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Page 27
"Why didn't they use wagons?" asked Elizabeth Ann.
"You can't run a wagon unless you've got a road to run it on, can you?"
asked Uncle Henry. "It was a long, long time before they had any roads.
It's an awful chore to make roads in a new country all woods and hills
and swamps and rocks. You were lucky if there was a good path from your
house to the next settlement."
"Now, Henry," said Aunt Abigail, "do stop going on about old times long
enough to let Betsy answer the question you asked her. You haven't given
her a chance to say how she got on at school."
"Well, I'm AWFULLY mixed up!" said Betsy, complainingly. "I don't know
what I am! I'm second-grade arithmetic and third-grade spelling and
seventh-grade reading and I don't know what in writing or composition.
We didn't have those."
Nobody seemed to think this very remarkable, or even very interesting.
Uncle Henry, indeed, noted it only to say, "Seventh-grade reading!" He
turned to Aunt Abigail. "Oh, Mother, don't you suppose she could read
aloud to us evenings?"
Aunt Abigail and Cousin Ann both laid down their sewing to laugh! "Yes,
yes, Father, and play checkers with you too, like as not!" They
explained to Betsy: "Your Uncle Henry is just daft on being read aloud
to when he's got something to do in the evening, and when he hasn't he's
as fidgety as a broody hen if he can't play checkers. Ann hates checkers
and I haven't got the time, often."
"Oh, I LOVE to play checkers!" said Betsy.
"Well, NOW ..." said Uncle Henry, rising instantly and dropping his half-
mended harness on the table. "Let's have a game."
"Oh, Father!" said Cousin Ann, in the tone she used for Shep. "How about
that piece of breeching! You know that's not safe. Why don't you finish
that up first?"
Uncle Henry sat down again, looking as Shep did when Cousin Ann told him
to get up on the couch, and took up his needle and awl.
"But I could read something aloud," said Betsy, feeling very sorry for
him. "At least I think I could. I never did, except at school."
"What shall we have, Mother?" asked Uncle Henry eagerly.
"Oh, I don't know. What have we got in this bookcase?" said Aunt
Abigail. "It's pretty cold to go into the parlor to the other one." She
leaned forward, ran her fat fore-finger over the worn old volumes, and
took out a battered, blue-covered book. "Scott?"
"Gosh, yes!" said Uncle Henry, his eyes shining. "The staggit eve!"
At least that was the way it sounded to Betsy, but when she took the
book and looked where Aunt Abigail pointed she read it correctly, though
in a timid, uncertain voice. She was very proud to think she could
please a grown-up so much as she was evidently pleasing Uncle Henry, but
the idea of reading aloud for people to hear, not for a teacher to
correct, was unheard-of.
The Stag at eve had drunk his fill
Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,
she began, and it was as though she had stepped into a boat and was
swept off by a strong current. She did not know what all the words
meant, and she could not pronounce a good many of the names, but nobody
interrupted to correct her, and she read on and on, steadied by the
strongly-marked rhythm, drawn forward swiftly from one clanging,
sonorous rhyme to another. Uncle Henry nodded his head in time to the
rise and fall of her voice and now and then stopped his work to look at
her with bright, eager, old eyes. He knew some of the places by heart
evidently, for once in a while his voice would join the little girl's
for a couplet or two. They chanted together thus:
A moment listened to the cry
That thickened as the chase drew nigh,
Then, as the headmost foes appeared,
With one brave bound, the copse he cleared.
At the last line Uncle Henry flung his arm out wide, and the child felt
as though the deer had made his great leap there, before her eyes.
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