Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (iphone ebook reader .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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seemed so lively and cheerful and gay before, seemed now a horrible,
frightening, noisy place, full of hurried strangers who came and went
their own ways, with not a glance out of their hard eyes for two little
girls stranded far from home.
The bright-colored young man was no better when they found him again. He
stopped his whistling only long enough to say, “Nope, no Will Vaughan
anywhere around these diggings yet.”
“We were going home with the Vaughans,” murmured Betsy, in a low tone,
hoping for some help from him.
“Looks as though you’d better go home on the cars,” advised the young
man casually. He smoothed his black hair back straighter than ever from
his forehead and looked over their heads.
“How much does it cost to go to Hillsboro on the cars?” asked Betsy with
a sinking heart.
“You’ll have to ask somebody else about that,” said the young man. “What
I don’t know about this Rube state! I never was in it before.” He spoke
as though he were very proud of the fact.
Betsy turned and went over to the older man who had told them about the
Vaughans.
Molly trotted at her heels, quite comforted, now that Betsy was talking
so competently to grown-ups. She did not hear what they said, nor try
to. Now that Betsy’s voice sounded all right she had no more fears.
Betsy would manage somehow. She heard Betsy’s voice again talking to the
other man, but she was busy looking at an exhibit of beautiful jelly
glasses, and paid no attention. Then Betsy led her away again out of
doors, where everybody was walking back and forth under the bright
September sky, blowing on horns, waving plumes of brilliant tissue-paper, tickling each other with peacock feathers, and eating pop-corn
and candy out of paper bags.
That reminded Molly that they had ten cents yet. “Oh, Betsy,” she
proposed, “let’s take a nickel of our money for some pop-corn.”
She was startled by Betsy’s fierce sudden clutch at their little purse
and by the quaver in her voice as she answered: “No, no, Molly. We’ve
got to save every cent of that. I’ve found out it costs thirty cents for
us both to go home to Hillsboro on the train. The last one goes at six
o’clock.”
“We haven’t got but ten,” said Molly.
Betsy looked at her silently for a moment and then burst out, “I’ll earn
the rest! I’ll earn it somehow! I’ll have to! There isn’t any other
way!”
“All right,” said Molly quaintly, not seeing anything unusual in this.
“You can, if you want to. I’ll wait for you here.”
“No, you won’t!” cried Betsy, who had quite enough of trying to meet
people in a crowd. “No, you won’t! You just follow me every minute! I
don’t want you out of my sight!”
They began to move forward now, Betsy’s eyes wildly roving from one
place to another. How COULD a little girl earn money at a county fair!
She was horribly afraid to go up and speak to a stranger, and yet how
else could she begin?
“Here, Molly, you wait here,” she said. “Don’t you budge till I come
back.”
But alas! Molly had only a moment to wait that time, for the man who was
selling lemonade answered Betsy’s shy question with a stare and a curt,
“Lord, no! What could a young one like you do for me?”
The little girls wandered on, Molly calm and expectant, confident in
Betsy; Betsy with a very dry mouth and a very gone feeling. They were
passing by a big shed-like building now, where a large sign proclaimed
that the Woodford Ladies’ Aid Society would serve a hot chicken dinner
for thirty-five cents. Of course the sign was not accurate, for at half-past three, almost four, the chicken dinner had long ago been all eaten
and in place of the diners was a group of weary women moving languidly
about or standing saggingly by a great table piled with dirty dishes.
Betsy paused here, meditated a moment, and went in rapidly so that her
courage would not evaporate.
The woman with gray hair looked down at her a little impatiently and
said, “Dinner’s all over.”
“I didn’t come for dinner,” said Betsy, swallowing hard. “I came to see
if you wouldn’t hire me to wash your dishes. I’ll do them for twenty-five cents.”
The woman laughed, looked from little Betsy to the great pile of dishes,
and said, turning away, “Mercy, child, if you washed from now till
morning, you wouldn’t make a hole in what we’ve got to do.”
Betsy heard her say to the other women, “Some young one wanting more
money for the side-shows.”
Now, now was the moment to remember what Cousin Ann would have done. She
would certainly not have shaken all over with hurt feelings nor have
allowed the tears to come stingingly to her eyes. So Betsy sternly made
herself stop doing these things. And Cousin Ann wouldn’t have given way
to the dreadful sinking feeling of utter discouragement, but would have
gone right on to the next place. So, although Betsy felt like nothing so
much as crooking her elbow over her face and crying as hard as she could
cry, she stiffened her back, took Molly’s hand again, and stepped out,
heart-sick within but very steady (although rather pale) without.
She and Molly walked along in the crowd again, Molly laughing and
pointing out the pranks and antics of the young people, who were feeling
livelier than ever as the afternoon wore on. Betsy looked at them grimly
with unseeing eyes. It was four o’clock. The last train for Hillsboro
left in two hours and she was no nearer having the price of the tickets.
She stopped for a moment to get her breath; for, although they were
walking slowly, she kept feeling breathless and choked. It occurred to
her that if ever a little girl had had a more horrible birthday she
never heard of one!
“Oh, I wish I could, Dan!” said a young voice near her. “But honest!
Momma’d just eat me up alive if I left the booth for a minute!”
Betsy turned quickly. A very pretty girl with yellow hair and blue eyes
(she looked as Molly might when she was grown up) was leaning over the
edge of a little canvas-covered booth, the sign of which announced that
home-made doughnuts and soft drinks were for sale there. A young man,
very flushed and gay, was pulling at the girl’s blue gingham sleeve.
“Oh, come on, Annie. Just one turn! The floor’s elegant. You can keep an
eye on the booth from the hall! Nobody’s going to run away with the old
thing anyhow!”
“Honest, I’d love to! But I got a great lot of dishes to wash, too! You
know Momma!” She looked longingly toward the open-air dancing floor, out
from which just then floated a burst of brazen music.
“Oh, PLEASE!” said a small voice. “I’ll do it for twenty cents.”
Betsy stood by the girl’s elbow, all quivering earnestness.
“Do what, kiddie?” asked the girl in a good-natured surprise.
“Everything!” said Betsy, compendiously. “Everything! Wash the dishes,
tend the booth; YOU can go dance! I’ll do it for twenty cents.”
The eyes of the girl and the man met in high amusement. “My! Aren’t we
up and coming!” said the man. “You’re most as big as a pint-cup, aren’t
you?” he said to Betsy.
The little girl flushed—she detested being laughed at—but she looked
straight into the laughing eyes. “I’m ten years old today,” she said,
“and I can wash dishes as well as anybody.” She spoke with dignity.
The young man burst out into a great laugh.
“Great kid, what!” he said to the girl, and then, “Say, Annie, why not?
Your mother won’t be here for an hour. The kid can keep folks from
walking off with the dope and …”
“I’ll do the dishes, too,” repeated Betsy, trying hard not to mind being
laughed at, and keeping her eyes fixed steadily on the tickets to
Hillsboro.
“Well, by gosh,” said the young man, laughing. “Here’s our chance,
Annie, for fair! Come along!”
The girl laughed, too, out of high spirits. “Wouldn’t Momma be crazy!”
she said hilariously. “But she’ll never know. Here, you cute kid, here’s
my apron.” She took off her long apron and tied it around Betsy’s neck.
“There’s the soap, there’s the table. You stack the dishes up on that
counter.”
She was out of the little gate in the counter in a twinkling, just as
Molly, in answer to a beckoning gesture from Betsy, came in. “Hello,
there’s another one!” said the gay young man, gayer and gayer. “Hello,
button! What you going to do? I suppose when they try to crack the safe
you’ll run at them and bark and drive them away!”
Molly opened her sweet, blue eyes very wide, not understanding a single
word. The girl laughed, swooped back, gave Molly a kiss, and
disappeared, running side by side with the young man toward the dance
hall.
Betsy mounted on a soap box and began joyfully to wash the dishes. She
had never thought that ever in her life would she simply LOVE to wash
dishes beyond anything else! But it was so. Her relief was so great that
she could have kissed the coarse, thick plates and glasses as she washed
them.
“It’s all right, Molly; it’s all right!” she quavered exultantly to
Molly over her shoulder. But as Molly had not (from the moment Betsy
took command) suspected that it was not all right, she only nodded and
asked if she might sit up on a barrel where she could watch the crowd go
by.
“I guess you could. I don’t know why NOT,” said Betsy doubtfully. She
lifted her up and went back to her dishes. Never were dishes washed
better!
“Two doughnuts, please,” said a man’s voice behind her.
Oh, mercy, there was somebody come to buy! Whatever should she do? She
came forward intending to say that the owner of the booth was away and
she didn’t know anything about … but the man laid down a nickel, took
two doughnuts, and turned away. Betsy gasped and looked at the home-made
sign stuck into the big pan of doughnuts. Sure enough, it read “2 for
5.” She put the nickel up on a shelf and went back to her dishwashing.
Selling things wasn’t so hard, she reflected.
As her hunted feeling of desperation relaxed she began to find some fun
in her new situation, and when a woman with two little boys approached
she came forward to wait on her, elated, important. “Two for five,” she
said in a businesslike tone. The woman put down a dime, took up four
doughnuts, divided them between her sons, and departed.
[Illustration: Never were dishes washed better!]
“My!” said Molly, looking admiringly at Betsy’s coolness over this
transaction. Betsy went back to her dishes, stepping high.
“Oh, Betsy, see! The pig! The big ox!” cried Molly now, looking from her
coign of vantage down the wide, grass-grown lane between the booths.
Betsy craned her head around over her shoulder, continuing
conscientiously to wash and wipe the dishes. The prize stock was being
paraded around the Fair; the great prize ox, his shining horns tipped
with blue rosettes; the prize cows, with wreaths around their necks; the
prize horses, four or five of them as glossy as satin, curving their
bright, strong necks and
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