Understood Betsy | Page 9

day, with an icy wind blowing down the back of her neck.
The early winter twilight was beginning to fall, and she felt rather
empty. She grew very tired of waiting, and remembered how the
grocer's boy at home had started his horse. Then, summoning all her
courage, with an apprehensive glance at Uncle Henry's arithmetical
silence, she slapped the reins up and down on the horses' backs and
made the best imitation she could of the grocer's boy's cluck. The
horses lifted their heads, they leaned forward, they put one foot before

the other ... they were off! The color rose hot on Elizabeth Ann's happy
face. If she had started a big red automobile she would not have been
prouder. For it was the first thing she had ever done all herself ... every
bit ... every smitch! She had thought of it and she had done it. And it
had worked!
Now for what seemed to her a long, long time she drove, drove so hard
she could think of nothing else. She guided the horses around stones,
she cheered them through freezing mud-puddles of melted snow, she
kept them in the anxiously exact middle of the road. She was quite
astonished when Uncle Henry put his pencil and paper away, took the
reins from her hands, and drove into a yard, on one side of which was a
little low white house and on the other a big red barn. He did not say a
word, but she guessed that this was Putney Farm.
Two women in gingham dresses and white aprons came out of the
house. One was old and one might be called young, just like Aunt
Harriet and Aunt Frances. But they looked very different from those
aunts. The dark- haired one was very tall and strong-looking, and the
white-haired one was very rosy and fat. They both looked up at the
little, thin, white- faced girl on the high seat, and smiled. "Well, Father,
you got her, I see," said the brown-haired one. She stepped up to the
wagon and held up her arms to the child. "Come on, Betsy, and get
some supper," she said, as though Elizabeth Ann had lived there all her
life and had just driven into town and back.
And that was the arrival of Elizabeth Ann at Putney Farm.
The brown-haired one took a long, strong step or two and swung her up
on the porch. "You take her in, Mother," she said. "I'll help Father
unhitch."
The fat, rosy, white-haired one took Elizabeth Ann's skinny, cold little
hand in her soft warm fat one, and led her along to the open kitchen
door. "I'm your Aunt Abigail," she said. "Your mother's aunt, you know.
And that's your Cousin Ann that lifted you down, and it was your Uncle
Henry that brought you out from town." She shut the door and went on,
"I don't know if your Aunt Harriet ever happened to tell you about us,

and so ..."
Elizabeth Ann interrupted her hastily, the recollection of all Aunt
Harriet's remarks vividly before her. "Oh yes, oh yes!" she said. "She
always talked about you. She talked about you a lot, she ..." The little
girl stopped short and bit her lip.
If Aunt Abigail guessed from the expression on Elizabeth Ann's face
what kind of talking Aunt Harriet's had been, she showed it only by a
deepening of the wrinkles all around her eyes. She said, gravely: "Well,
that's a good thing. You know all about us then." She turned to the
stove and took out of the oven a pan of hot baked beans, very brown
and crispy on top (Elizabeth Ann detested beans), and said, over her
shoulder, "Take your things off, Betsy, and hang 'em on that lowest
hook back of the door. That's YOUR hook."
The little girl fumbled forlornly with the fastenings of her cape and the
buttons of her coat. At home, Aunt Frances or Grace had always taken
off her wraps and put them away for her. When, very sorry for herself,
she turned away from the hook, Aunt Abigail said: "Now you must be
cold. Pull a chair right up here by the stove." She was stepping around
quickly as she put supper on the table. The floor shook under her. She
was one of the fattest people Elizabeth Ann had ever seen. After living
with Aunt Frances and Aunt Harriet and Grace the little girl could
scarcely believe her eyes. She stared and stared.
Aunt Abigail seemed not to notice this. Indeed, she seemed for the
moment to have forgotten all about the newcomer. Elizabeth Ann sat
on the wooden chair, her feet hanging (she had been taught that it was
not manners to put her feet