Part 5 (2/2)

Serena was walking in the side yard in her nice plain afternoon dress, and somehow Betty felt more like seeking comfort from her than from Aunt Barbara, and was glad to go in at the little gate and join her kind old friend.

”What's fell upon _you_?” asked Serena, with sincere compa.s.sion.

”Mary Beck's just as disagreeable as she can be to-day,” responded Betty, regardless of her sin book. ”Serena! I just hate her, and I hate that horrid best hat of hers with the feather in it.”

”Oh, no you don't, sweetin's;” Serena protested peacefully. ”You'll be keepin' company same's ever to-morrow. Now I think of 't, you've been off a good deal with the Grants and that French girl” (not a favorite of Serena's); ”I wonder if that's all?”

”Yes--no”--wavered Betty. ”Don't you tell anybody, but I do belong to a little club, but Becky doesn't really understand, for we've kept it very secret indeed.”

”I want to know,” exclaimed Serena.

”Yes, and it's for such a good object. I'll tell you some time, perhaps, but we want to cure ourselves of a fault.” It seemed no harm to tell good old Serena; the compact had only been that none of the other girls should know. ”We keep a little book, and we can have a good mark at night if we haven't said anything against anybody, but to-day I shall have such a black one! It makes us careful how we speak; truly, Serena; but Becky doesn't know, and she's making me feel so badly just because she suspects something.”

”The tongue is an evil member,” said Serena. ”I don't know but doing things is full as bad as sayin' 'em, though. I s'pose you ain't kind of flaunted it a little speck that you had some secret amon'st you, to spite Mary?”

”She was stuffy about it and she had no right to be,” Betty said this at first hastily, and then added: ”I did wish yesterday that she would ask to belong and find that for once she couldn't.”

Serena took Betty's light hand in her own work-worn one and held it fast. ”Le's come and set on the doorstep a spell,” she said; ”I want to tell you something about me an' a girl I thought everything of when we was young.

”She was real pretty, and we went together and had our young men--not serious, only kind o' going together; an' Cynthy an' me we had a misunderstandin' o' one another and we didn't speak for much's a fortnight an' said spiteful things. I was here same's I be now, an' your Aunt Barbara, she was young too, an' the old lady, Madam Leicester, she was alive and they all was inquirin' what had come over me. I used to have a pretty voice then, and I wouldn't go to singin'-school or evenin'

meetin' nor nothin'. I set out to leave here an' my good kind home an'

go off to Lowell working in the mill, 't was when so many did, and girls liked it. Cynthy lived to the minister's folks. I've never got over it how ugly spoken I was about that poor girl, and she used to look kind of beseechin' at me the two or three times we met, as if she'd make up if I would, but I wouldn't. An' don't you think, one night her brother come after her to take her home, up Great Hill way, and the horse got scared and threw 'em out on the ice; an' when they picked Cynthy up she was just breathin' an' that was all, an' never spoke nor knew nothin' again.

'T was at the foot o' that hill just this side o' the Picknells. It give me a fit o' sickness; it did so,” said Serena mournfully. ”I can't bear to think about her never. Oh, she was one of the prettiest girls you ever saw. I try to go every summer an' lay a bunch o' pink roses on to her grave; she used to like 'em. I know 't was a fault o' youth an'

hastiness, but I ain't never forgot it all my long life. I tell you with a reason. Folks says it takes two to make a quarrel but only one to end it. Now you bear that in your mind.”

Betty glanced at old Serena, and saw two great tears slowly running down her faded cheek. She was much moved by the sad little story, and Serena's pretty friend and the pink roses. She wondered what the quarrel had been about, but she did not like to ask, and as Serena still held one hand she put the other over it, while Serena took the corner of her afternoon ap.r.o.n to wipe away the tears.

”It's very hard to be good, isn't it, Serena dear?” asked Betty.

”It's master hard, sweetin's,” answered Serena gravely,--”master hard; but it can be done with help.” They sat there on the shady doorstep for some minutes without speaking. A robin was chirping loud, as if for rain, high in one of the elms overhead, and the sun was getting low.

Presently Serena was mindful of her evening duties and rose to go in, but not before Betty had put both arms round her and kissed her.

”There, there! somebody'll see you,” protested the kind soul, but her face shone with joy. ”Which d' you want for your supper, shortcakes or some o' them crispy rye ones?” she asked, trying to be very matter-of-fact. As for Betty, she turned and went down the yard and out of the carriage gate and straight across the wide street. She opened the Becks' front door and saw Becky at the end of the entry trying to escape to the garden.

”Don't let's be grumpy,” she said in a friendly tone, ”I've come over to make up.”

Becky tried to preserve a stern expression, but somehow there was a warmth at her heart which suddenly came to the surface in a smile and the two girls were friends again. That night Betty put down a black mark, but not without feeling that the day had ended well in spite of its dark shadows.

”I don't believe that we ought to keep the sin books secret,” she told the members of the club one afternoon when the second week's trial was over and there had been four or five good days for encouragement. ”I don't wish everybody to know, but now that we find how much good they do us, we ought to let somebody else try; only Becky and the Picknells and Nelly Foster.”

But there was no expression of approval.

”Then I'm going to do this: not tell them about this club, but behave as if it was something new and start another club. I could belong to two as well as one, you know.”

”I wouldn't be such a copy-cat,” said Lizzie French quickly. ”It's _our_ secret; we shall be provoked that we ever asked you,” and with this verdict Betty was forced to be contented. She felt as if she had taken most inflexible vows, but there was a pleasing excitement in such dark mystery. The girls had to employ much stratagem in order to have their weekly meetings unsuspected, for Betty was determined not to make any more trouble among her friends. When she was first in Tideshead she often felt more enlightened than her neighbors, as if she had been beyond those bounds and experiences of every-day life known to the other girls, but she soon discovered herself to be single-handed and weak before their force of habit and prejudice. With all their friendliness and affection for Betty Leicester they held their own with great decision, and sometimes she found herself nothing but a despised minority. This was very good for her, especially when, as it sometimes happened, she was quite in the wrong, while if she were right she became more sure of it and was able to make her reasons clear.

There were several solemn evening meetings of the Sin Book Club after this; the favorite place of a.s.semblage was a shady corner of Lizzie French's damp garden, where the records were sorrowfully inspected by the fleeting light of burnt matches, and gratified crowds of mosquitoes forced the sessions to be extremely brief. Whether it was that new interests took the place of the club, or whether the members thought best to keep their trials to themselves, no one can say, but by the middle of August the regular meetings had ceased. Yet sometimes the little books came accidentally out of pocket with a member's handkerchief, and were not without a good and lasting effect upon four quick young tongues; perhaps this will be seen as the story goes on.

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