FOLLOWING THE PRESCRIPTION
THE sound of some one chopping wood caught the alert ear of Bob
Henderson as he came whistling through the yard on his way to the tool
house. Some peculiar quality in the strokes seemed to suggest something
to him, and he turned aside and made for the woodshed.
"For the love of Mike! Betty Gordon, what do you call it you're
doing now?" he inquired, standing in the frame of the woodshed, at a
respectful distance from the energetic figure by the wood block.
"Chopping wood!" snapped Betty, hacking a dry rail viciously. "Did you
think I was cutting out paper dolls?"
"My dear child, that isn't the way to chop wood," insisted Bob
paternally. "Here, let me show you. You'll ruin the axe, to say nothing
of chopping off your own right ear."
Betty brought the axe down on the rail with unnecessary violence.
"Let me alone," she said ominously. "I'm mad! This is Uncle Dick's
prescription, but I can't see that it works. The more I chop, the
madder I get!"
Bob grinned, and then as a shout of "You, Bob!" sounded from outside,
his expression changed.
"Wapley is waiting for nails to fix the fence with," he said hurriedly.
"I'll have to hurry. But come on down to the cornfield, can't you,
Betty? We can talk there."
Bob ran off, and Betty regarded the axe resentfully.
"Seems to me he's hoed enough corn to reach round the earth," she said
aloud. "I wonder if Bob ever gets mad? Well, I guess I will go down and
talk to him, though I did mean to weed the garden for Mrs. Peabody. I
can do that this afternoon."
In spite of the absence of fresh eggs and milk from her diet, the weeks
at Bramble Farm had benefited Betty. She was deeply tanned from days
spent in the sun, and while perceptibly thinner, a close observer would
have known that she was hardy and strong. She was growing taller, too.
"Mr. Peabody is so mean!" she scolded, dropping down under a scrubby
wild cherry tree in the field where Bob was already hard at work hoeing
corn, having delivered the nails to Wapley. "You know this is the first
fair day we've had since those three rainy ones, and I promised Mr.
Lieson I'd take his picture. He wants it for his girl. And Mr. Peabody
wouldn't let him go upstairs and put on his best clothes. Said it was
his time and that foolishness could wait till after supper. You know I
can't take a snapshot after supper!"
Bob hoed a few minutes in silence.
"Try a little diplomacy, Betty," he finally advised. "Sunday is the
time to take Lieson in his glad rags. He looks fierce all dressed up,
I think; it probably will break off the match if his girl is marrying
him for his beauty. But Lieson the way he is now--in that soft shirt
and without his hat--isn't half bad. He's got a kind of wistful, gentle
face, for all he can jaw so terribly; have you noticed it? Go down in
the potato field and take his picture while he's working and tell him
you'll take him dressed up Sunday and he can have both pictures. He'll
be so pleased, he'll offer to let you hold a pig."
Betty made a little face. Lieson had already done just that. Thinking
that Betty, who made such a fuss over the baby lambs, would be equally
delighted with the little pigs, Lieson had told her to shut her eyes
one day and hold out her hands; into them he had dropped a squirming,
slippery, squealing baby pig and Bob had always declared he could not
tell which made the most noise--Betty when she opened her eyes, or the
pig when she dropped him. Lieson had been much disappointed.
"I'll go and get the camera now," said Betty, jumping up, all traces of
temper vanished. "I'll put in the film that holds a dozen and just go
round taking everything. That will be fun!"
She went running up the field and Bob's eyes followed her wistfully.
"She's a good kid," he said to himself. "Trouble is, she's never been
up against it before and she doesn't always know how to take it. It
does make her so mad to see old Peabody walk all over every one; but
there's no sense in letting her buck against him when you can turn her
thoughts in another direction. Gee, I'm sick of this blamed corn!"
Bob went up and down the endless rows, and Betty skipped about,
"snapping" views of Bramble Farm to her heart's content. Lieson was
delighted to learn that he might have two pictures of himself, and
though it seemed to him a waste of time to be photographed in his
work clothes, still he admitted that even an "ordinary" picture was
preferable to none.
"My lady friend," he announced proudly, as Betty clicked her bulb, "she
like me anyway."
Wapley, while without the excuse of a "lady friend," was nevertheless
almost childishly pleased to pose for his photograph, and him, too,
Betty promised to take again on Sunday. Mrs. Peabody, weeding in the
large vegetable garden that was her regular care, alone refused to be
taken.
"Oh, no!" she shrank down among the cabbages and pulled her hideous
sunbonnet further over her eyes when Betty pressed her to reconsider
her refusal. "Child, don't ask me. When I look at the picture of me
taken in my wedding dress and then see myself in the mirror mornings, I
wonder if I'm the same person. I wouldn't have my picture taken for one
hundred dollars!"
Betty used up one roll of films that morning, but she decided to save
the other roll for Sunday, as she was not sure she could get another in
Glenside. She determined to take her pictures over that afternoon and
have them developed, for she was as eager to see the results as Lieson
and Wapley. Bob, too, owned up to a desire to see how he "turned out."
"It's a pretty hot day," ventured Mrs. Peabody uncertainly, when Betty,
at the dinner table, announced her intention of walking to Glenside
that afternoon. "Maybe, dearie, if you wait till after supper, some one
will be driving over."
"Horses ain't going a step off this farm this week," said Mr. Peabody
impressively. "They're working without shoes, as anybody with any
interest in the place would know. If some folks haven't any more
to do than gad around spending good money, it's none of my affair;
but I don't aim to run a stage between here and Glenside for their
convenience."
Dinner was finished in silence after this speech, and immediately after
she had helped Mrs. Peabody with the dishes, Betty went up to her room
to change her dress. She did not mind the walk; indeed she had taken
it several times before, and knew that one side of the road would be
comparatively shady all the way.
Betty took an inexplicable whim to put on her prettiest dress, a
delicate pink linen with white collars and cuffs that Mrs. Arnold had
taught her to embroider herself in French knots. She untied the black
velvet ribbon she usually wore on her broad-brimmed hat and substituted
a sash of pink mull.
"You look too nice!" exclaimed Mrs. Peabody when the girl came
downstairs. "Don't you think you should take an umbrella, though? Those
big white clouds mean a thunder storm."
Betty laughingly declined the umbrella, and, promising Mrs. Peabody
"something pretty," started off on her walk. Poor Mrs. Peabody, though
Betty was too inexperienced to realize it, was beginning, very slowly
it is true, but still beginning, to break under the long strain of
hard work and unhappiness. Betty only knew that she was pitifully
pleased with the smallest gift from the town stores.
"If I don't see a girl of my own age to speak to pretty soon," declared
Betty to herself, walking swiftly up the lane, "I don't know what I
shall do! Bob is nice, but, goodness! he isn't interested in lots of
things I like. Crocheting, for instance. I never was crazy about fancy
work, but now I'm kind of hungry for a crochet needle."
Half way to Glenside a farmer overtook her, and after the pleasant
country fashion offered her a "lift." Betty accepted gladly. He lived,
as she discovered after a few minutes' conversation, on the farm next
to the Peabodys, and he had heard about her and knew who she was.
"When you get time," he said kindly, when she told him she was going to
Glenside, "walk through the town and out toward Linden. There's quite
a nursery out that way, and you'd like to see the flowers. Folks come
from the city to buy their plants there."
At the nearest crossroads to Glenside he turned, and Betty got out,
thanking him heartily for the ride. It was a matter of only a few
moments now to reach Glenside, and she found herself in the town much
sooner than she had counted on. So when the drug-store clerk said he
would have her pictures developed and printed within an hour if she
could wait, Betty determined to wait instead of having them mailed to
her. She had a sundae and bought some chocolates for Mrs. Peabody, and
then remembered the farmer's remark about the nursery.
"How far is it to the nursery they talk about?" she said to the woman
clerk who had weighed out the candy.
"Baxter's? Oh, not more than three-quarters of a mile," was the
answer. "You go right up Main Street an far as the sidewalk goes. When
it stops, keep right on, and pretty soon you'll see a big sign of a
watering-pot; that's it."
Betty followed these directions implicitly, and she had reached the end
of the town sidewalk when she heard the distant mutter of thunder.
"I guess I can reach the nursery and be looking at the flowers while it
storms," she said to herself.
Betty had no more fear of thunderstorms than of a tame cat, but she
mightily disliked the idea of getting her hat wet. So she hurried
conscientiously.
The sun went under a heavy cloud, and a violent crash of thunder
directly overhead stimulated her into a run. There was not a house in
sight, and Betty began to wish she had turned and gone back to the
town. At least she could have found shelter in a shop.
Splash! A huge drop of rain flattened in the dust of the road. The tall
trees on either side began to sway in the slowly rising wind.
"I'll bet it will be a big storm, and I'll be soaked!" gasped Betty.
"Where is that plaguey nursery!"
She began to run, and the drops came faster and faster. Then, without
warning, the long line of swaying trees stopped, and a tidy white
picket fence began on the side of the road nearest Betty. Back of the
pickets was a well-kept green lawn; and set in the center of a circle
of glorious elm trees was a comfortable white house with green blinds
and a wide porch. A woman and two girls were hastily taking in a swing
and a quantity of sofa pillows to protect them from the storm.
"Come in, quick!" called the woman, as Betty came in sight. "Hurry,
before you're soaked. Just lift the latch and the gate swings in."
"Just lift the latch." Betty thought she had never heard a more cordial
or welcome invitation.