MRS. PEABODY WRITES
THE bad, little stubborn horse standing on the track at the mercy of
the coming comet! That was Betty's thought as she sped down the road.
In the hope that a sense of the danger might have reached the animal's
instinct, she gave the bridle a desperate tug when she reached the
horse, but it was of no use. Feverishly Betty set to work to unharness
the little bay horse.
She was unaccustomed to many of the buckles, and the harness was stiff
and unyielding. Working at it in a hurry was very different from the
few times she had done it for fun, or with some one to manage all the
hard places. She had finished one side when the whistle sounded again.
To the girl's overwrought nerves it seemed to be just around the curve.
She had no thought of abandoning the animal, however, and she set her
teeth and began on the second set of snaps and buckles. These, too,
gave way, and with a strong push Betty sent the buggy flying backward
free of the tracks, and, seizing the bridle, she led the cause of all
the trouble forward and into safety. For the third time the whistle
blew warningly, and this time the noise of the train could be plainly
heard. But it was nearly a minute before the glare of the headlight
showed around the curve.
"Look what didn't hit you, no thanks to you," Betty scolded the horse,
as a relief to herself. "I 'most wish I'd left you there; only then we
never would get Uncle Dick home."
Poor Betty had now the hardest part of her task before her. She went
back and dragged the buggy over the tracks, up to the horse and started
the tedious business of harnessing again. She was not sure where all
the straps went, but she hoped enough of them would hold together till
they could get home. When she had everything as nearly in place as she
could get them she climbed down into the pit.
To her surprise, her uncle's eyes were open. He lay gazing at the buggy
lamp she had left.
"Uncle Dick," she whispered, "are you hurt? Can you walk? Because
you're so big, I can't pull you out very well."
"Why, I can't be hurt," said her uncle slowly in his natural voice.
"What's happened? Where are we? Goodness, child, you look like a ghost
with a dirty face."
Betty was not concerned with her looks at that moment, and she was so
delighted to find her uncle conscious that she did not feel offended
at his uncomplimentary remark. In a few words she sketched for him
what had happened.
"My dear child!" he ejaculated when she had told him, "have you been
through all that? Why, you're the pluckiest little woman I ever heard
of! No wonder you look thoroughly done up. All I remember is whistling
for you to come ahead and then taking a step that landed me nowhere. In
other words, I must have stepped into this pit. I'm not hurt--just a
bit dazed."
To prove it, he got to his feet a trifle shakily. Declining Betty's
assistance, he managed to scramble out of the pit, up on to the road.
His head cleared rapidly, and in a few more moments he declared he felt
like himself.
"In with you," he ordered Betty, after a preliminary examination of the
harness which, he announced, was "as right as a trivet." "You've done
your share for to-night. Go to sleep, if you like, and I'll wake you up
in time to hear Mrs. Arnold send Ted out to take the horse around to
the livery stable. It wouldn't do for me to do it--I might murder the
owner!"
Betty leaned her head against her uncle's broad shoulder, for a minute
she thought, and when she woke found herself being helped gently from
the buggy.
"You're all right, Betty," soothed Mrs. Arnold's voice in the
darkness. "I've worried myself sick! Do you know it's one o'clock?"
Mr. Gordon took the wagon around to the stable, and Betty, with Mrs.
Arnold's help, got ready for bed.
Betty was fast asleep almost before the undressing was completed, and
she slept until late the next morning. When she came down to the luxury
of a special breakfast, she found only Mrs. Arnold in the house.
"Your uncle's gone out to post a letter," that voluble lady informed
her. "Both boys have gone fishing again. I'm only waiting for their
father to come home and straighten 'em out. Will you have cocoa,
dearie?"
Before she had quite finished her breakfast, Mr. Gordon came back
from the post-office, and then, as Mrs. Arnold wanted to go over to a
neighbor's to borrow a pattern, he sat down opposite Betty.
"You look rested," he commented. "I don't like to think what might
have happened last night. However, we'll be optimistic and look ahead.
I've written to Mrs. Peabody, dear, and to-morrow I think you and Mrs.
Arnold had better go shopping. I'll write you a check this morning.
Agatha will want you to come, I know. And to tell you the truth, Betty,
I've had a letter that makes me anxious to be off. I want to stay to
see you safely started for Bramble Farm, and then I must peg away at
this new work. Finished? Then let's go into the sitting room and I'll
explain about the check."
The next morning Betty and Mrs. Arnold started for Harburton with what
seemed to Betty a small fortune folded in her purse. Mrs. Arnold had
shown her how to cash the check at the Pineville Bank, and she was to
advise as to material and value of the clothing Betty might select;
but the outfit was to represent Betty's choice and was to please her
primarily--Uncle Dick had made this very clear.
Betty had learned a good deal about shopping in the last months of her
mother's illness, and she did not find it difficult to choose suitable
and pretty ginghams for her frocks, a middy blouse or two, some new
smocks, and a smart blue sweater. She very sensibly decided that as she
was to spend the summer on a farm she did not need elaborate clothes,
and she knew, from listening to Mrs. Arnold, that those easiest to iron
would probably please Mrs. Peabody most whether she did her own laundry
work or had a washerwoman.
When the purchases came home Uncle Dick delighted Betty with his warm
approval. For a couple of days the sewing machine whirred from morning
to night as the village dressmaker sewed and fitted the new frocks and
made the old presentable. Then the letter from Mrs. Peabody arrived.
"I will be very glad to have your niece spend the
summer with me," she wrote, in a fine, slanting
hand. "The question of board, as you arrange it, is
satisfactory. I would not take anything for her, you
know, Dick, and for old times' sake would welcome her
without compensation, but living is so dreadfully high
these days. Joseph has not had good luck lately, and
there are so many things against the farmer.... Let me
know when to expect Betty and some one will meet her."
The letter rambled on for several pages, complaining rather querulously
of hard times and the difficulties under which the writer and her
husband managed to "get along."
"Doesn't sound like Agatha, somehow," worried Uncle Dick, a slight
frown between his eyes. "She was always a good-natured, happy kind of
girl. But most likely she can't write a sunny letter. I know we used
to have an aunt whose letters were always referred to as 'calamity
howlers.' Yet to meet her you'd think she hadn't a care in the world.
Yes, probably Agatha puts her blues into her letters and so doesn't
have any left to spill around where she lives."
Several times that day Betty saw him pull the letter from his pocket
and re-read it, always with the puzzled lines between his brows. Once
he called to her as she was going upstairs.
"Betty," he said rather awkwardly, "I don't know exactly how to put
it, but you're going to board with Mrs. Peabody, you know. You'll
be independent--not 'beholden,' as the country folk say, to her. I
want you to like her and to help her, but, oh, well, I guess I don't
know what I am trying to say. Only remember, child, if you don't like
Bramble Farm for any good reason, I'll see that you don't have to
remain there."
A brand-new little trunk for Betty made its appearance in the front
hall of the Arnold house, and two subdued boys--for Mr. Arnold had
returned home--helped her carry down her new treasures and, after the
clothes were neatly packed, strap and lock the trunk. There was a tiny
"over-night" bag, too, fitted with toilet articles and just large
enough to hold a nightdress and a dressing gown and slippers. Betty
felt very young-ladyish indeed with these traveling accessories.
"I'll order a riding habit for you in the first large city I get to,"
promised her uncle. "I want you to learn to ride--I wrote Agatha that.
She doesn't say anything about saddle horses, but they must have
something you can ride. And you'll write to me, my dear, faithfully?"
"Of course," promised Betty, clinging to him, for she had learned to
love him dearly even in the short time they had been together. "I'll
write to you, Uncle Dick, and I'll do everything you ask me to do.
Then, this winter, do let's keep house."
"We will," said Uncle Dick, fervently, "if we have to keep house on the
back of a camel in the desert!" At this Betty giggled delightedly.
Betty's train left early in the morning, and her uncle went to the
station with her. Mrs. Arnold cried a great deal when she said
good-bye, but Betty cheered her up by picturing the long, chatty
letters they would write to each other and by assuring her friend that
she might yet visit her in California.
Mr. Gordon placed his niece in the care of the conductor and the
porter, and the last person Betty saw was this gray-haired uncle
running beside the train, waving his hat and smiling at her till her
car passed beyond the platform.
"Now," said Betty methodically, "if I think back, I shall cry; so I'll
think ahead."
Which she proceeded to do. She pictured Mrs. Peabody as a gray-haired,
capable, kindly woman, older than Mrs. Arnold, and perhaps more serene.
She might like to be called "Aunt Agatha." Mr. Peabody, she decided,
would be short and round, with twinkling blue eyes and perhaps a white
stubby beard. He would probably call her "Sis," and would always be
studying how to make things about the house comfortable for his wife.
"I hope they have horses and pigs and cows and sheep," mused Betty, the
flying landscape slipping past her window unheeded. "And if they have
sheep, they'll have a dog. Wouldn't I love to have a dog to take long
walks with! And, of course, there will be a flower garden. 'Bramble
Farm' sounds like a bed of roses to me."
The idea of roses persisted, and while Betty outwardly was strictly
attentive to the things about her, giving up her ticket at the proper
time, drinking the cocoa and eating the sandwich the porter brought
her (on Uncle Dick's orders she learned) at eleven o'clock, she was in
reality busy picturing a white farmhouse set in the center of a rose
garden, with a hedge of hollyhocks dividing it from a scarcely less
beautiful and orderly vegetable kingdom.
Day dreams, she was soon to learn.