BETTY’S ILLNESS.
Moses adored his little foster-sister when she was well; but sick, his
adoration turned to blind worship. For several days Betty had been
ill. Moses’ religion, bottled up during care-free days, burst forth in
foam of intercession for Betty’s return to health.
“Oh, Lord, she’s orl I got,” he wailed. He hinted that there would be
no more light in him, than in Job’s blind eye, should Betty be lost to
him.
The first sign of return to health was indicated by a slight
querulousness that invalids seem to claim as their prerogative. The
convalescent wanted books and pictures, her discarded favorite,
Hannah, stiff with long neglect, and her pets individually and
collectively. Then having run the gamut of dumb playmates, she called
for her beloved friends.
“I want Howard Eliot,” she cried, “he can sing so lovely, an’ I want
Miss Gordon, she’s so comfortin’.”
All this time Mrs. Wopp ran breathlessly up and down stairs attending
to the feverish child. Even wash-day was postponed, but the terrors of
that dread event would never again appal Moses, he felt sure, if only
Betty got well. Ebenezer Wopp was distracted and neglected to take his
usual number of notes.
Directly the invalid’s querulous demand for the rancher was made,
Moses started off to fetch him.
“Wot’s the use of livin’ if Betty grows them there wings they talk
of?” he demanded of the fowl as they scurried from his path.
When the two arrived, Nell Gordon was sitting with the sick child and
crooning softly to her. Howard Eliot drew near, accidentally touching
the firm round arm of Nell as he did so.
“Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards,” quoted Mrs. Wopp.
“We’ve had sich a time, but I’m shore our li’l Mornin’-Glory is
gittin’ better now.” She gazed at the child with true maternal
affection. “She’s lookin’ kinder peart agin.”
“Glory must git better, nothin’s no fun no more,” blurted Moses.
“Betty’s not goin’ to no kingdom come yet,” assured Mrs. Wopp, her
optimism rising like a star of the first magnitude to lighten the
darkness of her son’s midnight sky.
“There’s no mention of circus-ladies going there anyway,” said Howard,
smiling. This reference to her attempts to out-barnum Barnum brought a
bright smile to the wan face of Betty.
“Don’t stan’ there fillin’ the doorway like a bung in a barrel,
Moses,” reprimanded Mrs. Wopp. “That boy’s gone clean petrified. Go
an’ fetch the lamp, it air giftin’ so dark I can’t tell which is Glory
an’ which is Miss Gordon.”
As Moses clattered down stairs, Mrs. Wopp continued, “There is shore a
thunderstorm comin’ up to-night. ’Pears to me I heerd like a roll of
drums.”
A dull yellow glow from the kerosene lamp, placed by Moses on the
bureau, lighted up the figure of Betty reclining on snowy pillows. On
one side of her was seated Howard, his arm about the drowsy child. On
the side of the bed, squarely seated on one of Mrs. Wopp’s texts
worked into the patchwork quilt, was Nell, watching the little pallid
face and trying to avoid the eyes of her silent lover.
“Been talkin’ to a grave-digger?” queried Mrs. Wopp, of her offspring,
as Moses selected a comfortable seat, his sober face still bearing
traces of the last few days’ anxiety. She looked on the solicitude of
Moses with an approving eye, but it was necessary, however, to hide
her maternal pride by a series of assaults upon him on every possible
pretext. Her banterings also helped to keep her son and heir in the
spotlight.
“There’s Mose allers ready fer a sitdown, a sort of kerlapsible
verlise.”
During Betty’s illness these one-sided dialogues were more than
usually plentiful. In this way only was Mrs. Wopp able to alleviate
the “gnawin’ at her heart-strings” as she said, at having Betty so
ill. It also kept the boy alive to the fact that life’s path was not
strewn with “cabbage roses.” Such, at least, were the confidences
poured into the sympathetic ear of his pinto.
Moses capitalized his bulk to effectively fill the large chair into
which he sank. He surveyed with approval the new trousers presented to
him by Miss Gordon, and tried to blot from his mind the ignominy that
had attended the wearing of the ill-fitting pair. Those discarded
checked monstrosities languished under Moses’ bed in close
consultation with a pair of decrepit and muddy shoes. It was so sweet
to the boy to see signs of convalescence in Betty that he took great
comfort in just gazing on her pale face with its wisps of fair hair
across the forehead. He summed up his general attitude to life by
whispering to himself, “I don’t give a doughnut fer orl the check
pants in Alberta.”
A low rumble of thunder was heard in the distance and a flash of
lightning made the coal-oil lamp look like a bilious spot in the room.
“Sing something, Mar.” Betty’s plaintive voice broke the silence.
“What’ll I sing Betty?”
“Oh, the song ’bout the clouds rollin’ away,” she yawned, “I want
everybody to be happy.” She looked at her teacher and Nell wondered if
the child had read her heart and had seen its unhappiness.
“Wait till the clouds roll by, Jenny,
Wait till the clouds roll by,
Jenny, my own true loved one
Wait till the clouds roll by.”
Mrs. Wopp’s voice, a dramatic outburst before which almost any cloud
would have quailed, filled the bedroom. Betty turned to Nell Gordon,
“I hope all yer clouds’ll hev silver linin’s, Miss Gordon,” she
smiled.
“Why, Betty?”
“’Cause I love you, ’n’ I hope the edges’ll be all pink like my
mornin’-glories.”
Howard caught Nell’s gaze. He longed to gather the girl who had so
completely captured his heart into his arms and kiss away their
estrangement.
“I think the linin’ of Miss Gordon’s cloud needs polishin’ these
days,” ventured Betty, shyly.
“Won’t you sing something else, Mrs. Wopp.” Nell was growing
uncomfortable under Betty’s reference to the unburnished state of her
cloud.
Mrs. Wopp obligingly gave as an encore, “There were ninety and nine,”
apropos of nothing whatever. Then turning to a portrait on the wall,
she enlarged on the musical ability of a great-uncle from whom she
reckoned she had received her gift of song.
“I sorter hoped Moses’d take arter Uncle Josh, too,” she said,
regretfully.
The inexorable portrait on the wall seemed to gaze down on the
recalcitrant youth with disapproval.
“He’s been pushin’ up the daisies fer thirty years, I ain’t goin’ to
warble to please no tombstun.” Moses swung a ponderous foot to give
emphasis to his decision.
“Don’t sit there wool-gatherin’ anyways, Mose, or the moths’ll nest in
yer head. Ef you carn’t sing in toon, you kin bring up a cup of tea
fer Miss Gordon an’ Mr. Eliot, an’ don’t fergit Betty an’ yer Mar.”
Betty was still faintly laughing at Moses’ spirited retort to his
mother’s observations on his singing.
“Betty dimples in an’ out, like Mar’s dough,” he remarked, joyously,
“she’s shore gittin’ better.”
Going down the stairs his loud unmelodious singing reached the ears of
those in the bedroom. When he arrived at the foot, Betty, whose ears
were attuned to all acts of outlawry, had reason to believe that Moses
performed three successive somersaults.
“That boy’ll sartinly spill the tea,” prophecied Mrs. Wopp, with
laughing pessimism.
“I don’t give two whoops ef he does,” Betty was bubbling with
suppressed mirth.
Moses reappeared with a tray. The tea had been spilled as foretold by
his Mother, but sufficient was left for the party. Betty drank from a
dainty cup, her little finger straight and rigid as was fitting for
the delicate hand-painted china.
The effulgence of Mrs. Wopp’s smile was somewhat obscured by “I told
you so’s,” but the aroma of the steaming teapot soon restored its
radiance.
“This is like the cup I had at Mrs. Newman’s, in Calgary,” said Betty,
then turning to Nell she asked, “Do you ’member the lovely chiner cups
at Mrs. Newman’s, time Mr. Zalhamber was there?”
“Who is Mr. Zalhamber?” asked Howard, as though he had forgotten his
existence.
“Oh, he is a wonderful piannerist,” explained Betty. “He played, Oh,
jist lovely, jist like birds singin’ an’ rivers runnin’ an’ the sun
shinin’. But arfter he played he looked so fierce I was skeered of
him. Miss Gordon didn’t like him either, arfter she got knowin’ him
better.”
“He didn’t come roun’ here, I kin tell you though,” joined in Mrs.
Wopp, energetically. In speaking of Mr. Zelamba, her voice modulated
harshly into a key of hyper-acidulated sharps. “I says to Miss Gordon,
an’ she jined in with me, a piannerist may be well ’nough as an actor
man, but when it comes to takin’ fer keeps, give me a real man.” After
taking a deep breath she continued, “My, but he makes a heap of money
an’ he loves it, too; but when he gits to be about forty, the lines in
his fiz’ll be as tight as my clothes-rope arter a spell of rain.”
After this vigorous onslaught upon the quondam admirer of Nell, Mrs.
Wopp ordered Moses to help her prepare the spare room on the
ground-floor for the young rancher.
“The storm’ll be worse yet, Mr. Howard, so you jist stay here till the
cock crows fer risin’, an’ I’ll cook you a breakfast better’n a pore
lonely bachelor kin cook fer hisself.”
From the kitchen came an unmistakeable odor of cheese. Ebenezer Wopp
was having a slight snack before retiring. With the back of his
nervous hand he was wiping from the corners of his mouth the telltale
crumbs.
“Ebenezer Wopp, no wonder you talk sich ridicilsome nonsense in yer
sleep, eatin’ cheese at night. It’s ’nough to make you dream of
boer-constructors.”
Uplifted by limburger, Mr. Wopp grew emboldened, “Jist a mouthful of
somethink don’t hurt nobody, an’ I’ll be asleep afore you kin say
Jack Robinson, an’ ef I talk as loud as you snore, we’re even I
reckon.”
“There ain’t a shadder of a doubt Moses takes arter his Par in the
gift of the gab,” was Mrs. Wopp’s genial rejoinder.
Upstairs the lightning filled Betty’s room with a weird intermittent
radiance. The child had become increasingly drowsy and asked Howard to
sing her to sleep.
“What song would you like, Betty?”
“Mary an’ Martha hev jist gone along to ring them shinin’ bells.”
To the melody of the shining bells, Betty dropped off to sleep.
Nell’s mirth at Betty’s choice of a hymn could be stifled no longer.
Howard’s studied aloofness yielded before her laughter and the hand
that was not supporting Betty caught and pressed the small dimpled
fingers of Nell.
“Can you forgive me, Nell? This guiding star of Moses is our guiding
star, too.” After a moment Howard continued, “I wish we could
transplant this morning-glory into _our_ garden, don’t you?”
Nell’s answer was somehow strangely muffled.
Although she was asleep, Betty was fully conscious in that Dream-World
of love and joy where values are real. Nell and Howard saw a tender
smile light up her sweet face as Mrs. Wopp’s singing, subdued by
distance, floated into the room,
“Let us keep the wheat an’ roses
Gamin’ out the thorns an’ charff,
Let us find our sweetest comfort
In the blessin’s of to-day,
With a patient hand removin’
Orl the briers from the way.
Then scartter seeds of kindness,
Then scartter seeds of kindness,
Then scartter seeds of kindness
Fer our reapin’ bye ’n’ bye.”
Warwick Bro’s & Rutter, Limited, Printers and Bookbinders, Toronto,
Canada.