there seemed so noisy
and so--so confounded healthy.”
Meadowcroft laughed as he caught the implication. His left leg and arm
were paralyzed, the arm being shrunken also, and he spent the greater
part of his time in a large padded wheel-chair. A pair of crutches
stood in a corner. Tommy had never seen Mr. Meadowcroft resort to them,
though it was said that he took daily exercise in a part of the garden
which had been enclosed by high brick walls since he had come to South
Paulding.
“That’s rather a left-hander, but it comes from the right spot, Tommy!”
Meadowcroft said. And Tommy decided to try another chair. The room
was very large, with chairs and sofas and couches galore, and Mr.
Meadowcroft never minded his progress from one to another. For himself,
he always sat by one of the side windows, in a position where he could
also see all that passed in the street below the front windows. He had
a handsome, refined, rather worn face, smooth-shaven, with brilliant
gray eyes and thick dark hair lightly sprinkled with gray. His dress
and manner were more elegant than anything Tommy or, in fact, South
Paulding had ever known before. Mr. Phillips had been a man of wealth
but plain and brusque, and might have been taken at any time for one of
the operatives of his factory at Paulding.
As Tommy vainly strove to amend his statement so that it would indicate
that he liked Mr. Meadowcroft even better and admired him exactly
as much as if he had the full use of both hands and feet, it came to
him that his other friend would have expressed the meaning without
awkwardness.
“Now, Bouncing Bet”--he began, but stopped short, partly because
he hardly knew what he was about to say, but rather because Mr.
Meadowcroft suddenly bent his brows and fixed his eyes sharply upon him.
“What is that you call your other _fidus Achates_?” he demanded.
“Bouncing Bet,” rejoined Tommy glibly, and looked for the smile that
usually followed the use of that appellation. But he failed to see any
evidence of humorous appreciation.
The village of South Paulding consisted practically of one long street
which was really a beautiful avenue. The Phillips house stood about
half-way between the limits, the greater number of dwelling-houses
being above, towards Paulding, and the group of shops, the post office
and grammar and primary schools below. Meadowcroft, who had never lived
in the country before, enjoyed watching the straggling procession that
passed the window almost continuously from morning until night. And he
particularly enjoyed the school children who went back and forth with a
certain regularity twice daily.
“I suppose, Tommy, you mean the big girl I see going to school with the
little ones?” he asked quietly.
Tommy nodded. “They’re not so little, you know, Mr. Meadowcroft, those
girls she walks with. It’s only that they look little ’side o’ her,”
he explained. “Why, even I would look small myself--I mean sort of--if
I was to walk with her, even if I stood up straight, which I don’t
always.”
He sat suddenly erect, but humped down again almost immediately.
“Poor thing! Is she a bit stupid, Tommy, or is it worse than that?”
Meadowcroft asked. In his pity, he had averted his eyes when the girl
passed as he would have refrained from looking at a cripple.
“Stupid!” cried Tommy. “Gee! Bouncing Bet stupid! Why, she’s the best
scholar in my class--the very best.” He paused, then added loftily:
“She takes a really intelligent interest in my magic. There’s no
fooling her like you can the fellows--sometimes. She ain’t like some
girls that say they like it to be polite and wouldn’t look on while I
do one trick for fear they’d be blown up or lose their eyebrows.”
“But why is she so backward?” queried Meadowcroft in genuine surprise.
“Surely, she ought to be going over to Paulding to the high school at
her age.”
“O, she ain’t old. She’s just big of her age, you know, Mr.
Meadowcroft,” rejoined the boy. “She ain’t so old as me and most of the
others. She’s just--well, _big_. That’s why they call her Bouncing Bet,
you see.”
“Well, I’m surprised; I confess that I am amazed!” exclaimed
Meadowcroft. He hadn’t looked at the girl; but a glance told one that
she would have been tall for a girl of sixteen, and large for any age
whatever. Her nickname seemed to suggest a sort of jovial coarseness,
but he had particular sympathy for anyone who was physically
conspicuous.
“And she doesn’t mind being called--Bouncing Bet?” he asked, with
reluctance to repeat the phrase.
“O no, sir,” replied Tommy promptly, “you see her name’s Betty--or
really Betsey. Her father sometimes calls her Betsey. And she’s used
to it, for she’s always been big, and everybody calls her Bouncing
Bet--not exactly right out to her face, you know, and yet not behind
her back.”
“Perhaps she’s rather proud of her size?” suggested Meadowcroft, rather
hoping that such was the case.
“Proud of it! O gee! she just hates it. Why, she
just--just--_abominates_ and despises being so big!” cried Tommy,
reaching for the piano stool in his excitement and twirling it madly.
Then remembering how that action annoyed his mother, he removed the
temptation by changing his seat again.
“You see she never has any fun at all, and never has had except what
she gets out of my magic,” he added.
“If she hates being big, Tommy, believe me she minds that nickname,”
Meadowcroft declared with unusual emphasis. “When I was at
boarding-school I learned by chance that the other boys referred to me
as Hoplite Meadowcroft. You won’t get the full significance of that
until you go to the high school and study Greek, but perhaps you may
guess something of what I felt, for I should really hate to tell you
how that nickname hurt me, or----” He paused. “I daresay hers hurts
Miss Betty more,” he added.
Tommy’s eyes fell on his spotted hands. “Fat’s--different,” he said in
a low voice.
“And so are girls. They take things harder than we men, Tommy,”
returned the other so earnestly that Tommy winked fast and got into
another chair.
He was silent for a little, then began to speak of a trick in magic he
was eager to perform, which involved as a beginning getting the bottom
out of a glass bottle.
“All you have to do, the book says, is to give the bottle a smart, deft
rap with a hammer or any bit of steel, but I don’t seem to get the
combination,” he observed. “The bottom busts up first thing with me
every time. I’ve used up all the bottles I can find, and dad watches
me like he was a policeman if I go near the shed, and ma just the same
with the medicine cupboard and the kitchen sink, and I haven’t got one
yet to begin on. And how are you going to do the trick, I’d like to
know, if you can’t begin?”
Meadowcroft proposed to consult Herbie, the man who had lived with him
for years and who now acted also as butler for his sister, with regard
to a fresh supply of bottles. Tommy was properly gratified, but as the
clock struck and he picked up his wad of a cap preparatory to leaving,
he remarked in an offhand manner:
“I guess after all I won’t call her that any more. She’s mighty decent,
you know,--no nonsense about her, and I’d sooner tell her things and
have her watch me do magic than any fellow I know. She’s really my best
friend, though you never see me walking by with her as probably you see
me sometimes walking with other girls in my class. One reason why is
she walks so slow I can’t keep up with her,--no, _down_, I mean. But
that ain’t the real reason. She’s a head taller ’n me, and I’m not so
small, either, ’bout the average for my age. And a fellow feels funny,
you know, as if he was walking with his aunty. She’s taller ’n any boy
in school and way up above Miss Sherman, the teacher.”
“You’ll overtake her in time, Tommy, if you give yourself a fair
chance,” remarked Meadowcroft kindly. “You must remember, however, not
to shut yourself up so closely with your magic as not to get enough
fresh air and exercise to add the proper number of inches to your
height each year.”
“Not much danger of that,” grumbled the lad. “Every single time I set
things afire--even the leastest mite--or forget to take off my good
clothes and get holes in ’em or borrow things like felt table covers
and get spots on ’em, mother tells dad on me, and he says I ain’t to
do any magic or even open a book on magic for a week or sometimes two.
Those times I play ball. And they come often, I can tell you.”
He sighed, then raised himself from his usual lounging stoop to his
full height, which was surely not a fraction above the average for his
years.
“I’m goin’ on fourteen, but I ain’t nearly got my growth yet,” he
declared stoutly. “And there’s a lot of hope. But you see it’s
different with Betty. She can’t grow _down_. She’s more’n big enough
now for a grown woman. And she just has to act like one--to go around
and visit older people and pug her hair, and wear long dresses and walk
slow. Of course she has to. It’s too bad, but--well, you ought to see
one of my cousins in Jersey. She ain’t so tall, but she’s about as fat
as Betty, and she wears her hair flying and runs and races and shouts
and dresses in sailor-suits just like other girls. I don’t think it’s
nice, do you, when she’s so big? Sometimes she just shrieks.”
“Which of the two girls enjoys life more, Tommy, your friend or your
cousin?”
Tommy opened his eyes wide. “O, Madge has a jolly time, of course, and
Betty never has any fun, but--she doesn’t care for it. She’d drather--I
mean, she’s used to it by this time. She’s always been too big to play
ever since she was little. And--she gets considerable quiet enjoyment
out of my magic.”
Meadowcroft smiled. Tommy grinned and reluctantly left the room.
Sliding down the handsome solid railing of the staircase, he landed
neatly on a rug and let himself out the screen door. At that moment he
heard his name called, and stepping back saw Meadowcroft leaning over
the balustrade with his crutches. He wished he might have seen how he
got there. He had never dreamed he was so spry as all that!
“Tommy, I wish you would ask Miss Betty to come in to see me some day,”
Meadowcroft called down--“some day soon, please.”
“Sure. That’s just her line. She’ll be pleased to accept,” Tommy
called back cheerfully, and was off again, whistling gaily if not very
tunefully as he strolled up the avenue towards home.