“She could just as well go to all the dances with Tom,” Betsy answered, and told about the conversations with Tom and with Tacy.
Tib shook her head. “I hate to say it, but I believe that Tacy is going to be an old maid.”
“Oh, Tib!” cried Betsy.
“You don’t get married without lifting your finger.”
“I know it,” said Betsy in an agonized tone. “But she can’t be an old maid! She just can’t! If all the rest of us get to work, we ought to be able to marry her off. She’s so beautiful, with that gorgeous hair and those big blue eyes.”
“But she doesn’t do anything with them,” Tib protested. “I wish I had them for about five minutes.”
“You do all right being little and blonde,” Betsy said.
“Ralph likes blondes. I’m glad of that,” said Tib. She had felt romantic about Ralph Maddox ever since the St. John game. “Lloyd and Dennie are both having fits,” she went on, holding a piece of pink silk shoulder to shoulder and looking in the mirror. “I hope Ralph asks me first for that dance at the Hotel…if they give it. Who do you want to go with, Betsy? Which one do you like best, Tony or Joe?”
“I’ve loved Tony for years,” said Betsy, lightly.
“You’re not answering my question, and you know it.”
No one knew which one Betsy liked best, but the rivalry began to attract attention, and the general opinion was that Joe was edging ahead. Word got around school that Betsy and Joe Willard were practically going together.
Miss Clarke, the Zetamathian faculty advisor who had seen Betsy through the Essay Contests, beamed upon them; and Miss O’Rourke, the Philomathian faculty advisor who had sponsored Joe, looked mischievous. Miss Fowler, the little English teacher who had given them both so much encouragement and praise, smiled when she saw them together.
In Miss Bangeter’s Shakespeare class they sat side by side at the back of the room. Miss Bangeter, with her dark magnetic eyes and sonorous voice, had almost transformed that roomful of desks and blackboards into the Forest of Arden. Trees with love songs hung and carved upon them seemed to rise between the desks. The sun slanted down through leafy aisles upon gallants and fair ladies, shepherds, shepherdesses, clowns, and courtiers. The Forest of Arden always made Betsy think of the Big Hill.
She underlined a sentence and passed it across to Joe. “Fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.”
“That’s what I’d like to do,” she whispered.
“That’s what we’ll do next spring,” Joe whispered back, while even Miss Bangeter looked pleased.
12
“Don’t Worry”
BURSTING IN TO CALL FOR Betsy one morning in mid-December, Tib and Tacy cried, “Say, what about our Christmas shopping trip?”
This was an annual event, as heavily weighted with tradition as a Christmas pudding with plums. As children they had gone with just ten cents apiece to spend. They had visited every store in town, priced everything from diamonds to gum drops, and bought, each one, a Christmas tree ornament. The last few years, they had been less carefree; they had had real shopping to do. But they had never failed to make the trip, savoring Christmas together all up and down Front Street.
“Of course,” said Betsy. “Let’s go after school tonight.”
There had been repeated falls of snow, and Deep Valley was bedded down in drifts. But bright sun and jingling sleighbells made the cold seem festive. Front Street masqueraded in evergreen and holly. The store windows were full of gifts, and the stores were full of merry harassed crowds and the smell of damp clothing.
The girls bought presents for their parents, for their brothers and sisters, and for other members of the Crowd. Tacy bought beauty pins for Mrs. Poppy, with whom she studied singing. Betsy bought a Deep Valley pennant for Leonard. At last, for old times’ sake, they bought the Christmas tree ornaments, each selecting just one after prolonged debate.
As they paid their dimes, they were laughing at themselves, but Betsy admitted silently that she had never ceased to be thrilled by the sight of a Christmas tree ornament, so fragile, so glittery, so full of the promise of Christmas. When they were drinking coffee at Heinz’s, she took her silver ball out of its wrappings.
“Just think!” she began—Betsy was always saying “Just think!” this year. “Just think! This may be our last Christmas shopping trip!”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Tib, startled.
“Well, next year I’ll be at the U. You’ll be going to Browner College in Milwaukee, probably…or maybe on the stage; it wouldn’t surprise me…and Tacy will be going to the College on the hill, studying Public School Music. We may very well not get downtown together.”
“Heavens!” said Tacy. She looked aghast.
“We can’t go on doing the same things forever,” said Tib. But she looked sober, too.
“Maybe we ought to have more cakes,” suggested Betsy, by way of consolation. So they ordered another round of cakes.
They went home laden with bundles, but Betsy had not yet bought her most important gift. She had not even mentioned it to Tacy and Tib. This was for Joe.
He had already bought her present.
“It doesn’t amount to much. Just something I thought you might like,” he had said with shining carelessness one Sunday night at lunch.
He almost always came for Sunday night lunch now. Tony was often there and the relationship between them had grown a little stiff. Joe was aware that although Betsy’s feeling for Tony might be sisterly, Tony’s feeling for her was more than brotherly. And Tony had heard the general rumors about Betsy and Joe.
Tony had the inside track at the Ray house Sunday nights. But Joe was winning a special place, too. Margaret actually permitted him to tease her. He pelted Mrs. Ray with compliments, and when Mr. Ray was making the famous sandwiches, Joe always kept him company. He got Mr. Ray to talk about the shoe store, about his youth, about Deep Valley history. Mr. Ray loved to talk and Joe to listen.
“I think your father is the finest person I ever met in my life,” Joe said one night. “He has the finest character and philosophy, he is the happiest. I’ve been trying to decide what makes him so happy. I believe it’s because he never thinks of himself. He is always thinking about doing something for somebody else…you, or Margaret, or your mother…or Anna, or the shoemaker who works for him, or some poor widow across the slough with a house full of kids.”
Mr. Ray, for his part, was highly gratified with his attentive listener. Now when he brought home especially good anecdotes he was eager to share them with the Willard boy. Betsy was occasionally almost annoyed by this. She and Joe didn’t have much time together. Sometimes when they were sitting by the fire, happily alone for once, Mr. Ray would join them, sit down, and begin to talk.
“A remarkable fellow came into the store today. Name of Kerr. And guess what he did. I’m always selling the other fellow a bill of goods. But this fellow Kerr sold me. I didn’t want to put in a line of knitwear. Never thought of doing it. Perfectly content with shoes. But, by golly, I did!”
Joe was delighted. “How did he manage it?” he asked.
“He was so darned positive,” Mr. Ray replied. “He knows exactly what he wants and what you ought to want, whether you do or not.”
At this point, Mrs. Ray, to whom Betsy had been lifting eyebrows in appeal, called Mr. Ray away. She asked him to fix a squeaking door.
“Shucks!” said Mr. Ray. “That door has been squeaking for weeks. Why do I have to fix it right now when I want to talk to Joe?”
There could certainly be no doubt about Mr. Ray’s liking for Joe, and even Anna, although she adored Tony, allowed that Joe was “puny.”
“There was a boy something like that who used to call on the McCloskey girl,” she remarked to Betsy. The McCloskeys were a legendary family for whom Anna had worked in a legendary past. When Anna quoted the McCloskeys, it was important.
She quoted them, as Christmas drew near, about
cookies. They had always made three kinds, she said, and so she was making three kinds now.
The December issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal had an impressive page entitled “Twenty Christmas Cookies from One Batter.” Betsy showed it to Anna, who sniffed.
“Ja, and I’ll bet they all taste alike. Mrs. McCloskey’s recipes are good enough for me.”
Mrs. Ray was rapturously shopping. Betsy was worrying darkly over her “Don’t Worry” motto. Margaret was working on something—it looked like a blotter—which she whisked out of sight whenever Betsy came near.
Mr. Ray brought home holly wreaths, which were put up in the windows. He brought home mistletoe, and candy canes. A Christmas tree waited on the chill back porch, sending out whiff of aromatic fragrance whenever the door was opened.
Mr. Ray called the girls aside. “You could never guess what my present for Jule is, not if you tried a hundred years.”
“What is it, Papa?” Betsy urged.
“Never mind. You’ll find out.”
Margaret protested. “You never kept Mamma’s present a secret from us before.”
Mr. Ray only chuckled.
Margaret, who sang in the seventh-grade chorus, was practising Christmas carols.
“It came upon the midnight clear….”
Betsy and Tacy were practising for the high school Christmas program.
“The first Noel, the angel did say,
Was to certain poor shepherds,
In fields as they lay….”
Betsy was busy with choir practise, too. And there seemed to be a sound of carols in the air even when she wasn’t in chorus or choir. She thought sometimes that in spite of the void caused by Julia’s absence, this was going to be a wonderful Christmas.
It was getting difficult, though, to divide her time between Joe and Tony. Balancing their claims, she felt sometimes like an acrobat on a tight rope. She consoled herself by thinking of Tony. He wasn’t any longer stealing rides on freight cars. He wasn’t going with that wild crowd. And soon, certainly, he would get a crush on some other girl.
But Tony, she admitted reluctantly, hadn’t had very many crushes during the years she had known him. Moreover, in an offhand nonchalant way, he was letting her know that he liked her…too much.
Walking downtown with Joe after school, she asked where he was spending Christmas
“Butternut Center,” he replied. “My uncle and aunt sort of like to have me around.”
“Do you suppose you’ll get in town during the day?”
“Does your father make turkey sandwiches at night?”
“He certainly does.” Betsy smiled. “They’re the most famous of the year. He puts cold dressing in them.”
“When do you get your presents?”
“Christmas morning, in our stockings. We hang them the night before and then after we’ve decorated the tree and sung carols, we turn out the lights and fill them. It’s lots of fun.”
“You Rays know how to do things,” Joe answered. “Well,” he added, “the last day of school is Christmas Eve. I’ll give you your present then and you can put it into your own stocking.”
They parted at the usual corner and Joe went on to the Sun, but Betsy didn’t go to the library. She went to Front Street, and she came nearer to duplicating the traditional Christmas shopping trip than she and Tacy and Tib had done. She traversed Front Street from end to end, looking into every store.
It was proper for a boy to give a girl only books, flowers, or candy. It would be proper for Betsy to give Joe nothing more. A box of home made candy might be the best thing, but she did want to give him something he could keep. She ended at Cook’s Book Store, her favorite store in town, and browsing about, she found a small, red, limp-leather edition of Shakespeare. The Avon edition, it was called. She purchased As You Like It.
Hurrying to her father’s store in order to get a ride home in the sleigh, she passed Alquist’s. She remembered that she hadn’t bought a present for Tony and went in and bought a red tie. It wouldn’t be proper to give a tie to the average boy, but Tony was so much more than just a beau. So much more, and also…so much less.
On the evening before the last day of school, the Crowd went to the high school to decorate. They stopped by for Cab and made him go, too. Decorating the school for Christmas was a senior prerogative and a very hilarious occasion.
A few industrious persons really worked, hanging popcorn and cranberry strings and loops of silver paper on a tall evergreen tree set up on the platform. The others drew pictures and scrawled slams on the blackboards, tacked mistletoe in strategic places. Clutching mistletoe, Dennie pursued Winona over the tops of the desks.
Tib ran up to Betsy. “Remember what I told you about a dance at the Melborn Hotel? Well, it’s going to be on New Year’s Eve. Ralph just asked me.”
Betsy had a tightrope walker’s shiver. She didn’t want to go to this all-important dance with Tony.
During the rest of the evening she stayed so close to Joe that he asked, “What’s the matter? Scared of something?”
“Scared to go home in the dark.”
“Gosh!” said Joe. “That’s too bad. I have to get down to the roller rink to cover an exhibition of skating. You don’t want to come along, do you?”
“I mustn’t,” said Betsy. “There’s too much to do at home.”
She thought of bringing up the subject of the dance. After all, she and Joe were almost going together. But Betsy wasn’t sure she had the poise. Besides, she didn’t want to. It would take away something of the thrill to ask him instead of having him ask her.
She thought she could manage. “If Tony asks me,” she planned, “I’ll say I’m engaged. It would be just a white lie. Or I’ll tell him frankly I’d prefer to go with Joe. He has to know sometime.”
Probably, she thought, he wouldn’t get the chance to ask her. She had come with Tacy and Tib and would go home with them.
At the time for departure, however, Tony came up.
“I’ll walk you home,” he said, taking her arm.
“I came over with the girls, Tony, and I think I’d better…”
“I think you’d better go home with me,” he interrupted, insouciant as ever.
Dennie, Cab, and Lloyd had joined Tacy, Tib, and Winona. They sauntered along High Street together. In desperation, when they reached her home, Betsy asked them all in.
It was the worst thing she could have done. Everyone began to talk about the dance.
“What’s this? What’s this?” cried Tony. “A dance on New Year’s Eve? Mar-vo-lous!”
He turned to Betsy, and his manner was unconcerned, but not the look in his black eyes.
“How about it, Ray of Sunshine? Will you go with me?” he asked.
Betsy felt the room listening and panic overwhelmed her. She couldn’t, in this company, say she was engaged. Julia with her cold confidence could have done it, but Betsy lacked the poise, and she certainly couldn’t be frank. She had to protect Tony.
“Why, thanks,” she said. She noticed that some of the boys were looking at her keenly and tried to act careless, as though it didn’t matter with whom one went to the New Year’s Eve dance.
But it did matter, she felt with foreboding.
Joe was so proud. She had watched him and thought about him a great deal over the autumn, and she had never seen him make a frankly friendly overture. She knew the reason: he felt he had nothing to offer. Other boys and girls had homes to entertain in, parents to give treats. He had nothing. He could never say, “Come on over to my house,” and bring a friend in for an apple or a cookie. He didn’t want to accept favors he couldn’t return. So he never made advances.
Betsy had made the advances. She had been generous with her friendship, with her admiration, with her praise. It was her nature to be that way and it had drawn Joe to her. Some boys might be spurred to greater devotion by a rival, but not Joe.
Betsy went to sleep worrying and she woke up still worrying.
Morning brought a diversion. Before breakfast was over, the doorbell rang, and she found no one less than Carney on the porch, Carney, dimple flickering!
They flew into each other’s arms. “Why, you haven’t changed at all!”
“Why should I have changed?” asked Carney. Tacy, Tib, and Alice came shouting up the steps. Carney was conveyed with a guard of honor to the high school.
She wasn’t the only Old Grad back that day. Al and Pin and Squirrelly were back. Tom was there, quite markedly avoiding Tacy, telling Carney that he would be at West Point next year.
“Maybe,” he said, “you’ll come over to some dances.”
The Christmas exercises went off merrily, with Mr. Gaston a sardonic Santa Claus as usual. There was so much excitement that Betsy wasn’t surprised that she didn’t encounter Joe. But after the exercises it came to her that he was deliberately avoiding her. He was talking and joking with other groups and didn’t even look in her direction.
At last she went over to him with the little package she had brought.
“Merry Christmas!” she said, extending it. “I hope I’m going to see you Christmas night.”
“Not a chance,” he answered rudely. He didn’t take the package and Betsy put it down uncertainly on a desk.
“Why? What’s the matter?”
He turned on her fiercely.
“You certainly didn’t lose any time in getting Tony to take you to the New Year’s Eve dance.”
“Why, Joe!” faltered Betsy. “Who told you….” It was, she realized, a stupid answer. It made her sound guilty, as though she had done something wrong. She blushed scarlet.
“The whole school told me,” Joe answered hotly. “They’ve been laying bets, I hear, on which one of us you would go with. I can’t take it, and I won’t. Either you’re my girl or you’re not.”
Betsy felt sick with misery. “But we’ve talked that all over. I thought you understood.”
“I understand. I understand that you’re not my girl.”
“Why, Joe!” But he didn’t hear her. He strode off, and the little package she had wrapped with such care in tissue and bright ribbons still lay on the desk. Betsy picked it up, feeling cold inside.