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Page 34
She stopped short and looked at the two little girls, covered with snow,
their faces flaming with excitement, and at the black hole gaping behind
them. "I always TOLD Father we ought to put a fence around that pit,"
she said in a matter-of-fact voice. "Some day a sheep's going to fall
down there. Shep came along to the house without you, and we thought
most likely you'd taken the wrong turn."
Betsy felt terribly aggrieved. She wanted to be petted and praised for
her heroism. She wanted Cousin Ann to REALIZE ... oh, if Aunt Frances were
only there, SHE would realize ... !
"I fell down in the hole, and Betsy wanted to go and get Mr. Putney, but
I wouldn't let her, and so she threw down a big branch and I climbed
out," explained Molly, who, now that her danger was past, took Betsy's
action quite as a matter of course.
"Oh, that was how it happened," said Cousin Ann. She looked down the
hole and saw the big branch, and looked back and saw the long trail of
crushed snow where Betsy had dragged it. "Well, now, that was quite a
good idea for a little girl to have," she said briefly. "I guess you'll
do to take care of Molly all right!"
She spoke in her usual voice and immediately drew the children after
her, but Betsy's heart was singing joyfully as she trotted along
clasping Cousin Ann's strong hand. Now she knew that Cousin Ann
realized. ... She trotted fast, smiling to herself in the darkness.
"What made you think of doing that?" asked Cousin Ann presently, as they
approached the house.
"Why, I tried to think what YOU would have done if you'd been there,"
said Betsy.
"Oh!" said Cousin Ann. "Well ..."
She didn't say another word, but Betsy, glancing up into her face as
they stepped into the lighted room, saw an expression that made her give
a little skip and hop of joy. She had PLEASED Cousin Ann.
That night, as she lay in her bed, her arm over Molly cuddled up warm
beside her, she remembered, oh, ever so faintly, as something of no
importance, that she had failed in an examination that afternoon.
CHAPTER VIII
BETSY STARTS A SEWING SOCIETY
Betsy and Molly had taken Deborah to school with them. Deborah was the
old wooden doll with brown, painted curls. She had lain in a trunk
almost ever since Aunt Abigail's childhood, because Cousin Ann had never
cared for dolls when she was a little girl. At first Betsy had not dared
to ask to see her, much less to play with her, but when Ellen, as she
had promised, came over to Putney Farm that first Saturday she had said
right out, as soon as she landed in the house, "Oh, Mrs. Putney, can't
we play with Deborah?" And Aunt Abigail had answered: "Why YES, of
course! I KNEW there was something I've kept forgetting!" She went up
with them herself to the cold attic and opened the little hair-trunk
under the eaves.
There lay a doll, flat on her back, looking up at them brightly out of
her blue eyes.
"Well, Debby dear," said Aunt Abigail, taking her up gently. "It's a
good long time since you and I played under the lilac bushes, isn't it?
I expect you've been pretty lonesome up here all these years. Never you
mind, you'll have some good times again, now." She pulled down the
doll's full, ruffled skirt, straightened the lace at the neck of her
dress, and held her for a moment, looking down at her silently. You
could tell by the way she spoke, by the way she touched Deborah, by the
way she looked at her, that she had loved the doll very dearly, and
maybe still did, a little.
When she put Deborah into Betsy's arms, the child felt that she was
receiving something very precious, almost something alive. She and Ellen
looked with delight at the yards and yards of picot-edged ribbon, sewed
on by hand to the ruffles of the skirt, and lifted up the silk folds to
admire the carefully made, full petticoats and frilly drawers, the
pretty, soft old kid shoes and white stockings. Aunt Abigail looked at
them with an absent smile on her lips, as though she were living over
old scenes.
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