Aunt Betty

“ She would get so excited and have such a good time and be well forever after."
"I really have thought so," acknowledged Aunt Barbara, smiling at Betty's audacity. "But your Aunt Mary has suffered many things, and has lost her motive power. She cannot rouse herself when she wishes to, nowadays, but must take life as it comes. I can see that it was a mistake to yield years ago to her nervous illness, but I was not so wise then, and now it is too late. You know, Betty, she had a great sorrow, and has never been the same person since." ”

“ Dorothy, taking the two packages and kissing her aunt, murmured: “You dear, dear Aunt Betty. I must see what’s inside.”
She carefully opened the first and exclaimed as she drew forth a long pair of white gloves, “Oh, goody, goody. Just what I have been longing for.” And then opening the second package she found it contained a very beautiful Irish crochetted collar. “Aunt Betty! You dear, dear Aunt Betty. Just think how fine this will look with my gray coat. Just like all the girls we see here in New York. You are the best aunt ever a girl had.” ”

“ I begged the butler to get a cloak for Mrs. Harborough. She was saying Bettina and I should have waited. And again that I must calm myself and tell her——
"Someone pretended to be you!" I hurled it at her. "She took us to a house—a place where they do worse than murder. Betty is there now——" I told her all I could pack into a few sentences.
"It isn't possible," my aunt said. "This is England."
"Come and see! Betty——" But they only thought me mad; they tortured me with questions.
I caught her by the arm. "God won't forgive you if you wait an instant more." ”

“ The two were always more or less at daggers drawn, but it was seldom that the mutual dislike blazed up into open war.
'I will show Peet a thing or two,' cried Alan with a wilful smile. 'He must learn he can't speak to me like that. He is Aunt Betty's servant, worse luck. If he had been Father's, I'd have been down on him with a vengeance.'
'It is a great pity to quarrel with him,' said Marjorie, though she knew the remark was not a wise one under the circumstances. 'He is an old man, he's seen heaps of trouble, and he's soured. That is what Aunt Betty says. ”

“ Confound it!’ he would say to himself. ‘Aunt Betty loves me, and money has no share in the affection I bear her. If she knew I must be her heir, she’d say so frankly and freely. She’d scorn the notion of doling out to me as benevolence what one day would be my own by right. She is proud and intolerant enough, but she is seldom unjust—never so willingly and consciously. If, then, she has not said O’Shea’s Barn must be mine some time, it is because she knows well it cannot be true. ”

“ Betty slipped her little hand into mine. "You promised to let me walk with you for a little. Shall we pick honeysuckle, supposing we see any?"
"Yes, we will, darling."
"Supposing you can't reach it," she said.
"There is always some within reach."
"I suppose grown-ups can always reach things," said Betty.
Later, in the quiet darkness of the night, I could picture the garden, the roses, the distant moor, Lady Mary's beautiful face, but I could not bring myself to believe that I had really heard those words, "I am sure that he cares." ”

“ It was one of Aunt Mary's very best days, and there were some things one could say more easily to her than to Aunt Barbara, though Aunt Barbara was what Betty was pleased to irreverently call her pal.
"I do wish that I had a talent for something," said Betty. "I can't sing: if I could, I am sure that I would sing for everybody who asked me. I don't see what makes people so silly about it; hear that old robin now!" and they both laughed. "Nobody asks me to play who knows anything about music. I wish I had Aunt Barbara's fingers; I don't believe I can ever learn. ”

“ It looked like an Oriental throne with rose-silk hangings.
"I will send you up some tea," she said. "And you must rest. I am having a friend or two to dine. So wear your smartest gown. Come," she said to Betty.
"Betty is the one who ought to rest," I said.
"And so she shall," our aunt said. "I will show Betty her room."
Betty looked blank.
"We are not to be together?" she asked.
"Together!" Aunt Josephine repeated the word with the smile that drew her nose down. "Oh, you shall have a room of your own."
Betty moved a little nearer me. ”

“ The small white figure in the moonlight, the merry little playmate, hanging on his footsteps, eager to run his errands, the slender girl, with the red braids and the proud shy eyes, and the woman who knelt upon the hearth in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, smiling up at him as she dried her hair—all gathered round him now illuminated against the darkness of the night. Betty, Betty,—he whispered her name softly beneath his breath, he spoke it aloud in the silence of the turnpike, he even cried it out against the mountains, and waited for the echo—Betty, Betty. ”

“ Betty was almost as tall and only a little more quick and graceful than her grandaunt. [233]
"It is such fun to be just the same age as you and papa," insisted Betty. "We do everything together now." She took on a pretty grown-up air, and looked at Aunt Barbara admiringly. It was only this summer that she had begun to understand how young grown people really are. Aunt Mary seemed much older because she had stopped doing so many pleasant things. This garret dance was a thing to remember. ”

“ Mr dear Betty,—Your letter is very good, and I am more glad than ever that you chose to go to Tideshead. You will learn so much from Aunt Barbara that I wish my girl to know and to be. And you must remember, in Aunt Mary's self-pitying moments, all her sympathy and her true love for us both, and remember that she has in her character something that makes her the dearest being in the world to such a woman as Aunt Barbara. She is a person, in fact they both are, to be liked and appreciated more and more. ”

“ I do not mean that you shall be shut up in this hot city all summer without a bit of an outing. What would you say to a—oh, but I’m ahead of my story! I’ll tell you all this when you are rested and can better decide whether my plans for your vacation will please you.”
“Oh, auntie, tell me now—don’t keep me in suspense!”
“Young ladies,” said Aunt Betty, regarding her great-niece half-severely over her glasses, “should learn to control their curiosity. If allowed to run unbridled, it is apt, sooner or later, to get them into trouble.” ”

“ Aunt Betty said it was much better wanting things you can’t have, because then you go on being excited, but that’s of course absurd and just like Aunt Betty.
Bought Aunt Aggie a calendar-blotter thing for Christmas which she won’t like (blue leather with silver corners) but I can’t help it. I’m sick of thinking what to get her, and she won’t be contented whatever it is. Meanwhile, in the afternoon: the sensation of a lifetime—All sitting in the drawing-room, waiting for tea. When in bursts Henry with the wild news that Katie’s engaged herself to Philip Mark. ”

“ Buttons! In the arbour! With a man——"
"Major d'Arcy, our neighbour, aunt. Major, my aunt, Lady Belinda Damain."
Hereupon the Major bowed a trifle awkwardly since Lady Betty still had him in leash, while her aunt, rising, sank into a curtsey that was a wonder to behold and thereafter sighed and languished like the faded beauty she was.
"My undutiful niece, sir," said she, "hath no eye to decorum, she is for ever shocking the proprieties and me—alack, 'tis a naughty baggage—a romping hoyden, a wicked puss——"
"Aunt Belinda, dare to call me a 'puss' again and I'll scratch!" ”

“ Enter Betty. She looks in surprise at her aunt and guests.
Mrs. S. (maliciously) . Miss Betty, your aunt is deeply concerned over the downfall of Judge Ingram. The whole town is buzzing with the news. It seems the Judge joined the patriot army but to furnish information to the British. He has been discovered and is to be executed as a spy!
(Betty springs to her aunt’s side and puts her arms around her.)
Betty. Dear aunt, ’tis a false charge—I know it. They would not execute an innocent man. ”

“ That poor little wanderer who strayed into Deerhurst grounds, whom nobody comes to claim, shall not be the first to find it inhospitable. I’ve written Aunt Betty all about this ‘Luna’ and I know she’ll approve, just as Mr. Winters does. So don’t try to keep her shut up out of sight, any longer, Dinah dear. It goes to my heart to see her pace, pace around any room you put her in by herself. Like [Pg 84] a poor wild animal caged! It fairly made me shiver to see her, yesterday, when you led her into the great storeroom and left her. ”

“ Some magic must have been at work, for right there upon the sandy beach sat a pink gingham dress much like Betty’s own! It turned as Betty’s white shoes crunched the coarse gravel. “Hello,” she greeted. “I was just wishing I had a girl to talk to and then you came!”
Betty laughed. “I was just wishing, myself,” she smiled. “I’m staying with Mrs. Roberts. Do you live next door?”
The pink hair-ribbon bobbed. “I’m staying with my aunt,” it said. “I just came from the West. I don’t know a soul my own age here and it’s stupid. Now that you’ve come, let’s have some fun together. My name’s Lydia. ”

“ I suppose that is why I do my complaining to you, Betty. Was there ever such a character as Aunt Patricia? I believe she grows fiercer in manner and kinder in heart with each passing year. Her reconstruction work in France was so remarkable that the French government wished to present her with a medal of honor, which Aunt Patricia was about to refuse with scant courtesy when I induced her to allow me to write the letter of thanks at the time she declined the offer. There are moments when she is so autocratic I feel I must rebel and yet I am utterly devoted to her and under eternal obligations. ”

“ Many a time had Betty stood as a shield between their Aunt Dorothy and the spoiled child, her sister, and skilfully covered any of Bryda's delinquencies by the garment which loving hands know so well how to throw over those who are dearest to them. ”

“ I think a child like Betty should not be allowed to go to church on such occasions, for what is the use of preaching against matrimony on the one hand, and that, I suppose, is what the moral of such a sermon should be,—and on the other hand holding up an incentive to matrimony in the very alluring shape of Betty? For, personally, I think Betty would be a very wonderful possession for any curate to have.
Hugh was growing restless and I was bearing the brunt of it. Nannie, feeling for me, leaned over from the back pew and said, "Don't rest your head on your Aunt Woggles." ”

“ Her rich hair, with its soft tendrils curling upon her neck, was adorned with a wreath of ivy leaves, and tiny moss rosebuds from the rosebush in the window of the sitting-room. This little wreath gave Betty the look of a woodland nymph. Aunt Tulip, who acted as lady’s maid, during the intervals of her duty as cook, housemaid, and what not, was lost in admiration, and suggested that Betty would “cert’n’y ketch a beau.” This simple flattery delighted Betty, especially as all the time she was dressing her mind was fixed upon the charms of Lieutenant John Hope Fortescue of the United States Army. ”

“ Music and dancing were like foretastes of Heaven to Betty, who could dance twenty-five miles a night without the slightest fatigue. But she was the same gay little Betty in the long wintry days at Holly Lodge, with no one for company except her grandfather, Colonel Beverley, and his rheumatism, and Uncle Cesar and his wife, Aunt Tulip, the two old servants who had followed them into exile. ”

“ And with that the girls departed.
In a few moments they came back, and by just glancing at them Aunt Betty knew that the quest had failed.
“No, it is nowhere there,” said Dorothy sadly, “nowhere there.”
“Ring for the manager, dear, and I will see him and see what he suggests doing. The locket is of no value to anyone else. Its main value is in the pictures. I am very sorry I have no other copy of them. I have a picture of your father when he was younger, a mere boy at our Baltimore home, Bellevieu, but I never had another picture of your mother, dear,” said Aunt Betty. ”

“ He and Aunt Betty have been dearest friends ever since they were little. They call each other cousin, though they’re no kin at all, any more than he’s my uncle. He was my first teacher at his ‘school in the woods,’ but felt I ought to go to a school for girls. So I went to the Rhinelander Academy and he stayed at his smithy on the mountain, near Mother Martha’s little farm and Aunt Betty’s big one, and one vacation auntie told me who I was and took me home to live with her; and she liked Oak Knowe because the Bishop is her lifelong friend. ”

“ Aunt Betty took off one of the lids of the stove, jammed in all the wood it could be made to hold, then moved a straw-bottomed chair, laced and interlaced 144 with twine to keep the broken straw in place, close to the stove, and motioned Marion to sit down in it.
Then she stood at a little distance looking at her curiously. “You don’t favor the Parkes,” she said, after a slow examination. “You look more like your Aunt Jerushy; she was on my mother’s side. Your brown hair is hern, and your gray eyes; you feature her too. When you’re warm through, you can go up-stairs and lay off your things. ”

“ I shall ask a good deal of her time and attention; but I shall not live forever, and when I am gone, she will be independent, and able to make her own life.”
The three girls were breathless with attention, and Aunt Betty went on.
“I want the one I shall choose to ponder these conditions well; there will be a few years—probably—of partial seclusion from society, and of devotion to her old auntie, and then freedom, with the consciousness of having made happy the declining years of one who buried the last of her own children many years ago.” ”