Betsy Hale succeeds

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Letter from France. ... 11

II. Amiee Arrives. 27

Chapter I T

HE long, pleasant summer was over. The fields and forest trees were still green, but the goldenrod flamed by every wayside and the dogwood hung out gay banners of red to the quickening breezes. The summer was over.

Betsy Hale, coming out of the post office on her way home from the library, stuffed the letters in her sweater pocket, tucked the two books more firmly under her arm, and ran lightly down the store steps out into the mel¬ low autumn sunshine. She had hardly glanced at the letters, for her whole mind was on the books which she had just gotten from the library.

“I’m glad tomorrow will be Sunday,” she thought happily. “I’ll have lots of time to

(ID read. It’s really a blessing that Philip is away just now and that Selma is going over to Highville for the day. I ought to be able to manage to get through with one of the books by Monday. I wonder which I’ll start with?”

She stopped in the road for a moment as she shifted the volumes to examine them more closely, * The blue-covered “ Children of Compeigne” looked very inviting, but after glancing through the red-backed <c Recon¬ struction Work in France” she chose it. The pictures of rebuilt villages, and tiny clusters of portable houses, of reclaimed battle-fields appealed to her more strongly than the pictureless little blue book.

“I’ll read you first,” she told the red book, as she tucked it again under her arm. “Then I’ll tell Selma all about it, and we can look over the pictures together at recess. She won’t care much about the reading, but she’ll love the pictures.”

As she started off again, she cast an upward glance over her shoulder. It was a habit she had whenever she passed that corner, and although it had been a habit for some months, she never did it without a little thrill, remem¬ bering all that it had meant to her.

The big flag was floating serenely against the hazy blue of the afternoon sky, its bright folds lifting and falling gently on the breeze, its starry field shining out bravely and its very cords and rigging standing out clearly in the golden sunshine.

“It’s always the same,” thought Betsy ardently. “I believe it’s the most beautiful thing in the whole world.”

Once again, as in that day in the early summer, she felt the rush of a great desire within her. She pressed the two inspiring books close to her quickly beating heart. A confused impulse toward some newer ser¬ vice to the flag that might find its way to those desolated villages abroad swept through her.

“Oh, I do wish I were older, so I could go help make those ugly places prettier over there in France,” she sighed. “It’s so horrid to be only going-on-to-fifteen, when there’s so much to do. I’d go over right straight away if they’d let me, and I’d do, oh, lots of things.”

She walked slowly on in the warm sunshine, picturing the scenes across the sea. She forgot that the book was not a new one, and she felt instant need for beautifying those war-racked regions. She longed to plant trees, vines, flowers over the grimy places— to make that section exactly like the Wee Corner, in fact. She knew she could do much and she wanted to do it instantly.

“Oh, if I only could go,” she breathed longingly. “If I only could manage to go! I know there would be lots of things I could do, even if I am terribly young.”

She was quite impatient with the restric¬ tions that kept young patriots in useless idleness at home.

“What’s the use of studying geography, when it will all be changed in such a short while?” she said with a shake of her smooth brown head. Her clear blue eyes shone with an intense light. She swept aside the rest of her studies without a qualm. “It’s silly to be trifling with books when one might be doing something worth while,” she ended vigorously.

She passed the beechwood copse without a glance at its silvery, yellowing beauty. Her whole mind was on the fascinating subject of making over Europe. “If Mother would only go,” she thought, “she might find lots to write about—even if the editors do say that France is written out. She’d make it seem new. I believe we ought to do all we can to help and not just settle down here where everything is sweet and lovely.”

She came down the long slope past the big field where the corn was already cut and shocked. The long lines of yellow-green tents stretched over the hill and stood out against the sky. Betsy looked at it with interest. She wished it were a cornfield in France.

Up in the Church Annex someone was putting off some records to test the machine which was to furnish music for the enter¬ tainment that evening. The funds were to go to the European Relief League and the selec¬ tions were to be appropriate. The notes of the noted military band rang out in the Marsellaise as Betsy stopped to listen.

“Oh, how sweet!” she cried with a throb of pleasure in the faint, clear notes. “It makes it seem just sinful not to go!”

She might have stopped longer, but another sound was making itself heard as she listened. It was an eager, yapping sound, and Betsy knew it very well.

“Mac’s tied up and howling,” she thought, dropping into everyday life again. “I sup¬ pose he’s been bothering Lucy’s parsley bed again. If he only wouldn’t!”

The Wee Corner lay smiling in the sun¬ shine as she hurried down the long slope. The tall sentinel pines were darkly green against the dogwoods and sumacs of the thicket on the back road. The summer¬ house was draped in a glowing mantle of gay Virginia creeper. The borders were bright with asters and marigold and in the midst of it all the little white house nestled cosily.

The sounds of Mac’s discontent grew more audible as Betsy hurried on.

“He’s in the barn,” she said to herself as she slammed the gate behind her and ran around the house, flinging the books, with the letters under them, on the summerhouse table as she ran.

There was no sign of anyone about. The careful Lucy was taking her afternoon outing and Mrs. Hale was at her typewriter. Betsy caught the click of its keys as she passed under the window. Mac’s howls redoubled as he heard the footsteps of his rescuer.

“ Yow - wow - wow - WOW! ” he howled, louder and louder every instant.

Betsy knew the very spot, the very iron ring where she should find him. [He had been punished in this way before, for he had a passion of burying his cast-off bones in the middle of the neat Lucy’s treasured bed of parsley, and no amount of discipline could shake his belief that the parsley bed was the best storage place he could find.

He tugged at his chain until his tongue hung out, and almost choked himself with joyful excitement when Betsy opened the big door and flew to his relief. He was not at all ashamed, it seemed, for he wagged his stumpy tail and barked short happy barks as she fumbled at the catch.

She felt too much stirred by the generosity of the moment to try to make him feel the proper sense of his iniquity. She merely patted the rough yellow head as she released the snap and left him free.

“Poor old Mac,” she said tenderly. Sympathy with all prisoners stirred her deeply. She was glad to see him bound away into the sunshine, and though he made straight towards the back garden she did not call him back. “Poor doggie, he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she thought, very sentimentally, as she turned towards the summer house to get the books and letters.

She was thinking of the pictures in the red book and those other pictures she had made for herself were still dimly with her, clouding her bright common sense and rather obscur¬ ing her judgment. She would not look back towards the parsley bed. She did not want to see what was going on there.

The books were in the summer house and the letters were under them. Betsy caught them all up together and tripped into the house, where the sound of the typewriter had ceased. She was framing in her mind a hun¬ dred eager questions regarding her own part in the reconstruction of France, and it was rather disappointing to find her mother so deeply immersed in correcting a pile of type¬ written sheets that she would hardly look up as Betsy put the mail on the table beside bear.

“Thank you, dear, I’ll look at them later,” she murmured abstractedly, and went on with her work.

Betsy was too full of her subject to be post¬ poned. Besides, she knew that the work of making corrections was very much less impor¬ tant than the actual writing of those sheets; so she lingered a moment and then burst out with her plea.

“ Oh, Mother, don’t you think we might go to France? So many people are going, and you could write splendid stories, and there are so many things to do, and I’m really very strong and can work quite hard, even if I am only going on fifteen; and if you’d take tonics and walk a lot you would soon be able to do perfectly splendid writing-”

She broke off suddenly, as her mother swung about in her chair.

Mrs. Hale’s blue eyes were wide and dis¬ turbed. She came out of her abstraction with a little frown of perplexity between her pretty eyebrows, and she shook back the little curl¬ ing wisps of hair with a rather impatient gesture.

“What are you talking about, Betsy?”

she asked. “Who in the world wants me to write about French stories?”

Betsy drew a long breath. She felt she was going to have a hard time to make her mother see the matter as she saw it.

“I am talking about work,” she said very soberly. She could not talk as brilliantly as she could dream. “And there are hundreds of things you could see and write about that other people missed-”

Mrs. Hale’s eyes were clear now and she understood Betsy quite well. She pushed the papers away from her, smiling a little as she reached out to pat her daughter’s shoulder. She understood, but she did not seem inclined to discuss the matter. Instead she took up the letters silently, still smiling her kind, sweet little smile, and she sorted them over with an eager intentness.

Betsy was used to waiting for her mother’s decisions. She saw that she had not made the impression she had hoped, but still she did not despair. There was something in her mother’s manner that was very promising.

“Here it is,” said Mrs. Hale, picking up an envelope covered with scribbled and stamped inscriptions, which Betsy had not noticed in the bundle of mail. “Here it is. I’d for¬ gotten it entirely, as usual. Just wait, my dear, till I read it.”

Betsy waited, growing more interested. She watched her mother’s eyes travel up and down the thin sheets, while the smile grew more tender and a soft light shone from her serious face. It was a long time till the last sheet was read, and Betsy could hardly restrain herself, as Mrs. Hale laid down the thin closely written paper, after searching for some item in the newspaper on her table, and turned to her again.

“Oh, Mother, are we going to France?” she burst out, catching up the envelope with its many postmarks. “Oh, Mother, please say we are!”

“It’s quite a different matter,” said Mrs. Hale gently. “It’s too late for us to go to France, but we are going to do our share, Betsy-girl, and I am looking to you to bear the heavy end of the log. I know you will be glad to do it. You will have to share your studies with her and try to make her happy-”

“But—” began Betsy, bewildered.

“The little girl from Muedun,” explained Mrs. Hale. “Mrs. Warren wrote me about her last month and I wrote at once to have her sent here. One must help, of course, in the healing of those war-wounds, particularly when many people are losing interest in such an old story. She sailed on the Fredonia , and the Fredonia is to dock today. She will be here tomorrow afternoon.”

“But who? Who?” demanded Betsy, aflame with curiosity.

“Why, Amiee LaLanne, of course,” replied her mother, quite as though she had explained everything. “She will be brought as far as the Junction by another immigrant and we must meet her at the station. It is all arranged most minutely.”

“Is she coming to stay with us?” asked Betsy, breathless with interest. “Who— where-?”

Mrs. Hale picked up her pencil again. She evidently thought she had made the matter very clear, but she was patient with Betsy’s curiosity. “She is the French orphan who is to live with us until she is educated, or some of her family can be found,” she said rather absently. “Mrs. Warren wrote me of her a month or so ago. She used to know the family in France. It was difficult to arrange, but it is all settled now. Run and ask Lucy to have the little spare room put in order, will you, my dear?” and she settled down to her work again, entirely oblivious of the astonish¬ ment and dismay on Betsy’s vivid face.

Betsy went slowly out of the room and downstairs. She felt as though a bomb had exploded at her feet.

“A French orphan,” she repeated. “Right here in the Wee Corner, too. A real French orphan.”

She did not wonder at all about Amiee LaLanne—what she was like or how she would like her new home. She was too much occupied with other feelings in the first moment of shock.

“Now we’ll never get to France at all,” she said dolefully." All of those noble emotions she had felt for the flag and the ruined villages seemed to be quite wasted. It was very tame indeed.

“ Anyone could take a French orphan for a while,” she told herself. “There’s nothing exciting about that!”

She went out into the garden, still holding the two books under her arm. She made her way to the summerhouse and sat down in the long chair. The zest had gone out of life. She shut her eyes to shut out the pretty garden and the bright sunshine. She felt like a prisoner in the peaceful scene.

“A French orphan,” she repeated once more. “And I suppose she’ll stay forever!”

There was a sound of rustling among the leaves at her feet, and she opened her eyes to see Mac, with his nose encrusted with fresh earth, standing beside her chair, looking up at her with a disturbed expression.

She leaned quickly down to catch his rough head in her two strong little arms.

“ Oh, Mac, Amiee LaLanne is coming tomor¬ row,” she said, giving him a very hard squeeze. “You’ll have to be nice to her, you know, because she’s a French orphan, but you mustn’t love her more than you love me.”

Mac sat up wdth his red tongue hanging out in an amiable smile, and his little brown eyes were so true and steady that Betsy felt suddenly ashamed of herself. The glamor of her dream pictures faded quite away, and she sat up in the long chair, herself again—kind, brave and unselfish.

“I’m a silly thing to be thinking of going so far away,” she told him with a little laugh at herself. “I’d simply cry my eyes out to leave the dear Wee Corner and Selma and Philip and all. It was perfectly lovely of Mother to have Amiee LaLanne come to us. I wonder what she’ll be like?”

It was tremendously interesting, now that she looked at it in the right way. No one else in the village had any such proud privi¬ leges. Some of them contributed to the sup¬ port of Belgian or French orphans, but not one family had a real, flesh-and-blood orphan for their own.

She reached for the books she had flung on the table.

“I’ll read every word of them both before tomorrow morning,” she planned, kindling at the thought. “I may have to stay up all night, but I simply must know all about the builded villages and the poor deserted children, so that I can understand how Amiee LaLanne feels.”

She opened the “Children of Compeigne,” at the title page. There was a relish in the very type that lured her.

“A French orphan. In the Wee Corner,” she murmured as she turned the first page. “I wonder what she’ll be like?”

Chapter II

* TT TE’RE just in time,” said Mrs. Hale.

The train was sliding around the " * last curve as they reached the little

station. It slowed down for the station plat¬ form as Mr. Simpson pulled up the horse and they jumped down. Mrs. Hale had thought it best to have a conveyance for the little new¬ comer who had traveled so many weary miles to her journey’s end, and Mr. Simpson had offered the two-seated surrey with himself as driver.

Betsy hurried to the front platform. She wanted to have the very first glimpse of their guest. “I suppose she will look very Frenchy and different,” she had said to her mother on the way. “There won’t be any trouble about recognizing her, I am sure.”

She was surer than ever, as she glanced at the sturdy country girls and their equally hearty mothers who were waiting on the cinder path beside the tracks.

“She won’t look much like them,” she smiled at her mother, who w^as scanning the windows of the cars as they slowed to a full stop. She felt a thrill of pride in Amiee LaLanne, who would be so very different and so very superior.

“There she is,” she exclaimed, as a tall girl in dark clothes appeared on the platform of the second car. “How sweet!"

But the tall girl stepped down to a small group of waiting friends and disappeared at once in their eager company. It was plain she could not be Amiee LaLanne.

“There isn’t anyone else,” cried Betsy in great disappointment. “Not a single girl-”

She stopped as her mother went towards the steps of the third car, where a blackrobed, square-set woman was tugging a huge valise through the door, while the obliging train-man was carrying out two large paper parcels which she had just handed him. A shadowy figure hovered behind in the little recess at the end of the car. The woman chattered and gesticulated as she handed the valise to the conductor, and then she backed into the car again, shoving the other figure out toward the steps of the car.

Betsy caught her breath. “Oh!” she said to herself. She said it sharply, as though some one had stuck a pin in her arm.

It was a short, thick-set girl in heavy black. She moved slowly down the steps, while the woman, nodding and waving to Mrs. Hale, who had advanced, poured out a perfect flood of explanation and counsel as to the care of her charge.

I The conductor and train-man paused for the girl to reach the cinder path, for the final excited instructions from the escort, and for Mrs. Hale to accept the slow girl together with her bundles and valise. And then the train began to move, the conductor and train¬ man jumped on, and the shriek of the whistle drowned the last shouted w^ords of the excited woman on the car platform.

Betsy stood perfectly still as the train pulled out and left the little group on the cinders. She stared at the short, heavy¬ faced girl in crepe, who was looking calmly at Mrs. Hale, who, in her turn, was occupied with the bundles and bag which the station agent was taking up.

“She isn’t a bit French looking,” thought the dismayed Betsy, noting the broad, indif¬ ferent face beneath the crepe hat. “The only thing that’s odd about her is the mourn¬ ing hatband. She looks exactly like some of these country girls.”

Then she went forward with her hand out¬ stretched. Her ready sympathy was begin¬ ning to rise as she saw the little perplexed frown on the stranger’s forehead deepen at Mrs. Hale’s question as to her luggage.

“You are Amiee, aren’t you?” she said in her friendliest voice and in very clear French. She was glad she had gone into languages so thoroughly now that she needed to use one of them.

The girl bowed with a rather distant air, and disregarding the outstretched hand, she turned to Mrs. Hale, speaking in careful English and almost without an accent.

“It is all the luggage I have, Madame,” she explained in a slightly impatient way. “Madame Koot thought it best to carry it with us by hand. The luggage vans are untrustworthy at present, she says.”

Mrs. Hale laughed her little rippling laugh and patted the stranger’s shoulder kindly. “I am sure it is a vast deal more than we looked for, my dear,” she said in her brightest fashion. “I am almost disappointed that your possessions are so numerous, for it leaves us so much less to do for you. We’ve been looking forward with so much pleasure to your coming,” she added, as they followed the bundles to the surrey, where the obliging Mr. Simpson was active in helping the station agent to stow them away beneath the seats.

Betsy felt rather snubbed, and she slipped into her seat beside the amiable Mr. Simpson very quietly, not venturing another word to the newcomer.

“She doesn’t like me at all,” she thought, fixing her eyes on a buckle in the harness. She would not look around unless they spoke to her—on that she was quite determined.

“ I’ll be pleasant if she wants to talk to me, but I shan’t bother her again.”

The drive was a very silent one. Mr. Simpson was absolutely mute, except for some chirping and clucking to the willing horse. Mrs. Hale made one or two little comments on the landscape, to which Amiee made short, mechanical replies. Altogether it was very stiff and uncomfortable, and entirely different from any of the imagined meetings which had been dancing through Betsy’s nimble brain since yesterday.

As they came in sight of the Wee Corner Betsy could not forbear.

“There it is,” she cried, turning to watch the effect on the strange girl’s face. “There is the place we live. Isn’t it the dearest little house in the world?”

The French girl looked at the little house cuddling among its trees and gardens and a strange expression came over her face.

“It is little, of a certainty, yes,” she agreed coldly. “The flowers are very bright. But are you not lonely—so far from habitations? It is the wilderness, is it not? ” and she glanced about the smiling fields and winding roads with evident distaste.

Betsy was astounded. She had never dreamed that anyone could regard the dear little house with such a look of disfavor. She rallied bravely, however, for she was not easily daunted, and the spirit of her New England forebears was rising within her.

“Oh, it really isn’t far from the other houses,” she explained eagerly, as the surrey came to a halt before the gate. “The trees hide the other houses, you know. The church is just over the hill, and Mr. Simpson’s house and the Timmins farm and lots of others are quite close. We like it because it isn’t right in the village.”

Amiee said nothing. She seemed to hold her own opinions, though, for she looked about, as she stepped down from the carriage, and her expression did not change. Betsy followed her as she went with Mrs. Hale into the house, and with every step she took her heart sank lower.

“She doesn’t like anything,” she said, noting the unchanged look of indifference with which the newcomer viewed the dear home things. “She looks perfectly bored to death. I hope Mother doesn’t ask me to take her to her room, like we planned. I shan’t know what in the world to say to her when we’re alone.”

She had to find words, however, when Mrs. Hale, pausing at the foot of the stairs, left her to lead Amiee up to the little room next her own while her mother stopped behind to see to the luggage.

Betsy was in an agony of embarrassment for the moment.

“I ought to try to make her feel at home,” she thought with a flash of pity for the deso¬ late stranger.

It was strange how much more compassion she could feel for Amiee when she did not see her. As long as the newcomer was following her up the stairs, Betsy’s heart melted in sympathy for her. She cleared her husky throat and tried to find words that might find their way to the right spot, but she delayed too long, for their feet were nimbler than her tongue and they were in the little cozy room with its cheerful dormer windows before a word was spoken.

Then Betsy faced about, meaning to say something that should make them friends at once, but when her eyes met those of Amiee, all her kind speeches fled completely. The French girl looked at her with the same stolid look with its touch of indifference that had so baffled Betsy before.

Still, it was necessary to talk. Betsy moved to the closet, opening the door. “You can put your coat on the hanger here,” she said boldly. “The little closet under the win¬ dow is a good place for hats.”

Amiee stood squarely on the rug before the dresser. She looked about her with a careful survey, saying never a word in response. She looked at the fresh white bed, at the dainty white curtains, at the flowers in the small green vase on the table. Then she turned to the mirror and began to take off her hat. It was very disconcerting.

Betsy’s compassion had turned to disap¬ pointment and was taking on an edge that was very much like vexation, in spite of her pity for French orphans. “She might pre¬ tend to like something , just to be polite,” she thought. “She isn’t a bit like those poor, desolate orphans in the books.”

Amiee calmly took off the crepe hat with its crepe streamer and then she looked with disfavor on the small ample closet under the window.

“It will discompose my new hat furniture,” she said in her precise, slow speech. “I wish it not to be discomposed into shabbiness by squeezing.”

Betsy’s touch of vexation melted before the quaint phrases. She did not laugh, however. She merely showed Amiee how to bestow the treasured new hat with its floating trimming on the wide shelf in the low closet so that its “furnishings” should not be discomposed. She was quite serious about it, and she became more at ease with their guest.

“You’ll find lots of room in the dresser and the chest there,” she told her cheerfully. “Lucy will bring your things up pretty soon, I suppose, and you can change, if you want. The bathroom is down-stairs next to Mother’s room. There’s always plenty of hot water.”

Amiee faced slowly about. “But I have already washed this day,” she explained, “At the hotel this morning there was warm water and also cold water in the corner of the room.”

Betsy felt she had made another blunder. “Oh, of course,” she said hastily. “You look awfully neat. The trains are pretty clean, now that the windows are down. It’s quite different in the summer.”

She was glad that the sound of bumping broke in on her disjointed speech. Lucy was bringing the two parcels under one arm and the valise in the other hand. It was a tight squeeze in the narrow stairway and she made a good bit of noise as she mounted the steps and crowded through the door. Amiee looked at her with a little frown. Betsy ran to help deposit the bundles safely on the bed.

“There, Miss, they’re all there,” said Lucy pleasantly. She, too, felt kindly to the orphan stranger.

She paused at the door, looking back into the room with a good-natured smile. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked. “Want that I should open the grip for you?”

Amiee shook her head. She was fingering something in her pocket. “No, I thank you, I am not in need of you,” she replied rather ungraciously.

And then she found what she wanted in her pocket, and she advanced to Lucy, holding out a coin in two fingers. “For the baggages ,” she said briefly.

Lucy put her hands behind her so swiftly that the coin dropped on the floor and rolled to Betsy’s feet.

“I don’t need to be paid,” she snapped, and she slammed the door with a jerk and went hurriedly downstairs. Betsy could hear her heels clicking on the bare steps and the sound of the door below as she vanished into the lower regions.

Betsy stooped to restore the coin to Amiee* She felt very uncomfortable indeed. It was far from the scene she had planned. “Lucy didn’t mean to be impudent, I am sure,” she said earnestly as she laid the coin in Amiee’s indifferent hand. “She’s usually very good tempered. Something must have happened to upset her. I’ve never seen her like this before.”