CHAPTER V
MRS. PEABODY WRITES
THE bad, little stubborn horse standing on the track at the mercy ofthe coming comet! That was Betty's thought as she sped down the road.In the hope that a sense of the danger might have reached the animal'sinstinct, she gave the bridle a desperate tug when she reached thehorse, but it was of no use. Feverishly Betty set to work to unharnessthe little bay horse.
She was unaccustomed to many of the buckles, and the harness was stiffand unyielding. Working at it in a hurry was very different from thefew times she had done it for fun, or with some one to manage all thehard places. She had finished one side when the whistle sounded again.To the girl's overwrought nerves it seemed to be just around the curve.She had no thought of abandoning the animal, however, and she set herteeth and began on the second set of snaps and buckles. These, too,gave way, and with a strong push Betty sent the buggy flying backwardfree of the tracks, and, seizing the bridle, she led the cause of allthe trouble forward and into safety. For the third time the whistleblew warningly, and this time the noise of the train could be plainlyheard. But it was nearly a minute before the glare of the headlightshowed around the curve.
"Look what didn't hit you, no thanks to you," Betty scolded the horse,as a relief to herself. "I 'most wish I'd left you there; only then wenever would get Uncle Dick home."
Poor Betty had now the hardest part of her task before her. She wentback and dragged the buggy over the tracks, up to the horse and startedthe tedious business of harnessing again. She was not sure where allthe straps went, but she hoped enough of them would hold together tillthey could get home. When she had everything as nearly in place as shecould get them she climbed down into the pit.
To her surprise, her uncle's eyes were open. He lay gazing at the buggylamp she had left.
"Uncle Dick," she whispered, "are you hurt? Can you walk? Becauseyou're so big, I can't pull you out very well."
"Why, I can't be hurt," said her uncle slowly in his natural voice."What's happened? Where are we? Goodness, child, you look like a ghostwith a dirty face."
Betty was not concerned with her looks at that moment, and she was sodelighted to find her uncle conscious that she did not feel offendedat his uncomplimentary remark. In a few words she sketched for himwhat had happened.
"My dear child!" he ejaculated when she had told him, "have you beenthrough all that? Why, you're the pluckiest little woman I ever heardof! No wonder you look thoroughly done up. All I remember is whistlingfor you to come ahead and then taking a step that landed me nowhere. Inother words, I must have stepped into this pit. I'm not hurt--just abit dazed."
To prove it, he got to his feet a trifle shakily. Declining Betty'sassistance, he managed to scramble out of the pit, up on to the road.His head cleared rapidly, and in a few more moments he declared he feltlike himself.
"In with you," he ordered Betty, after a preliminary examination of theharness which, he announced, was "as right as a trivet." "You've doneyour share for to-night. Go to sleep, if you like, and I'll wake you upin time to hear Mrs. Arnold send Ted out to take the horse around tothe livery stable. It wouldn't do for me to do it--I might murder theowner!"
Betty leaned her head against her uncle's broad shoulder, for a minuteshe thought, and when she woke found herself being helped gently fromthe buggy.
"You're all right, Betty," soothed Mrs. Arnold's voice in thedarkness. "I've worried myself sick! Do you know it's one o'clock?"
Mr. Gordon took the wagon around to the stable, and Betty, with Mrs.Arnold's help, got ready for bed.
Betty was fast asleep almost before the undressing was completed, andshe slept until late the next morning. When she came down to the luxuryof a special breakfast, she found only Mrs. Arnold in the house.
"Your uncle's gone out to post a letter," that voluble lady informedher. "Both boys have gone fishing again. I'm only waiting for theirfather to come home and straighten 'em out. Will you have cocoa,dearie?"
Before she had quite finished her breakfast, Mr. Gordon came backfrom the post-office, and then, as Mrs. Arnold wanted to go over to aneighbor's to borrow a pattern, he sat down opposite Betty.
"You look rested," he commented. "I don't like to think what mighthave happened last night. However, we'll be optimistic and look ahead.I've written to Mrs. Peabody, dear, and to-morrow I think you and Mrs.Arnold had better go shopping. I'll write you a check this morning.Agatha will want you to come, I know. And to tell you the truth, Betty,I've had a letter that makes me anxious to be off. I want to stay tosee you safely started for Bramble Farm, and then I must peg away atthis new work. Finished? Then let's go into the sitting room and I'llexplain about the check."
The next morning Betty and Mrs. Arnold started for Harburton with whatseemed to Betty a small fortune folded in her purse. Mrs. Arnold hadshown her how to cash the check at the Pineville Bank, and she was toadvise as to material and value of the clothing Betty might select;but the outfit was to represent Betty's choice and was to please herprimarily--Uncle Dick had made this very clear.
Betty had learned a good deal about shopping in the last months of hermother's illness, and she did not find it difficult to choose suitableand pretty ginghams for her frocks, a middy blouse or two, some newsmocks, and a smart blue sweater. She very sensibly decided that as shewas to spend the summer on a farm she did not need elaborate clothes,and she knew, from listening to Mrs. Arnold, that those easiest to ironwould probably please Mrs. Peabody most whether she did her own laundrywork or had a washerwoman.
When the purchases came home Uncle Dick delighted Betty with his warmapproval. For a couple of days the sewing machine whirred from morningto night as the village dressmaker sewed and fitted the new frocks andmade the old presentable. Then the letter from Mrs. Peabody arrived.
"I will be very glad to have your niece spend the summer with me," she wrote, in a fine, slanting hand. "The question of board, as you arrange it, is satisfactory. I would not take anything for her, you know, Dick, and for old times' sake would welcome her without compensation, but living is so dreadfully high these days. Joseph has not had good luck lately, and there are so many things against the farmer.... Let me know when to expect Betty and some one will meet her."
The letter rambled on for several pages, complaining rather querulouslyof hard times and the difficulties under which the writer and herhusband managed to "get along."
"Doesn't sound like Agatha, somehow," worried Uncle Dick, a slightfrown between his eyes. "She was always a good-natured, happy kind ofgirl. But most likely she can't write a sunny letter. I know we usedto have an aunt whose letters were always referred to as 'calamityhowlers.' Yet to meet her you'd think she hadn't a care in the world.Yes, probably Agatha puts her blues into her letters and so doesn'thave any left to spill around where she lives."
Several times that day Betty saw him pull the letter from his pocketand re-read it, always with the puzzled lines between his brows. Oncehe called to her as she was going upstairs.
"Betty," he said rather awkwardly, "I don't know exactly how to putit, but you're going to board with Mrs. Peabody, you know. You'llbe independent--not 'beholden,' as the country folk say, to her. Iwant you to like her and to help her, but, oh, well, I guess I don'tknow what I am trying to say. Only remember, child, if you don't likeBramble Farm for any good reason, I'll see that you don't have toremain there."
A brand-new little trunk for Betty made its appearance in the fronthall of the Arnold house, and two subdued boys--for Mr. Arnold hadreturned home--helped her carry down her new treasures and, after theclothes were neatly packed, strap and lock the trunk. There was a tiny"over-night" bag, too, fitted with toilet articles and just largeenough to hold a nightdress and a dressing gown and slippers. Bettyfelt very young-ladyish indeed with these traveling accessories.
"I'll order a riding habit for you in the first large city I get to,"promised her uncle. "I want you to learn to ride--I wrote Agatha that.She doesn't say anything
about saddle horses, but they must havesomething you can ride. And you'll write to me, my dear, faithfully?"
"Of course," promised Betty, clinging to him, for she had learned tolove him dearly even in the short time they had been together. "I'llwrite to you, Uncle Dick, and I'll do everything you ask me to do.Then, this winter, do let's keep house."
"We will," said Uncle Dick, fervently, "if we have to keep house on theback of a camel in the desert!" At this Betty giggled delightedly.
Betty's train left early in the morning, and her uncle went to thestation with her. Mrs. Arnold cried a great deal when she saidgood-bye, but Betty cheered her up by picturing the long, chattyletters they would write to each other and by assuring her friend thatshe might yet visit her in California.
Mr. Gordon placed his niece in the care of the conductor and theporter, and the last person Betty saw was this gray-haired unclerunning beside the train, waving his hat and smiling at her till hercar passed beyond the platform.
"Now," said Betty methodically, "if I think back, I shall cry; so I'llthink ahead."
Which she proceeded to do. She pictured Mrs. Peabody as a gray-haired,capable, kindly woman, older than Mrs. Arnold, and perhaps more serene.She might like to be called "Aunt Agatha." Mr. Peabody, she decided,would be short and round, with twinkling blue eyes and perhaps a whitestubby beard. He would probably call her "Sis," and would always bestudying how to make things about the house comfortable for his wife.
"I hope they have horses and pigs and cows and sheep," mused Betty, theflying landscape slipping past her window unheeded. "And if they havesheep, they'll have a dog. Wouldn't I love to have a dog to take longwalks with! And, of course, there will be a flower garden. 'BrambleFarm' sounds like a bed of roses to me."
The idea of roses persisted, and while Betty outwardly was strictlyattentive to the things about her, giving up her ticket at the propertime, drinking the cocoa and eating the sandwich the porter broughther (on Uncle Dick's orders she learned) at eleven o'clock, she was inreality busy picturing a white farmhouse set in the center of a rosegarden, with a hedge of hollyhocks dividing it from a scarcely lessbeautiful and orderly vegetable kingdom.
Day dreams, she was soon to learn.