BETSY STARTS A SEWING SOCIETY
Betsy and Molly had taken Deborah to school with them. Deborah was the
old wooden doll with brown, painted curls. She had lain in a trunk
almost ever since Aunt Abigail’s childhood, because Cousin Ann had never
cared for dolls when she was a little girl. At first Betsy had not dared
to ask to see her, much less to play with her, but when Ellen, as she
had promised, came over to Putney Farm that first Saturday she had said
right out, as soon as she landed in the house, “Oh, Mrs. Putney, can’t
we play with Deborah?” And Aunt Abigail had answered: “Why YES, of
course! I KNEW there was something I’ve kept forgetting!” She went up
with them herself to the cold attic and opened the little hair-trunk
under the eaves.
There lay a doll, flat on her back, looking up at them brightly out of
her blue eyes.
“Well, Debby dear,” said Aunt Abigail, taking her up gently. “It’s a
good long time since you and I played under the lilac bushes, isn’t it?
I expect you’ve been pretty lonesome up here all these years. Never you
mind, you’ll have some good times again, now.” She pulled down the
doll’s full, ruffled skirt, straightened the lace at the neck of her
dress, and held her for a moment, looking down at her silently. You
could tell by the way she spoke, by the way she touched Deborah, by the
way she looked at her, that she had loved the doll very dearly, and
maybe still did, a little.
When she put Deborah into Betsy’s arms, the child felt that she was
receiving something very precious, almost something alive. She and Ellen
looked with delight at the yards and yards of picot-edged ribbon, sewed
on by hand to the ruffles of the skirt, and lifted up the silk folds to
admire the carefully made, full petticoats and frilly drawers, the
pretty, soft old kid shoes and white stockings. Aunt Abigail looked at
them with an absent smile on her lips, as though she were living over
old scenes.
[Illustration: Betsy and Ellen and the old doll.]
Finally, “It’s too cold to play up here,” she said, coming to herself
with a long breath. “You’d better bring Deborah and the trunk down into
the south room.” She carried the doll, and Betsy and Ellen each took an
end of the old trunk, no larger than a modern suitcase. They settled
themselves on the big couch, back of the table with the lamp. Old Shep
was on it, but Betsy coaxed him off by putting down some bones Cousin
Ann had been saving for him. When he finished those and came back for
the rest of his snooze, he found his place occupied by the little girls,
sitting cross-legged, examining the contents of the trunk, all spread
out around them. Shep sighed deeply and sat down with his nose resting
on the couch near Betsy’s knee, following all their movements with his
kind, dark eyes. Once in a while Betsy stopped hugging Deborah or
exclaiming over a new dress long enough to pat Shep’s head and fondle
his ears. This was what he was waiting for, and every time she did it he
wagged his tail thumpingly against the floor.
After that Deborah and her trunk were kept downstairs where Betsy could
play with her. And often she was taken to school. You never heard of
such a thing as taking a doll to school, did you? Well, I told you this
was a queer, old-fashioned school that any modern School Superintendent
would sniff at. As a matter of fact, it was not only Betsy who took her
doll to school; all the little girls did, whenever they felt like it.
Miss Benton, the teacher, had a shelf for them in the entry-way where
the wraps were hung, and the dolls sat on it and waited patiently all
through lessons. At recess time or nooning each little mother snatched
her own child and began to play. As soon as it grew warm enough to play
outdoors without just racing around every minute to keep from freezing
to death, the dolls and their mothers went out to a great pile of rocks
at one end of the bare, stony field which was the playground.
There they sat and played in the spring sunshine, warmer from day to
day. There were a great many holes and shelves and pockets and little
caves in the rocks which made lovely places for playing keep-house. Each
little girl had her own particular cubby-holes and “rooms,” and they
“visited” their dolls back and forth all around the pile. And as they
played they talked very fast about all sorts of things, being little
girls and not boys who just yelled and howled inarticulately as they
played ball or duck-on-a-rock or prisoner’s goal, racing and running and
wrestling noisily all around the rocks.
There was one child who neither played with the girls nor ran and
whooped with the boys. This was little six-year-old ’Lias, one of the
two boys in Molly’s first grade. At recess time he generally hung about
the school door by himself, looking moodily down and knocking the toe of
his ragged, muddy shoe against a stone. The little girls were talking
about him one day as they played. “My! Isn’t that ’Lias Brewster the
horridest-looking child!” said Eliza, who had the second grade all to
herself, although Molly now read out of the second reader with her.
“Mercy, yes! So ragged!” said Anastasia Monahan, called Stashie for
short. She was a big girl, fourteen years old, who was in the seventh
grade.
“He doesn’t look as if he EVER combed his hair!” said Betsy. “It looks
just like a wisp of old hay.”
“And sometimes,” little Molly proudly added her bit to the talk of the
older girls, “he forgets to put on any stockings and just has his
dreadful old shoes on over his dirty, bare feet.”
“I guess he hasn’t GOT any stockings half the time,” said big Stashie
scornfully. “I guess his stepfather drinks ’em up.”
“How CAN he drink up stockings!” asked Molly, opening her round eyes
very wide.
“Sh! You mustn’t ask. Little girls shouldn’t know about such things,
should they, Betsy?”
“No INDEED,” said Betsy, looking mysterious. As a matter of fact, she
herself had no idea what Stashie meant, but she looked wise and said
nothing.
Some of the boys had squatted down near the rocks for a game of marbles
now.
“Well, anyhow,” said Molly resentfully, “I don’t care what his
stepfather does to his stockings. I wish ’Lias would wear ’em to school.
And lots of times he hasn’t anything on under those horrid old overalls
either! I can see his bare skin through the torn places.”
“I wish he didn’t have to sit so near me,” said Betsy complainingly.
“He’s SO dirty.”
“Well, I don’t want him near ME, either!” cried all the other little
girls at once. Ralph glanced up at them frowning, from where he knelt
with his middle finger crooked behind a marble ready for a shot. He
looked as he always did, very rough and half-threatening. “Oh, you girls
make me sick!” he said. He sent his marble straight to the mark,
pocketed his opponent’s, and stood up, scowling at the little mothers.
“I guess if you had to live the way he does you’d be dirty! Half the
time he don’t get anything to eat before he comes to school, and if my
mother didn’t put up some extra for him in my box he wouldn’t get any
lunch either. And then you go and jump on him!”
“Why doesn’t his own mother put up his lunch?” Betsy challenged their
critic.
“He hasn’t got any mother. She’s dead,” said Ralph, turning away with
his hands in his pockets. He yelled to the boys, “Come on, fellers,
beat-che to the bridge and back!” and was off, with the others racing at
his heels.
“Well, anyhow, I don’t care; he IS dirty and horrid!” said Stashie
emphatically, looking over at the drooping, battered little figure,
leaning against the school door, listlessly kicking at a stone.
But Betsy did not say anything more just then.
The teacher, who “boarded ’round,” was staying at Putney Farm at that
time, and that evening, as they all sat around the lamp in the south
room, Betsy looked up from her game of checkers with Uncle Henry and
asked, “How can anybody drink up stockings?”
“Mercy, child! what are you talking about?” asked Aunt Abigail.
Betsy repeated what Anastasia Monahan had said, and was flattered by the
instant, rather startled attention given her by the grown-ups. “Why, I
didn’t know that Bud Walker had taken to drinking again!” said Uncle
Henry. “My! That’s too bad!”
“Who takes care of that child anyhow, now that poor Susie is dead?” Aunt
Abigail asked of everybody in general.
“Is he just living there ALONE, with that good-for-nothing stepfather?
How do they get enough to EAT?” said Cousin Ann, looking troubled.
Apparently Betsy’s question had brought something half forgotten and
altogether neglected into their minds. They talked for some time after
that about ’Lias, the teacher confirming what Betsy and Stashie had
said.
“And we sitting right here with plenty to eat and never raising a hand!”
cried Aunt Abigail.
“How you WILL let things slip out of your mind!” said Cousin Ann
remorsefully.
It struck Betsy vividly that ’Lias was not at all the one they blamed
for his objectionable appearance. She felt quite ashamed to go on with
the other things she and the little girls had said, and fell silent,
pretending to be very much absorbed in her game of checkers.
“Do you know,” said Aunt Abigail suddenly, as though an inspiration had
just struck her, “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that Elmore Pond
might adopt ’Lias if he was gone at the right way.”
“Who’s Elmore Pond?” asked the schoolteacher.
“Why, you must have seen him—that great, big, red-faced,
good-natured-looking man that comes through here twice a year, buying
stock. He lives over Bigby way, but his wife was a Hillsboro girl, Matey
Pelham—an awfully nice girl she was, too. They never had any children,
and Matey told me the last time she was back for a visit that she and
her husband talked quite often about adopting a little boy. Seems that
Mr. Pond has always wanted a little boy. He’s such a nice man! ’Twould
be a lovely home for a child.”
“But goodness!” said the teacher. “Nobody would want to adopt such an
awful-looking little ragamuffin as that ’Lias. He looks so meeching,
too. I guess his stepfather is real mean to him, when he’s been
drinking, and it’s got ’Lias so he hardly dares hold his head up.”
The clock struck loudly. “Well, hear that!” said Cousin Ann. “Nine
o’clock and the children not in bed! Molly’s most asleep this minute.
Trot along with you, Betsy! Trot along, Molly. And, Betsy, be sure
Molly’s nightgown is buttoned up all the way.”
So it happened that, although the grown-ups were evidently going on to
talk about ’Lias Brewster, Betsy heard no more of what they said.
She herself went on thinking about ’Lias while she was undressing and
answering absently little Molly’s chatter. She was thinking about him
even after they had gone to bed, had put the light out, and were lying
snuggled up to each other, back to front, their four legs, crooked at
the same angle, fitting in together neatly like two spoons in a drawer.
She was thinking about him when she woke up, and as soon as she could
get hold of Cousin Ann she poured out a new plan. She had never been
afraid of Cousin Ann since the evening Molly had fallen into the Wolf
Pit and Betsy had seen that pleased smile on Cousin Ann’s firm lips.
“Cousin Ann, couldn’t we girls at school get together and sew—you’d
have to help us some—and make some nice, new clothes for little ’Lias
Brewster, and fix him up so he’ll look better, and maybe that Mr. Pond
will like him and adopt him?”
Cousin Ann listened attentively and nodded her head. “Yes, I think that
would be a good idea,” she said. “We were thinking last night we ought
to do something for him. If you’ll make the clothes, Mother’ll knit him
some stockings and Father will get him some shoes. Mr. Pond never makes
his spring trip till late May, so we’ll have plenty of time.”
Betsy was full of importance that day at school and at recess time got
the girls together on the rocks and told them all about the plan.
“Cousin Ann says she’ll help us, and we can meet at our house every
Saturday afternoon till we get them done. It’ll be fun! Aunt Abigail
telephoned down to the store right away, and Mr. Wilkins says he’ll give
the cloth if we’ll make it up.”
Betsy spoke very grandly of “making it up,” although she had hardly held
a needle in her life, and when the Saturday afternoon meetings began she
was ashamed to see how much better Ellen and even Eliza could sew than
she. To keep her end up, she was driven to practising her stitches
around the lamp in the evenings, with Aunt Abigail keeping an eye on
her.
Cousin Ann supervised the sewing on Saturday afternoons and taught those
of the little girls whose legs were long enough how to use the sewing
machine. First they made a little pair of trousers out of an old gray
woolen skirt of Aunt Abigail’s. This was for practice, before they cut
into the piece of new blue serge that the storekeeper had sent up.
Cousin Ann showed them how to pin the pattern on the goods and they each
cut out one piece. Those flat, queer-shaped pieces of cloth certainly
did look less like a pair of trousers to Betsy than anything she had
ever seen. Then one of the girls read aloud very slowly the
mysterious-sounding directions from the wrapper of the pattern about how
to put the pieces together, Cousin Ann helped here a little,
particularly just as they were about to put the sections together
wrong-side-up. Stashie, as the oldest, did the first basting, putting
the notches together carefully, just as they read the instructions
aloud, and there, all of a sudden, was a rough little sketch of a pair
of knee trousers, without any hem or any waist-band, of course, but just
the two-legged, complicated shape they ought to be! It was like a
miracle to Betsy! Then Cousin Ann helped them sew the seams on the
machine, and they all turned to for the basting of the facings and the
finishing. They each made one buttonhole. It was the first one Betsy had
ever made, and when she got through she was as tired as though she had
run all the way to school and back. Tired, but very proud; although when
Cousin Ann inspected that buttonhole, she covered her face with her
handkerchief for a minute, as though she were going to sneeze, although
she didn’t sneeze at all.
It took them two Saturdays to finish up that trial pair of trousers, and
when they showed the result to Aunt Abigail she was delighted. “Well, to
think of that being my old skirt!” she said, putting on her spectacles
to examine the work. She did not laugh, either, when she saw those
buttonholes, but she got up hastily and went into the next room, where
they soon heard her coughing.
Then they made a little blouse out of some new blue gingham. Cousin Ann
happened to have enough left over from a dress she was making. This thin
material was ever so much easier to manage than the gray flannel, and
they had the little garment done in no time, even to the buttons and
buttonholes. When it came to making the buttonholes, Cousin Ann sat
right down with each one and supervised every stitch. You may not be
surprised to know that they were a great improvement over the first
batch.
Then, making a great ceremony of it, they began on the store material,
working twice a week now, because May was slipping along very fast, and
Mr. Pond might be there at any time. They knew pretty well how to go
ahead on this one, after the experience of their first pair, and Cousin
Ann was not much needed, except as adviser in hard places. She sat there
in the room with them, doing some sewing of her own, so quiet that half
the time they forgot she was there. It was great fun, sewing all
together and chattering as they sewed.
A good deal of the time they talked about how splendid it was of them to
be so kind to little ’Lias. “My! I don’t believe most girls would put
themselves out this way for a dirty little boy!” said Stashie,
complacently.
“No INDEED!” chimed in Betsy. “It’s just like a story, isn’t it—working
and sacrificing for the poor!”
“I guess he’ll thank us all right for sure!” said Ellen. “He’ll never
forget us as long as he lives, I don’t suppose.”
Betsy, her imagination fired by this suggestion, said, “I guess when
he’s grown-up he’ll be telling everybody about how, when he was so poor
and ragged, Stashie Monahan and Ellen Peters and Elizabeth Ann ...”
“And Eliza!” put in that little girl hastily, very much afraid she would
not be given her due share of the glory.
Cousin Ann sewed, and listened, and said nothing.
Toward the end of May two little blouses, two pairs of trousers, two
pairs of stockings, two sets of underwear (contributed by the teacher),
and the pair of shoes Uncle Henry gave were ready. The little girls
handled the pile of new garments with inexpressible pride, and debated
just which way of bestowing them was sufficiently grand to be worthy the
occasion. Betsy was for taking them to school and giving them to ’Lias
one by one, so that each child could have her thanks separately. But
Stashie wanted to take them to the house when ’Lias’s stepfather would
be there, and shame him by showing that little girls had had to do what
he ought to have done.
Cousin Ann broke into the discussion by asking, in her quiet, firm
voice, “Why do you want ’Lias to know where the clothes come from?”
They had forgotten again that she was there, and turned around quickly
to stare at her. Nobody could think of any answer to her very queer
question. It had not occurred to any one that there could BE such a
question.
Cousin Ann shifted her ground and asked another: “Why did you make these
clothes, anyhow?”
They stared again, speechless. Why did she ask that? She knew why.
Finally little Molly said, in her honest, baby way, “Why, YOU know why,
Miss Ann! So ’Lias Brewster will look nice, and Mr. Pond will maybe
adopt him.”
“Well,” said Cousin Ann, “what has that got to do with ’Lias knowing who
did it?”
“Why, he wouldn’t know who to be grateful to,” cried Betsy.
“Oh,” said Cousin Ann. “Oh, I see. You didn’t do it to help ’Lias. You
did it to have him grateful to you. I see. Molly is such a little girl,
it’s no wonder she didn’t really take in what you girls were up to.” She
nodded her head wisely, as though now she understood.
But if she did, little Molly certainly did not. She had not the least
idea what everybody was talking about. She looked from one sober,
downcast face to another rather anxiously. What was the matter?
Apparently nothing was really the matter, she decided, for after a
minute’s silence Miss Ann got up with entirely her usual face of
cheerful gravity, and said: “Don’t you think you little girls ought to
top off this last afternoon with a tea-party? There’s a new batch of
cookies, and you can make yourselves some lemonade if you want to.”
They had these refreshments out on the porch, in the sunshine, with
their dolls for guests and a great deal of chatter for sauce. Nobody
said another word about how to give the clothes to ’Lias, till, just as
the girls were going away, Betsy said, walking along with the two older
ones, “Say, don’t you think it’d be fun to go some evening after dark
and leave the clothes on ’Lias’s doorstep, and knock and run away quick
before anybody comes to the door?” She spoke in an uncertain voice and
smoothed Deborah’s carved wooden curls.
“Yes, I do!” said Ellen, not looking at Betsy but down at the weeds by
the road. “I think it would be lots of fun!”
Little Molly, playing with Annie and Eliza, did not hear this; but she
was allowed to go with the older girls on the great expedition.
It was a warm, dark evening in late May, with the frogs piping their
sweet, high note, and the first of the fireflies wheeling over the wet
meadows near the tumble-down house where ’Lias lived. The girls took
turns in carrying the big paper-wrapped bundle, and stole along in the
shadow of the trees, full of excitement, looking over their shoulders at
nothing and pressing their hands over their mouths to keep back the
giggles. There was, of course, no reason on earth why they should
giggle, which is, of course, the very reason why they did. If you’ve
ever been a little girl you know about that.
One window of the small house was dimly lighted, they found, when they
came in sight of it, and they thrilled with excitement and joyful alarm.
Suppose ’Lias’s dreadful stepfather should come out and yell at them!
They came forward on tiptoe, making a great deal of noise by stepping on
twigs, rustling bushes, crackling gravel under their feet and doing all
the other things that make such a noise at night and never do in the
daytime. But nobody stirred inside the room with the lighted window.
They crept forward and peeped cautiously inside ... and stopped giggling.
The dim light coming from a little kerosene lamp with a smoky chimney
fell on a dismal, cluttered room, a bare, greasy wooden table, and two
broken-backed chairs, with little ’Lias in one of them. He had fallen
asleep with his head on his arms, his pinched, dirty, sad little figure
showing in the light from the lamp. His feet dangled high above the
floor in their broken, muddy shoes. One sleeve was torn to the shoulder.
A piece of dry bread had slipped from his bony little hand and a tin
dipper stood beside him on the bare table. Nobody else was in the room,
nor evidently in the darkened, empty, fireless house.
[Illustration: He had fallen asleep with his head on his arms.]
As long as she lives Betsy will never forget what she saw that night
through that window. Her eyes grew very hot and her hands very cold. Her
heart thumped hard. She reached for little Molly and gave her a great
hug in the darkness. Suppose it were little Molly asleep there, all
alone in the dirty, dismal house, with no supper and nobody to put her
to bed. She found that Ellen, next her, was crying quietly into the
corner of her apron.
Nobody said a word. Stashie, who had the bundle, walked around soberly
to the front door, put it down, and knocked loudly. They all darted away
noiselessly to the road, to the shadow of the trees, and waited until
the door opened. A square of yellow light appeared, with ’Lias’s figure,
very small, at the bottom of it. They saw him stoop and pick up the
bundle and go back into the house. Then they went quickly and silently
back, separating at the cross-roads with no good-night greetings.
Molly and Betsy began to climb the hill to Putney Farm. It was a very
warm night for May, and little Molly began to puff for breath. “Let’s
sit down on this rock awhile and rest,” she said.
They were half-way up the hill now. From the rock they could see the
lights in the farmhouses scattered along the valley road and on the side
of the mountain opposite them, like big stars fallen from the multitude
above. Betsy lay down on the rock and looked up at the stars. After a
silence little Molly’s chirping voice said, “Oh, I thought you said we
were going to march up to ’Lias in school and give him his clothes. Did
you forget about that?”
Betsy gave a wriggle of shame as she remembered that plan. “No, we
didn’t forget it,” she said. “We thought this would be a better way.”
“But how’ll ’Lias know who to thank?” asked Molly.
“That’s no matter,” said Betsy. Yes, it was Elizabeth-Ann-that-was who
said that. And meant it, too. She was not even thinking of what she was
saying. Between her and the stars, thick over her in the black, soft
sky, she saw again that dirty, disordered room and the little boy, all
alone, asleep with a piece of dry bread in his bony little fingers.
She looked hard and long at that picture, all the time seeing the quiet
stars through it. And then she turned over and hid her face on the rock.
She had said her “Now I lay me” every night since she could remember,
but she had never prayed till she lay there with her face on the rock,
saying over and over, “Oh, God, please, please, PLEASE make Mr. Pond
adopt ’Lias.”