Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (iphone ebook reader .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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“Well, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKES!” said Aunt Abigail. She turned and called
across the room, “Henry, did you ever! Here’s Betsy saying she don’t
know what we make butter out of! She actually never saw anybody making
butter!”
Uncle Henry was sitting down, near the window, turning the handle to a
small barrel swung between two uprights. He stopped for a moment and
considered Aunt Abigail’s remark with the same serious attention he had
given to Elizabeth Ann’s discovery about left and right. Then he began
to turn the churn over and over again and said, peaceably: “Well,
Mother, you never saw anybody laying asphalt pavement, I’ll warrant you!
And I suppose Betsy knows all about that.”
Elizabeth Ann’s spirits rose. She felt very superior indeed. “Oh, yes,”
she assured them, “I know ALL about that! Didn’t you ever see anybody
doing that? Why, I’ve seen them HUNDREDS of times! Every day as we went
to school they were doing over the whole pavement for blocks along
there.”
Aunt Abigail and Uncle Henry looked at her with interest, and Aunt
Abigail said: “Well, now, think of that! Tell us all about it!”
“Why, there’s a big black sort of wagon,” began Elizabeth Ann, “and they
run it up and down and pour out the black stuff on the road. And that’s
all there is to it.” She stopped, rather abruptly, looking uneasy. Uncle
Henry inquired: “Now there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to know. How
do they keep that stuff from hardening on them? How do they keep it
hot?”
The little girl looked blank. “Why, a fire, I suppose,” she faltered,
searching her memory desperately and finding there only a dim
recollection of a red glow somewhere connected with the familiar scene
at which she had so often looked with unseeing eyes.
“Of course a fire,” agreed Uncle Henry. “But what do they burn in it,
coke or coal or wood or charcoal? And how do they get any draft to keep
it going?”
Elizabeth Ann shook her head. “I never noticed,” she said.
Aunt Abigail asked her now, “What do they do to the road before they
pour it on?”
“Do?” said Elizabeth Ann. “I didn’t know they did anything.”
“Well, they can’t pour it right on a dirt road, can they?” asked Aunt
Abigail. “Don’t they put down cracked stone or something?”
Elizabeth Ann looked down at her toes. “I never noticed,” she said.
“I wonder how long it takes for it to harden?” said Uncle Henry.
“I never noticed,” said Elizabeth Ann, in a small voice.
Uncle Henry said, “Oh!” and stopped asking questions. Aunt Abigail
turned away and put a stick of wood in the stove. Elizabeth Ann did not
feel very superior now, and when Aunt Abigail said, “Now the butter’s
beginning to come. Don’t you want to watch and see everything I do, so’s
you can answer if anybody asks you how butter is made?” Elizabeth Ann
understood perfectly what was in Aunt’s Abigail’s mind, and gave to the
process of butter-making a more alert and aroused attention than she had
ever before given to anything. It was so interesting, too, that in no
time she forgot why she was watching, and was absorbed in the
fascinations of the dairy for their own sake.
She looked in the churn as Aunt Abigail unscrewed the top, and saw the
thick, sour cream separating into buttermilk and tiny golden particles.
“It’s gathering,” said Aunt Abigail, screwing the lid back on.
“Father’ll churn it a little more till it really comes. And you and I
will scald the wooden butter things and get everything ready. You’d
better take that apron there to keep your dress clean.”
Wouldn’t Aunt Frances have been astonished if she could have looked in
on Elizabeth Ann that very first morning of her stay at the hateful
Putney Farm and have seen her wrapped in a gingham apron, her face
bright with interest, trotting here and there in the stone-floored milk-room! She was allowed the excitement of pulling out the plug from the
bottom of the churn, and dodged back hastily to escape the gush of
buttermilk spouting into the pail held by Aunt Abigail. And she poured
the water in to wash the butter, and screwed on the top herself, and,
again all herself (for Uncle Henry had gone off as soon as the butter
had “come”), swung the barrel back and forth six or seven times to swish
the water all through the particles of butter. She even helped Aunt
Abigail scoop out the great yellow lumps—her imagination had never
conceived of so much butter in all the world! Then Aunt Abigail let her
run the curiously shaped wooden butter-worker back and forth over the
butter, squeezing out the water, and then pile it up again with her
wooden paddle into a mound of gold. She weighed out the salt needed on
the scales, and was very much surprised to find that there really is
such a thing as an ounce. She had never met it before outside the pages
of her arithmetic book and she didn’t know it lived anywhere else.
After the salt was worked in she watched Aunt Abigail’s deft, wrinkled
old hands make pats and rolls. It looked like the greatest fun, and too
easy for anything; and when Aunt Abigail asked her if she wouldn’t like
to make up the last half-pound into a pat for dinner, she took up the
wooden paddle confidently. And then she got one of the surprises that
Putney Farm seemed to have for her. She discovered that her hands didn’t
seem to belong to her at all, that her fingers were all thumbs, that she
didn’t seem to know in the least beforehand how hard a stroke she was
going to give nor which way her fingers were going to go. It was, as a
matter of fact, the first time Elizabeth Ann had tried to do anything
with her hands except to write and figure and play on the piano, and
naturally she wasn’t very well acquainted with them. She stopped in
dismay, looking at the shapeless, battered heap of butter before her and
holding out her hands as though they were not part of her.
Aunt Abigail laughed, took up the paddle, and after three or four passes
the butter was a smooth, yellow ball. “Well, that brings it all back to
me!” she said? “when I was a little girl, when my grandmother first
let me try to make a pat. I was about five years old—my! what a mess I
made of it! And I remember? doesn’t it seem funny—that SHE laughed and
said her Great-aunt Elmira had taught her how to handle butter right
here in this very milk-room. Let’s see, Grandmother was born the year
the Declaration of Independence was signed. That’s quite a while ago,
isn’t it? But butter hasn’t changed much, I guess, nor little girls
either.”
Elizabeth Ann listened to this statement with a very queer, startled
expression on her face, as though she hadn’t understood the words. Now
for a moment she stood staring up in Aunt Abigail’s face, and yet not
seeing her at all, because she was thinking so hard. She was thinking!
“Why! There were real people living when the Declaration of Independence
was signed—real people, not just history people—old women teaching
little girls how to do things—right in this very room, on this very
floor—and the Declaration of Independence just signed!”
To tell the honest truth, although she had passed a very good
examination in the little book on American history they had studied in
school, Elizabeth Ann had never to that moment had any notion that there
ever had been really and truly any Declaration of Independence at all.
It had been like the ounce, living exclusively inside her schoolbooks
for little girls to be examined about. And now here Aunt Abigail,
talking about a butter-pat, had brought it to life!
Of course all this only lasted a moment, because it was such a new idea!
She soon lost track of what she was thinking of; she rubbed her eyes as
though she were coming out of a dream, she thought, confusedly: “What
did butter have to do with the Declaration of Independence? Nothing, of
course! It couldn’t!” and the whole impression seemed to pass out of her
mind. But it was an impression which was to come again and again during
the next few months.
BETSY GOES TO SCHOOL
Elizabeth Ann was very much surprised to hear Cousin Ann’s voice
calling, “Dinner!” down the stairs. It did not seem possible that the
whole morning had gone by. “Here,” said Aunt Abigail, “just put that pat
on a plate, will you, and take it upstairs as you go. I’ve got all I can
do to haul my own two hundred pounds up, without any half-pound of
butter into the bargain.” The little girl smiled at this, though she did
not exactly know why, and skipped up the stairs proudly with her butter.
Dinner was smoking on the table, which was set in the midst of the great
pool of sunlight. A very large black-and-white dog, with a great bushy
tail, was walking around and around the table, sniffing the air. He
looked as big as a bear to Elizabeth Ann; and as he walked his great red
tongue hung out of his mouth and his white teeth gleamed horribly.
Elizabeth Ann shrank back in terror, clutching her plate of butter to
her breast with tense fingers. Cousin. Ann said, over her shoulder: “Oh,
bother! There’s old Shep, got up to pester us begging for scraps! Shep!
You go and lie down this minute!” To Elizabeth Ann’s astonishment and
immense relief, the great animal turned, drooping his head sadly, walked
back across the floor, got upon the couch again, and laid his head down
on one paw very forlornly, turning up the whites of his eyes meekly at
Cousin Ann.
Aunt Abigail, who had just pulled herself up the stairs, panting, said,
between laughing and puffing: “I’m glad I’m not an animal on this farm.
Ann does boss them around so.” “Well, SOMEbody has to!” said Cousin Ann,
advancing on the table with a platter. This proved to have chicken
fricassee on it, and Elizabeth Ann’s heart melted in her at the smell.
She loved chicken gravy on hot biscuits beyond anything in the world,
but chickens are so expensive when you buy them in the market that Aunt
Harriet hadn’t had them very often for dinner. And there was a plate of
biscuits, golden brown, just coming out of the oven! She sat down very
quickly, her mouth watering, and attacked with extreme haste the big
plateful of food which Cousin Ann passed her.
At Aunt Harriet’s she had always been aware that everybody watched her
anxiously as she ate, and she had heard so much about her light appetite
that she felt she must live up to her reputation, and had a very natural
and human hesitation about eating all she wanted when there happened to
be something she liked very much. But nobody here knew that she “only
ate enough to keep a bird alive,” and that her “appetite was SO
capricious!” Nor did anybody notice her while she stowed away the
chicken and gravy and hot biscuits and currant jelly and baked potatoes
and apple pie—when did Elizabeth Ann ever eat such a meal before! She
actually felt her belt grow tight.
In the middle of the meal Cousin Ann got up to answer the telephone,
which was in the next room. The instant the door had closed behind her
Uncle Henry leaned forward,
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