Part 13 (1/2)
However, she found that Aunt Mary was awake and in a cheerful frame, so she brought her boots in, and sat by the garden window while she put some new b.u.t.tons on with the delightful little clamps that save so many difficult st.i.tches. Aunt Mary was already dressed, though it was only nine o'clock, and was seated before an open bureau drawer, which her grandniece had learned to recognize as a good sign. Aunt Mary had endless treasures of the past carefully tucked away in little bundles and boxes, and she liked to look these over, and to show them to Betty, and tell their history. She listened with great eagerness to Betty's account of papa's departure.
”I was afraid that you would feel tired this morning,” said the girl, turning a bright face toward her aunt.
”I am sure I expected it myself,” replied Aunt Mary plaintively, ”but it isn't neuralgia weather, perhaps. At any rate, I am none the worse.”
”I believe that a good frolic is the very best thing for you,” insisted Betty, feeling very bold; but Aunt Mary received this news amiably, though she made no reply. Betty had recovered by this time from her sense of bitter wrong at her father's departure, and after she had talked with Aunt Mary a little while about the grand success of the Out-of-Door Club, she went her ways to find Becky.
Becky was in a very friendly mood, and admired Mr. Leicester, and wondered too at ever having been afraid of him in other years, when she used to see him walking sedately down the street.
”Papa is very sober sometimes when he is hard at work,” explained Betty with eagerness. ”He gets very tired, and then--oh, I don't mean that papa is ever aggravating, but for days and days I know that he is working hard and can't stop to hear about my troubles, so I try not to talk to him; but he always makes up for it after a while. I don't mind now, but when I was a little girl and first went away from here I used to be lonely, and even cry sometimes, and of course I didn't understand.
We get on beautifully now, and I like to read so much that I can always cover up the dull times with a nice book.”
”Do they last long,--the dull times?” asked Mary Beck in an unusually sympathetic voice. Betty had spoken sadly, and it dawned upon her friend's mind that life was not all a holiday even to Betty Leicester.
”Ever so long,” answered Betty briskly; ”but you see I have my mending and housekeeping when we are in lodgings. We are masters of the situation now, papa always says; but when I was too small to look after him, we used to have to depend upon old lodging-house women, and they made us miserable, though I love them all for the sake of the good ones who will let you go into the kitchen yourself and make a cup of tea for papa just right, and be honest and good, and cry when you go away instead of slamming the door. Oh, I could tell you stories, Mary Eliza Beck!” and Betty took one or two frisky steps along the sidewalk as if she meant to dance. Mary Beck felt as if she were looking out of a very small and high garret window at a vast and surprising world. She was not sure that she should not like to keep house in country lodgings, though, and order the dinner, and have a housekeeping purse, as Betty had done these three or four years. They had often talked about these experiences; but Becky's heart always faltered when she thought of being alone in strange houses and walking alone in strange streets. Sometimes Betty had delightful visits, and excellent town lodgings, and diversified hotel life of the most entertaining sort. She seemed to be thinking about all this and reflecting upon it deeply. ”I wish that papa and I were going to be here a year,” she said. ”I love Tideshead.”
Mr. Leicester did not wait to come back with the packet boat, but appeared by the stage from the railway station in good season for dinner. He was very hungry, and looked well satisfied with his morning's work, and he told Betty that she should know toward the end of the afternoon the reason of his going to Riverport, so that there was nothing to do but to wait. She was disappointed, because she had fancied that he meant to bring home a new row-boat; perhaps, after all, he had made some arrangements about it. Why, yes! it might be coming up by the packet, and they would go out together that very evening. Betty could hardly wait for the hour to come.
When dinner was over, papa was enticed up to see the cubby-house, while the aunts took their nap. There was a little roast pig for dinner, and Aunt Barbara had been disappointed to find that her guest had gone away, as it was his favorite dinner; but his unexpected return made up for everything, and they had a great deal of good fun. Papa was in the best of spirits, and went out to speak to Serena about the batter pudding as soon as Aunt Barbara rose from her chair.
”Now don't you tell me you don't get them batter puddings a sight better in the dwellings of the rich and great,” insisted Serena, with great complacency. ”Setting down to feast with lords and dukes, same's you do, you must eat of the best the year round. We do season the sauce well, I will allow. Miss Barbara, she always thinks it may need a drop more.”
”Serena,” said Betty's father solemnly, ”I a.s.sure you that I have eaten a slice of bacon between two tough pieces of hard tack for my dinner many a day this summer, and I haven't had such a batter pudding since the last one you made yourself.”
”You don't tell me they're goin' out o' fas.h.i.+on,” said Serena, much shocked. ”I know some ain't got the knack o' makin' 'em.”
Betty stood by, enjoying the conversation. Serena always said proudly that a great light of intellect would have been lost to the world if she had not rescued Mr. Leicester from the duck-pond when he was a boy, and they were indeed the best of friends. Serena's heart rejoiced when anybody praised her cooking, and she turned away now toward the pantry with a beaming smile, while the father and daughter went up to the garret.
It was hot there at this time of day; still the great elms outside kept the sun from s.h.i.+ning directly on the roof, and a light breeze was blowing in at the dormer window.
Mr. Leicester sat down in the high-backed wooden rocking-chair, and looked about the quaint little place with evident pleasure. Betty was perched on the window-sill. She had looked forward eagerly to this moment.
”There is my old b.u.t.terfly-net,” he exclaimed, ”and my minerals, and--why, all the old traps! Where did you find them? I remember that once I came up here and found everything cleared away but the gun,--they were afraid to touch that.”
”I looked in the boxes under the eaves,” explained Betty. ”Your little Fourth of July cannon is there in the dark corner. I had it out at first, but Becky tumbled over it three times, and once Aunt Mary heard the noise and had a palpitation of the heart, so I pushed it back again out of the way. I did so wish that you were here to fire it. I had almost forgotten what fun the Fourth is. I wrote you all about it, didn't I?”
”Some day we will come to Tideshead and have a great celebration, to make up for losing that,” said papa. ”Betty, my child, I'm sleepy. I don't know whether it is this rocking-chair or Serena's dinner.”
”Perhaps it was getting up so early in the morning,” suggested Betty.
”Go to sleep, papa. I'll say some of my new pieces of poetry. I learned all you gave me, and some others beside.”
”Not the 'Scholar Gypsy,' I suppose?”
”Yes, indeed,” said Betty. ”The last of it was hard, but all those verses about the fields are lovely, and make me remember that spring when we lived in Oxford. That was the only long one you gave me. I am not sure that I can say it without the book. I always play that I am in the 'high field corner' looking down at the meadows, and I can remember the first pages beautifully.”
Papa's eyes were already shut, and by the time Betty had said
”All the live murmur of a summer's day”
she found that he was fast asleep. She stole a glance at him now and then, and a little pang went through her heart as she saw that his hair was really growing gray. Aunt Mary and Aunt Barbara appeared to believe that he was hardly more than a boy, but to Betty thirty-nine years was a long lifetime, and indeed her father had achieved much more than most men of his age. She was afraid of waking him and kept very still, so that a sparrow lit on the window-sill and looked at her a moment or two before he flew away again. She could even hear the pigeons walking on the roof overhead and hopping on the s.h.i.+ngles, with a tap, from the little fence that went about the house-top. When Mr. Leicester waked he still wished to hear the ”Scholar Gypsy,” which was accordingly begun again, and repeated with only two or three stops. Sometimes they said a verse together, and then they fell to talking about some of the people whom they both loved in Oxford, and had a delightful hour together. At first Betty had not liked to learn long poems, and thought her father was stern and inconsiderate in choosing such old and sober ones; but she was already beginning to see a reason for it, and was glad, if for nothing else, to know the poems papa himself liked best, even if she did not wholly understand them. It was easy now to remember a new one, for she had learned so many. Aunt Barbara was much pleased with this accomplishment, for she had learned a great many herself in her lifetime. It seemed to be an old custom in the Leicester family, and Betty thought one day that she could let this gift stand in the place of singing as Becky could; one's own friends were not apt to care so much for poetry, but older people liked to be ”repeated” to. One night, however, she had said Tennyson's ballad of ”The Revenge” to Harry Foster and Nelly as they came up the river, and they liked it surprisingly.