



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.









UNDERSTOOD BETSY

BY

DOROTHY CANFIELD
Author of "The Bent Twig," etc.


ILLUSTRATIONS BY
ADA C. WILLIAMSON




[Illustration: Uncle Henry looked at her, eyeing her sidewise over the
top of one spectacle glass. (Page 34)]




CONTENTS

  I    Aunt Harriet Has a Cough
  II   Betsy Holds the Reins
  III  A Short Morning
  IV   Betsy Goes to School
  V    What Grade is Betsy?
  VI   If You Don't Like Conversation in a Book Skip this Chapter!
  VII  Elizabeth Ann Fails in an Examination
  VIII Betsy Starts a Sewing Society
  IX   The New Clothes Fail
  X    Betsy Has a Birthday
  XI   "Understood Aunt Frances"




ILLUSTRATIONS

Uncle Henry looked at her, eying her sidewise
over the top of one spectacle-glass    Frontispiece

Elizabeth Ann stood up before the doctor.
"Do you know," said Aunt Abigail, "I think
it's going to be real nice, having a little girl
in the house again"

She had greatly enjoyed doing her own hair.

"Oh, he's asking for more!" cried Elizabeth Ann

Betsy shut her teeth together hard, and started across

"What's the matter, Molly? What's the matter?"

Betsy and Ellen and the old doll

He had fallen asleep with his head on his arms

Never were dishes washed better!

Betsy was staring down at her shoes, biting her
lips and winking her eyes






CHAPTER I

AUNT HARRIET HAS A COUGH

When this story begins, Elizabeth Ann, who is the heroine of it, was a
little girl of nine, who lived with her Great-aunt Harriet in a
medium-sized city in a medium-sized State in the middle of this country;
and that's all you need to know about the place, for it's not the
important thing in the story; and anyhow you know all about it because
it was probably very much like the place you live in yourself.

Elizabeth Ann's Great-aunt Harriet was a widow who was not very rich or
very poor, and she had one daughter, Frances, who gave piano lessons to
little girls. They kept a "girl" whose name was Grace and who had asthma
dreadfully and wasn't very much of a "girl" at all, being nearer fifty
than forty. Aunt Harriet, who was very tender-hearted, kept her chiefly
because she couldn't get any other place on account of her coughing so
you could hear her all over the house.

So now you know the names of all the household. And this is how they
looked: Aunt Harriet was very small and thin and old, Grace was very
small and thin and middle-aged, Aunt Frances (for Elizabeth Ann called
her "Aunt," although she was really, of course, a
first-cousin-once-removed) was small and thin and if the light wasn't
too strong might be called young, and Elizabeth Ann was very small and
thin and little. And yet they all had plenty to eat. I wonder what was
the matter with them?

It was certainly not because they were not good, for no womenkind in all
the world had kinder hearts than they. You have heard how Aunt Harriet
kept Grace (in spite of the fact that she was a very depressing person)
on account of her asthma; and when Elizabeth Ann's father and mother
both died when she was a baby, although there were many other cousins
and uncles and aunts in the family, these two women fairly rushed upon
the little baby-orphan, taking her home and surrounding her henceforth
with the most loving devotion.

They had said to themselves that it was their manifest duty to save the
dear little thing from the other relatives, who had no idea about how to
bring up a sensitive, impressionable child, and they were sure, from the
way Elizabeth Ann looked at six months, that she was going to be a
sensitive, impressionable child. It is possible also that they were a
little bored with their empty life in their rather forlorn, little brick
house in the medium-sized city, and that they welcomed the occupation
and new interests which a child would bring in.

But they thought that they chiefly desired to save dear Edward's child
from the other kin, especially from the Putney cousins, who had written
down from their Vermont farm that they would be glad to take the little
girl into their family. But "ANYTHING but the Putneys!" said Aunt
Harriet, a great many times. They were related only by marriage to her,
and she had her own opinion of them as a stiffnecked, cold-hearted,
undemonstrative, and hard set of New Englanders. "I boarded near them
one summer when you were a baby, Frances, and I shall never forget the
way they were treating some children visiting there!... Oh, no, I don't
mean they abused them or beat them... but such lack of sympathy, such
perfect indifference to the sacred sensitiveness of child-life, such a
starving of the child-heart... No, I shall never forget it! They had
chores to do... as though they had been hired men!"

Aunt Harriet never meant to say any of this when Elizabeth Ann could
hear, but the little girl's ears were as sharp as little girls' ears
always are, and long before she was nine she knew all about the opinion
Aunt Harriet had of the Putneys. She did not know, to be sure, what
"chores" were, but she took it confidently from Aunt Harriet's voice
that they were something very, very dreadful.

There was certainly neither coldness nor hardness in the way Aunt
Harriet and Aunt Frances treated Elizabeth Ann. They had really given
themselves up to the new responsibility, especially Aunt Frances, who
was very conscientious about everything. As soon as the baby came there
to live, Aunt Frances stopped reading novels and magazines, and re-read
one book after another which told her how to bring up children. And she
joined a Mothers' Club which met once a week. And she took a
correspondence course in mothercraft from a school in Chicago which
teaches that business by mail. So you can see that by the time Elizabeth
Ann was nine years old Aunt Frances must have known all that anybody can
know about how to bring up children. And Elizabeth Ann got the benefit
of it all.

She and her Aunt Frances were simply inseparable. Aunt Frances shared in
all Elizabeth Ann's doings and even in all her thoughts. She was
especially anxious to share all the little girl's thoughts, because she
felt that the trouble with most children is that they are not
understood, and she was determined that she would thoroughly understand
Elizabeth Ann down to the bottom of her little mind. Aunt Frances (down
in the bottom of her own mind) thought that her mother had never REALLY
understood her, and she meant to do better by Elizabeth Ann. She also
loved the little girl with all her heart, and longed, above everything
in the world, to protect her from all harm and to keep her happy and
strong and well.

And yet Elizabeth Ann was neither very strong nor well. And as to her
being happy, you can judge for yourself when you have read all this
story. She was very small for her age, with a rather pale face and big
dark eyes which had in them a frightened, wistful expression that went
to Aunt Frances's tender heart and made her ache to take care of
Elizabeth Ann better and better.

Aunt Frances was afraid of a great many things herself, and she knew how
to sympathize with timidity. She was always quick to reassure the little
girl with all her might and main whenever there was anything to fear.
When they were out walking (Aunt Frances took her out for a walk up one
block and down another every single day, no matter how tired the music
lessons had made her), the aunt's eyes were always on the alert to avoid
anything which might frighten Elizabeth Ann. If a big dog trotted by,
Aunt Frances always said, hastily: "There, there, dear! That's a NICE
doggie, I'm sure. I don't believe he ever bites little girls.... MERCY!
Elizabeth Ann, don't go near him!... Here, darling, just get on the
other side of Aunt Frances if he scares you so" (by that time Elizabeth
Ann was always pretty well scared), "and perhaps we'd better just turn
this corner and walk in the other direction." If by any chance the dog
went in that direction too, Aunt Frances became a prodigy of valiant
protection, putting the shivering little girl behind her, threatening
the animal with her umbrella, and saying in a trembling voice, "Go away,
sir! Go AWAY!"

Or if it thundered and lightened, Aunt Frances always dropped everything
she might be doing and held Elizabeth Ann tightly in her arms until it
was all over. And at night--Elizabeth Ann did not sleep very well--when
the little girl woke up screaming with a bad dream, it was always dear
Aunt Frances who came to her bedside, a warm wrapper over her nightgown
so that she need not hurry back to her own room, a candle lighting up
her tired, kind face. She always took the little girl into her thin arms
and held her close against her thin breast. "TELL Aunt Frances all about
your naughty dream, darling," she would murmur, "so's to get it off your
mind!"

She had read in her books that you can tell a great deal about
children's inner lives by analyzing their dreams, and besides, if she
did not urge Elizabeth Ann to tell it, she was afraid the sensitive,
nervous little thing would "lie awake and brood over it." This was the
phrase she always used the next day to her mother when Aunt Harriet
exclaimed about her paleness and the dark rings under her eyes. So she
listened patiently while the little girl told her all about the fearful
dreams she had, the great dogs with huge red mouths that ran after her,
the Indians who scalped her, her schoolhouse on fire so that she had to
jump from a third-story window and was all broken to bits--once in a
while Elizabeth Ann got so interested in all this that she went on and
made up more awful things even than she had dreamed, and told long
stories which showed her to be a child of great imagination. But all
these dreams and continuations of dreams Aunt Frances wrote down the
first thing the next morning, and, with frequent references to a thick
book full of hard words, she tried her best to puzzle out from them
exactly what kind of little girl Elizabeth Ann really was.

There was one dream, however, that even conscientious Aunt Frances never
tried to analyze, because it was too sad. Elizabeth Ann dreamed
sometimes that she was dead and lay in a little white coffin with white
roses over her. Oh, that made Aunt Frances cry, and so did Elizabeth
Ann. It was very touching. Then, after a long, long time of talk and
tears and sobs and hugs, the little girl would begin to get drowsy, and
Aunt Frances would rock her to sleep in her arms, and lay her down ever
so quietly, and slip away to try to get a little nap herself before it
was time to get up.

At a quarter of nine every weekday morning Aunt Frances dropped whatever
else she was doing, took Elizabeth Ann's little, thin, white hand
protectingly in hers, and led her through the busy streets to the big
brick school-building where the little girl had always gone to school.
It was four stories high, and when all the classes were in session there
were six hundred children under that one roof. You can imagine, perhaps,
the noise there was on the playground just before school! Elizabeth Ann
shrank from it with all her soul, and clung more tightly than ever to
Aunt Frances's hand as she was led along through the crowded, shrieking
masses of children. Oh, how glad she was that she had Aunt Frances there
to take care of her, though as a matter of fact nobody noticed the
little thin girl at all, and her very own classmates would hardly have
known whether she came to school or not. Aunt Frances took her safely
through the ordeal of the playground, then up the long, broad stairs,
and pigeonholed her carefully in her own schoolroom. She was in the
third grade,--3A, you understand, which is almost the fourth.

Then at noon Aunt Frances was waiting there, a patient, never-failing
figure, to walk home with her little charge; and in the afternoon the
same thing happened over again. On the way to and from school they
talked about what had happened in the class. Aunt Frances believed in
sympathizing with a child's life, so she always asked about every little
thing, and remembered to inquire about the continuation of every
episode, and sympathized with all her heart over the failure in mental
arithmetic, and triumphed over Elizabeth Ann's beating the Schmidt girl
in spelling, and was indignant over the teacher's having pets. Sometimes
in telling over some very dreadful failure or disappointment Elizabeth
Ann would get so wrought up that she would cry. This always brought the
ready tears to Aunt Frances's kind eyes, and with many soothing words
and nervous, tremulous caresses she tried to make life easier for poor
little Elizabeth Ann. The days when they had cried they could neither of
them eat much luncheon.

After school and on Saturdays there was always the daily walk, and there
were lessons, all kinds of lessons--piano-lessons of course, and
nature-study lessons out of an excellent book Aunt Frances had bought,
and painting lessons, and sewing lessons, and even a little French,
although Aunt Frances was not very sure about her own pronunciation. She
wanted to give the little girl every possible advantage, you see. They
were really inseparable. Elizabeth Ann once said to some ladies calling
on her aunts that whenever anything happened in school, the first thing
she thought of was what Aunt Frances would think of it.

"Why is that?" they asked, looking at Aunt Frances, who was blushing
with pleasure.

"Oh, she is so interested in my school work! And she UNDERSTANDS me!"
said Elizabeth Ann, repeating the phrases she had heard so often.

Aunt Frances's eyes filled with happy tears. She called Elizabeth Ann to
her and kissed her and gave her as big a hug as her thin arms could
manage. Elizabeth Ann was growing tall very fast. One of the visiting
ladies said that before long she would be as big as her auntie, and a
troublesome young lady. Aunt Frances said: "I have had her from the time
she was a little baby and there has scarcely been an hour she has been
out of my sight. I'll always have her confidence. You'll always tell
Aunt Frances EVERYTHING, won't you, darling?" Elizabeth Ann resolved to
do this always, even if, as now, she often had to invent things to tell.

Aunt Frances went on, to the callers: "But I do wish she weren't so thin
and pale and nervous. I suppose it is the exciting modern life that is
so bad for children. I try to see that she has plenty of fresh air. I go
out with her for a walk every single day. But we have taken all the
walks around here so often that we're rather tired of them. It's often
hard to know how to get her out enough. I think I'll have to get the
doctor to come and see her and perhaps give her a tonic." To Elizabeth
Ann she added, hastily: "Now don't go getting notions in your head,
darling. Aunt Frances doesn't think there's anything VERY much the
matter with you. You'll be all right again soon if you just take the
doctor's medicine nicely. Aunt Frances will take care of her precious
little girl. SHE'll make the bad sickness go away." Elizabeth Ann, who
had not known before that she was sick, had a picture of herself lying
in the little white coffin, all covered over with white.... In a few
minutes Aunt Frances was obliged to excuse herself from her callers and
devote herself entirely to taking care of Elizabeth Ann.

So one day, after this had happened several times, Aunt Frances really
did send for the doctor, who came briskly in, just as Elizabeth Ann had
always seen him, with his little square black bag smelling of leather,
his sharp eyes, and the air of bored impatience which he always wore in
that house. Elizabeth Ann was terribly afraid to see him, for she felt
in her bones he would say she had galloping consumption and would die
before the leaves cast a shadow. This was a phrase she had picked up
from Grace, whose conversation, perhaps on account of her asthma, was
full of references to early graves and quick declines.

And yet--did you ever hear of such a case before?--although Elizabeth
Ann when she first stood up before the doctor had been quaking with fear
lest he discover some deadly disease in her, she was very much hurt
indeed when, after thumping her and looking at her lower eyelid inside
out, and listening to her breathing, he pushed her away with a little
jerk and said: "There's nothing in the world the matter with that child.
She's as sound as a nut! What she needs is..."--he looked for a moment
at Aunt Frances's thin, anxious face, with the eyebrows drawn together
in a knot of conscientiousness, and then he looked at Aunt Harriet's
thin, anxious face with the eyebrows drawn up that very same way, and
then he glanced at Grace's thin, anxious face peering from the door
waiting for his verdict--and then he drew a long breath, shut his lips
and his little black case very tightly, and did not go on