CONCERNING BETTY.
The Wopp family had two domestic pets, a plump tortoise-shell cat
called Nancy, and a black and white terrier named Jethro, after the
father-in-law of Moses, the great law-giver.
Nancy was the older and larger of the two, and having long been the
pampered favorite of the house, she had at first resented the
introduction of Jethro. She would not associate with him at all, and
whenever he came dancing into the room where she was, she generally
withdrew with the greatest possible dignity.
But after a time Jethro grew very tired of playing with a dilapidated
shoe, a shiny bone, a grimy dish-mop and other erstwhile interesting
things, and he thought it would be delightful to make friends with
Nancy and play with her. But Nancy was still unapproachable. When
Jethro capered up to her she arched her back and spat at him. Not
being a thin-skinned puppy, he refused to consider this rebuff as
final.
“Perhaps this is Nancy’s way of playing,” he thought.
Nancy had jumped on a chair, and when Jethro pranced up to her again
she promptly boxed his ear. The blow, delivered with such a soft paw,
could not have been very severe, but the feelings of the pup were
badly hurt. He did not yelp, but his brown eyes grew solemn and
wistful and he ceased his antics. He put his forepaws on the rung of
the chair and looked long and appealingly at Nancy. The cat sat down,
her paws doubled under her, and apparently remained quite unmoved. But
her heart may have been touched more than an observer would imagine,
because from that time, she gradually grew more tolerant towards the
pup. Now they were very good friends.
Betty, orphaned at the age of six, had been adopted by the
kind-hearted Mrs. Wopp. The child found her chief joy in life, outside
of Jethro, Nancy and Job, in a flower-bed. A small plot of ground had
been allotted her for her own use, and there every spring for the last
four years her precious flowers had bloomed and had filled her eyes
with brightness and her soul with gladness. Morning-glories and
nasturtiums were the surest to bloom. They climbed the strings so
gracefully and turned the old weather-beaten fence where they grew
into a tapestry of gorgeous dyes.
Every morning during the summer a bunch of morning-glories, wet with
dew, adorned the breakfast table. Blue and pink and white, they seemed
the very spirit of morning freshness and sweetness.
On the morning after Nell Gordon’s arrival, she admired the lovely
array of fairy-like trumpets that seemed to smile a welcome from the
glass bowl in the centre of the table. A tiny spider had been hidden
in the heart of one of the blooms, and was weaving a net of filmy
loveliness from flower to flower.
“Oh Miss Gordon,” cried Betty, her dark brown eyes sparkling with
delight, “the flowers can talk to each other across them telfone
wires, can’t they?”
“Why yes Betty, what do you suppose they will talk about?”
“Oh ’bout the fairies an’ stars an’ lovely things that grownups know
nothin’ about.”
“Do you understand them Betty?”
“Oh yes,” said Betty solemnly, “they tell me orl their secrets. They
call me their Mornin-Glory Girl.” As she spoke she leaned over to
touch with her slender, brown fingers one of the pure, white bells.
“Yes indeed,” laughed Mrs. Wopp, who was just then entering the room
with a platter of bacon and eggs, “Betty’s our mornin’-glory girl
shore nuff, she’s first up in the mornin’, she’s a glory little urchin
an’ she’s our little girl to stay.”
Mrs. Wopp, as was usual at the morning meal, appeared with her
greyish-red hair tortured with curl papers. After depositing the
appetizing breakfast dish on the table she thrust her head out of a
window and called lustily, “Come on Moses the perkelater’s perkin’ an’
the bacon’s sizzlin’ on the plate.”
Moses, once seated, speedily overtook the other members of the family.
Betty looked at him gravely and remarked, “Moses says nothin’ buts
eats purty steady on.”
“Have more toast Glory,” said Moses suddenly wakened. Unwrapping his
leg from the rung of the chair, he reached across the table.
“No, Mosey, I must hurry and get some flowers fer school to-day.”
“Oh go on Betty, a daddy-long-legs’d die of starvin’ on what you eat.”
“Don’t worry me Mosey, this is a ’portant day,” then turning to Miss
Gordon she added, “I’ll take ’sturtiums an’ larkspur an’ sweet peas
an’ you’ll be ever so happy lookin’ at them.” A busy silence ensued.
Presently, Moses made for the yard and on his way, offered tribute to
Betty by standing on his head on the mat at the door.
“Moses stan’s on his head so’s his brains’ll filter back into place,”
teased Mrs. Wopp.
“Never mind Mosey, yer heart don’t need fixin’ anyhow,” comforted
Betty.
Her breakfast finished, Betty sought the company of Moses, who was in
a small shed adjoining the kitchen. He was piling some fire-wood he
had carried in from the yard.
“Don’t you think the new teacher is jist lovely Moses, with her big
shinin’ blue eyes an’ wavy black hair?” Betty eagerly enquired, “An’
aint her clothes lovely too?”
Moses suspended operations on the woodpile and leaned against it.
“Huh,” he grunted with masculine superiority, “all girls think of is
looks. Some of them sorft lookin’ teachers is the wust when it comes
to lickin’ the kids. You can’t jedge a hoss by his hide.”
“Now, Mosey, you like the new teacher’s well’s I do, else why were you
showin’ off before her, ridin’ Ladybird like mad.”
“Mebbe she’s all right,” admitted the boy.
“I wonder ef she guesses you aint my really truly brother. Ef I only
had your beaut-i-ful red hair an’ white eyebrows, stead of havin’
yaller hair an’ brown eyebrows. I can’t do nothin’ jist now ’bout my
hair, but s’pose I cut off my eyebrows an’ make them look nice an’
white like yours. Mosey,” coaxingly, “you cut them fer me.”
“Naw,” answered the boy, “What’d Mar say? she’d put a tin ear on me.”
“You know she never does nothin’ to us really, Moses, no matter how
she jaws. Come on, you clipped yer pony so lovely an’ evenlike. The
horse-clippers is bangin’ on the wall behind you.”
“I dassent do it, Betty,” replied Moses. “Anyhow this ole pair of
scissors ’d do the job better.”
“Then you don’t love yer li’l sister ef you don’t want her to look
like you.” Betty almost wept.
“Orl right Betty, I’ll do it, but ef it is a poor job don’t blame me,”
returned Moses as he advanced with the scissors.
Betty winced slightly as the chilly weapon touched her face, but
recollecting the importance of the issue at stake she submitted tamely
to be shorn. In a few moments Moses stepped back to contemplate the
result of his drastic work. There was no denying that it had totally
changed his little sister’s appearance. A queer expression on Moses’
face made Betty enquire anxiously, “What is it? Don’t I look orlright
Moses?”
“You look orful, jist like you was growin’ a pair of speckled
toothbrushes. What ’ll Mar say? You carn’t go to school like that.”
“I’ll take all the blame Mosey.”
“Ef you could only see how you look, Betty. You must hev some eyebrows
somehow.”
“Put a li’l shoe-black on then an’ that’ll make me dark again,”
advised Betty serenely.
A liberal application of shoe paste furnished the unfortunate victim
with a startling pair of jet-black eyebrows, nearly an inch in depth.
Appalled at what he saw, Moses drew from his pocket a grimy
handkerchief. Dampening one corner of it in his mouth, the most
expeditious thing to do under the circumstances, he carefully wiped
around the outside of these funereal bands, reducing them slightly in
size but also straightening their edges.
“Moses! Betty! Time fer school!” called Mrs. Wopp. Betty, satisfied
that after Moses’ frenzied ministrations she was quite presentable,
hastened into the house. Moses fled into the yard where he became very
active splitting wood, his guilty conscience adding efficiency to his
arm.
“Land o’ Goshen, child,” shrieked Mrs. Wopp throwing up her hands in
dismay, “whatever hev you been doin’ to yerself. You look jist like a
wooden Injin. I wouldn’t of knowed you ef I’d met you in the streets
of Judear.”
Nell Gordon, ready for school, came into the kitchen and catching
sight of Betty was seized with such uncontrollable mirth that she fled
upstairs again.
“Come here Betty, till I clean yer face. Where is that boy Moses? I
know he had a hand in this. Drat him anyhow,” said the incensed Mrs.
Wopp.
“Moses didn’t want to clip me Mar, but I thought ’twould be a
’provement to hev nice white eyebrows.” As Betty spoke one large tear
rolled slowly down her cheek moistening in its course a small drop of
blacking which Moses had overlooked in his cleansing operations,
adding still more to the child’s grotesque appearance.
“White eyebrows child! What are you talkin’ about? Yer eyebrows are
blacker nor that stove.”
Betty, feeling that further explanations were worse than useless,
submitted to be led to the sink where her energetic foster-mother
subjected her to so many soapy treatments that in a few minutes time
she emerged very red in the face but purified.
As Mrs. Wopp stood watching her family and the new teacher climb the
hill on their way to school, she remarked to herself, “That boy jist
naterly takes to mischief same as a gopher takes to my green peas.”