Understood Betsy — Dorothy Canfield Fisher
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Understood Betsy Author : Dorothy Canfield Fisher Release date : March 1, 2004 [eBook #5347] Most recently updated: January 20, 2022 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5347 Credits : Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version produced by Chuck Greif. Revised by Richard Tonsing. *** START OF ILLUSTRATIONS BY ADA C. WILLIAMSON Uncle Henry looked at her, eyeing her sidewise over the top of one spectacle-glass. (Page 34) The Project Gutenberg eBook of Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield 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” “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 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 l