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Page 35
[Illustration: Betsy and Ellen and the old doll.]
Finally, "It's too cold to play up here," she said, coming to herself
with a long breath. "You'd better bring Deborah and the trunk down into
the south room." She carried the doll, and Betsy and Ellen each took an
end of the old trunk, no larger than a modern suitcase. They settled
themselves on the big couch, back of the table with the lamp. Old Shep
was on it, but Betsy coaxed him off by putting down some bones Cousin
Ann had been saving for him. When he finished those and came back for
the rest of his snooze, he found his place occupied by the little girls,
sitting cross-legged, examining the contents of the trunk, all spread
out around them. Shep sighed deeply and sat down with his nose resting
on the couch near Betsy's knee, following all their movements with his
kind, dark eyes. Once in a while Betsy stopped hugging Deborah or
exclaiming over a new dress long enough to pat Shep's head and fondle
his ears. This was what he was waiting for, and every time she did it he
wagged his tail thumpingly against the floor.
After that Deborah and her trunk were kept downstairs where Betsy could
play with her. And often she was taken to school. You never heard of
such a thing as taking a doll to school, did you? Well, I told you this
was a queer, old-fashioned school that any modern School Superintendent
would sniff at. As a matter of fact, it was not only Betsy who took her
doll to school; all the little girls did, whenever they felt like it.
Miss Benton, the teacher, had a shelf for them in the entry-way where
the wraps were hung, and the dolls sat on it and waited patiently all
through lessons. At recess time or nooning each little mother snatched
her own child and began to play. As soon as it grew warm enough to play
outdoors without just racing around every minute to keep from freezing
to death, the dolls and their mothers went out to a great pile of rocks
at one end of the bare, stony field which was the playground.
There they sat and played in the spring sunshine, warmer from day to
day. There were a great many holes and shelves and pockets and little
caves in the rocks which made lovely places for playing keep-house. Each
little girl had her own particular cubby-holes and "rooms," and they
"visited" their dolls back and forth all around the pile. And as they
played they talked very fast about all sorts of things, being little
girls and not boys who just yelled and howled inarticulately as they
played ball or duck-on-a-rock or prisoner's goal, racing and running and
wrestling noisily all around the rocks.
There was one child who neither played with the girls nor ran and
whooped with the boys. This was little six-year-old 'Lias, one of the
two boys in Molly's first grade. At recess time he generally hung about
the school door by himself, looking moodily down and knocking the toe of
his ragged, muddy shoe against a stone. The little girls were talking
about him one day as they played. "My! Isn't that 'Lias Brewster the
horridest-looking child!" said Eliza, who had the second grade all to
herself, although Molly now read out of the second reader with her.
"Mercy, yes! So ragged!" said Anastasia Monahan, called Stashie for
short. She was a big girl, fourteen years old, who was in the seventh
grade.
"He doesn't look as if he EVER combed his hair!" said Betsy. "It looks
just like a wisp of old hay."
"And sometimes," little Molly proudly added her bit to the talk of the
older girls, "he forgets to put on any stockings and just has his
dreadful old shoes on over his dirty, bare feet."
"I guess he hasn't GOT any stockings half the time," said big Stashie
scornfully. "I guess his stepfather drinks 'em up."
"How CAN he drink up stockings!" asked Molly, opening her round eyes
very wide.
"Sh! You mustn't ask. Little girls shouldn't know about such things,
should they, Betsy?"
"No INDEED," said Betsy, looking mysterious. As a matter of fact, she
herself had no idea what Stashie meant, but she looked wise and said
nothing.
Some of the boys had squatted down near the rocks for a game of marbles
now.
"Well, anyhow," said Molly resentfully, "I don't care what his
stepfather does to his stockings. I wish 'Lias would wear 'em to school.
And lots of times he hasn't anything on under those horrid old overalls
either! I can see his bare skin through the torn places."
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