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By Clara Louise Burnham


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    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
    BOSTON AND NEW YORK




CLEVER BETSY

[Illustration: SHE SANK INTO THE ARMS THAT CLASPED HER]




CLEVER BETSY

A Novel

    by
    Clara Louise Burnham

    With Illustrations by
    Rose O’Neill

[Illustration]

    BOSTON AND NEW YORK
    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
    The Riverside Press Cambridge
    1910




    COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM
    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    _Published September 1910_




CONTENTS


         I. OPENING THE COTTAGE          1
        II. MISTRESS AND MAID           16
       III. IRVING BRUCE                27
        IV. MRS. POGRAM CONFIDES        38
         V. ROSALIE VINCENT             47
        VI. THE LAST STAGE              62
       VII. THE NATIONAL PARK           75
      VIII. THE BLONDE HEAVER           87
        IX. THE FOUNTAIN HOUSE         102
         X. ON THE RIVERSIDE           117
        XI. FACE TO FACE               131
       XII. THE FAITHFUL GEYSER        150
      XIII. THE HEIRESS                160
       XIV. THE LOOKOUT                176
        XV. AN EXODUS                  189
       XVI. BETSY’S GIFT               202
      XVII. SUNRISE                    217
     XVIII. HOMEWARD BOUND             232
       XIX. MRS. BRUCE’S HEADACHE      246
        XX. BETSY’S APPEAL             258
       XXI. A RAINY EVENING            270
      XXII. THE WHITE DOVE             282
     XXIII. THE DANCE                  296
      XXIV. THE CLASH                  313
       XXV. WHITE SWEET PEAS           327
      XXVI. IN BETSY’S ROOM            338
     XXVII. BETSY RECEIVES             355
    XXVIII. GOOD-BY, SUMMER            369
      XXIX. THE NEW YEAR               387




CLEVER BETSY




CHAPTER I

OPENING THE COTTAGE


“HELLO there!” The man with grizzled hair and bronzed face under a
shabby yachting-cap stopped in his leisurely ramble up the street of
a seaport village, and his eyes lighted at sight of a spare feminine
figure, whose lean vigorous arms were shaking a long narrow rug at a
cottage gate. “Ahoy there—The Clever Betsy!” he went on.

The energetic woman vouchsafed a sidewise twist of her mouth intended
for a smile, but did not cease from her labors, and a cloud of dust met
the hastened approach of the seaman.

“Here, there’s enough o’ that! Don’t you know your captain?” he went
on, dodging the woolen fringe which snapped near his dark cheek.

“_My_ captain!” retorted the energetic one, while the rug billowed
still more wildly. She was a woman of his own middle age, and the cloth
tied around her head did not add to her charms; but the man’s eyes
softened as they rested on her.

“Here! You carry too much sail. Take a reef!” he cried; and deftly
snatching the rug, in an instant it was trailing on the walk behind
him, while Betsy Foster stared, offended.

“How long ye been here, Betsy?”

“A couple o’ days,” replied the woman, adjusting the cheese-cloth
covering more firmly behind her ears.

“Why didn’t ye let a feller know?”

“Thought I wouldn’t trouble trouble till trouble troubled me.”

The man smiled. “The Clever Betsy,” he said musingly. They regarded one
another for a silent moment. “Why ain’t ye ever clever to me?”

She sniffed.

“Why don’t ye fat up some?” he asked again.

“If I was as lazy as you are, probably I should,” she returned, with
the sidewise grimace appearing again, and the breeze from the wide
ocean a stone’s throw away ruffling the sparse straight locks that
escaped from her headdress.

“Goin’ to marry me this time, Betsy?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Same old reason.”

“But I _tell_ ye,” said the man, in half-humorous, half-earnest appeal,
“I’ve told ye a dozen times I didn’t know which I liked best then. If
you’d happened to go home from singin’-school with me that night it
would ’a’ ben you.”

“And I say it ain’t proper respect to Annie’s memory for you to talk
that way.”

“I ain’t disrespectful. There never were two such nice girls in one
village before. I nearly grew wall-eyed tryin’ to look at you both at
once. Annie and I were happy as clams for fifteen years. She’s been
gone five, and I’ve asked ye four separate times if you’d go down the
hill o’ life with me, and there ain’t any sense in your refusin’ and
flappin’ rugs in my face.”

“You know I don’t like this sort o’ foolin’, Hiram. I wish you’d be
done with it.”

“I ain’t ever goin’ to be done with it, Betsy, not while you live and I
live.”

“Have some sense,” she rejoined. “We both made our choice when we were
young and we must abide by it—