Understood Betsy | Page 3

Elizabeth Ann was always pretty well scared), "and perhaps we'd
better just turn this corner and walk in the other direction." If by any
chance the dog went in that direction too, Aunt Frances became a
prodigy of valiant protection, putting the shivering little girl behind her,
threatening the animal with her umbrella, and saying in a trembling
voice, "Go away, sir! Go AWAY!"
Or if it thundered and lightened, Aunt Frances always dropped
everything she might be doing and held Elizabeth Ann tightly in her
arms until it was all over. And at night--Elizabeth Ann did not sleep
very well--when the little girl woke up screaming with a bad dream, it
was always dear Aunt Frances who came to her bedside, a warm
wrapper over her nightgown so that she need not hurry back to her own

room, a candle lighting up her tired, kind face. She always took the
little girl into her thin arms and held her close against her thin breast.
"TELL Aunt Frances all about your naughty dream, darling," she
would murmur, "so's to get it off your mind!"
She had read in her books that you can tell a great deal about children's
inner lives by analyzing their dreams, and besides, if she did not urge
Elizabeth Ann to tell it, she was afraid the sensitive, nervous little thing
would "lie awake and brood over it." This was the phrase she always
used the next day to her mother when Aunt Harriet exclaimed about her
paleness and the dark rings under her eyes. So she listened patiently
while the little girl told her all about the fearful dreams she had, the
great dogs with huge red mouths that ran after her, the Indians who
scalped her, her schoolhouse on fire so that she had to jump from a
third-story window and was all broken to bits--once in a while
Elizabeth Ann got so interested in all this that she went on and made up
more awful things even than she had dreamed, and told long stories
which showed her to be a child of great imagination. But all these
dreams and continuations of dreams Aunt Frances wrote down the first
thing the next morning, and, with frequent references to a thick book
full of hard words, she tried her best to puzzle out from them exactly
what kind of little girl Elizabeth Ann really was.
There was one dream, however, that even conscientious Aunt Frances
never tried to analyze, because it was too sad. Elizabeth Ann dreamed
sometimes that she was dead and lay in a little white coffin with white
roses over her. Oh, that made Aunt Frances cry, and so did Elizabeth
Ann. It was very touching. Then, after a long, long time of talk and
tears and sobs and hugs, the little girl would begin to get drowsy, and
Aunt Frances would rock her to sleep in her arms, and lay her down
ever so quietly, and slip away to try to get a little nap herself before it
was time to get up.
At a quarter of nine every weekday morning Aunt Frances dropped
whatever else she was doing, took Elizabeth Ann's little, thin, white
hand protectingly in hers, and led her through the busy streets to the big
brick school-building where the little girl had always gone to school. It

was four stories high, and when all the classes were in session there
were six hundred children under that one roof. You can imagine,
perhaps, the noise there was on the playground just before school!
Elizabeth Ann shrank from it with all her soul, and clung more tightly
than ever to Aunt Frances's hand as she was led along through the
crowded, shrieking masses of children. Oh, how glad she was that she
had Aunt Frances there to take care of her, though as a matter of fact
nobody noticed the little thin girl at all, and her very own classmates
would hardly have known whether she came to school or not. Aunt
Frances took her safely through the ordeal of the playground, then up
the long, broad stairs, and pigeonholed her carefully in her own
schoolroom. She was in the third grade,--3A, you understand, which is
almost the fourth.
Then at noon Aunt Frances was waiting there, a patient, never-failing
figure, to walk home with her little charge; and in the afternoon the
same thing happened over again. On the way to and from school they
talked about what had happened in the class. Aunt Frances believed in
sympathizing with a child's life, so she always asked about every little
thing, and remembered to inquire about the continuation of every
episode, and sympathized with all her heart over the failure in mental
arithmetic, and triumphed over Elizabeth Ann's beating the