Clever Betsy. Clara Louise Burnham

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СКАЧАТЬ He said he supposed Mrs. Pogram knew, but there had been some recent quarrel with a brother of Mrs. Pogram’s and it had ended in Rosalie’s going away.”

      “Soarin’, perhaps,” remarked Betsy dryly, grasping the legs of an unoffending table and giving it vicious tweaks with the dust-cloth. “Just as well folks shouldn’t be given wings sometimes, in my opinion. When a bird’s got plumage like Rosalie’s, it’d better stick to the long grass. The world’s just full o’ folks that if they catch sight o’ the brightness never rest till they get a shot at it and drag it down.”

      “Was she so pretty? Let’s see, was she dark or light? Oh, I remember her hair was blonde.”

      Betsy gave one look at her employer. It was entirely characteristic that two years should have sunk the village girl’s memory in a haze.

      Mrs. Bruce sighed and began to polish another fork. “It seldom pays to try to help people,” she said. “I distinctly remember the girl had talent, and I thought she might get a position in one of the Portland schools if she had a little training and applied herself.”

      “Her letters to you certainly sounded as if she was workin’ her best.”

      “Did they?” vaguely. “Perhaps they did. Well, very likely she has gone to take a position then.”

      “Not in summer time, I guess,” remarked Betsy.

      “I don’t seem to remember any brother of Mrs. Pogram’s,” said Mrs. Bruce plaintively.

      “Humph! You’ve probably bought ribbons of him lots o’ times. He sells ’em up in Portland, and I’ll bet it’s a strain on him every time he measures off over thirty-five and a half inches for a yard. Brown’s his name. Loomis Brown; and it would seem more fittin’ if ’twas Lucy. Such a hen-betty I never saw in all my days. I wonder if it’s possible he took to shinin’ up to Rosalie.”

      “Oh, he’s a bachelor?”

      “Law, yes. He wouldn’t want to pay for a marriage license, but p’raps he took such a shine to Rosalie as she grew older that it spurred him on to the extravagance. No tellin’. If that’s the case, no wonder she took wings.”

      “It’s very tiresome,” said Mrs. Bruce, “the way girls will marry after one has done one’s best for them.”

      “Yes, Mrs. Bruce. The next time you take a fancy to a village girl, you give her a course in cookin’ instead of English. She can jaw her husband all right without any teachin’; but it takes trainin’ to make good bread.”

      Mrs. Bruce sighed leniently. “That is your point of view, naturally,” she said. “You could hardly be expected to have that divining rod which recognizes the artistic. Strange how much better I remember that girl’s gift and her unstudied gestures than I do her face.”

      Betsy paused long enough in her undertakings to pull up the bib of her mistress’s apron, which had slipped, endangering the pretty silk gown. There was a permanent line in Betsy’s forehead, which might have been named “Mrs. Bruce the second”; but she fastened the apron as carefully now as she did all things pertaining to that lady’s welfare, and made no reply to the reflection upon her æsthetic capabilities. Betsy would not have known the meaning of the word æsthetic, but she would have declared unhesitatingly that if it characterized Mrs. Bruce she was willing not to have it describe herself. Not that she had a dislike of her mistress. She took her as she found her. Mr. Bruce had been attached to her, and Betsy’s duty was to the bearer of his name. She seldom contended with her mistress, nor had any argument. She said to herself simply that it was hard to teach an old dog new tricks; and while it might seem a trifle rough to mention an old dog in connection with a lady of Mrs. Bruce’s attractive appearance, the sense of the axiom was extremely applicable, since Mrs. Bruce could become no more set in all essentials if she lived to be a hundred.

      Betsy very rightly realizing that avoidable discord was foolishness, lived her philosophy, and contented herself with mental reservations which would have astonished her complacent mistress mightily.

      On the evening, twelve years ago, when Mr. Bruce announced to his housekeeper his impending marriage, she shouldered this cross resolutely.

      He had been a man of few words, and on this occasion he said simply to the woman who had seen his happiness with the bride of his youth, “I find myself very lonely, Betsy. I am going to marry Miss Flushing.”

      “Very well, sir,” she replied quietly, though her heart leaped to her throat and her thoughts flew to the twelve-year-old boy who was then at home on his vacation. “Have you told Mr. Irving, sir?”

      She remembered the father’s face as he replied, “Yes. That boy, Betsy, is a manly little chap. Miss Flushing is devoted to him and has gained his affection already; but – it was a blow to him. I saw it. A surprise, a great surprise.”

      Betsy remembered to this day how she bit her tongue to keep it from speaking.

      “He talked to me though,” the father had continued, “more like one man to another than like a child; but after being very civil about it, he announced that I mustn’t expect him to call her mother, because he should not be able to.”

      Betsy had nodded. “Mr. Irving had a mother out of the ordinary, Mr. Bruce,” she replied very quietly, but with the hot blood pressing in her head; then she went up decorously to her room, closed the door, and indulged in one storm of weeping; after which she shouldered the cross above mentioned, which like all crosses heartily borne, lightened as the years went on.

      One thing was certain. Greater devotion was never displayed by a stepmother; and if Irving Bruce had mental reservations, too, he did not divulge them to the faithful woman who was part of his earliest remembrance.

      CHAPTER III

      IRVING BRUCE

      Mrs. Bruce had retired from her labors, but a vigorous cleansing process was still going on in the cottage, when a man’s footsteps again sounded on the garden-path. Some one set a suit-case down on the porch, and then appeared in the doorway for a moment of inspection.

      Betsy started at sight of the tall, gray-clad apparition.

      “Mr. Irving!” she ejaculated, and the transfiguring expression which crossed her face gave the key at once to her loyalty. “Go ’way from here, we ain’t a bit ready for you!” she said severely.

      He strode forward and gently shook the speaker’s angular shoulders instead of her busy hands.

      “Great that I could get here so soon,” he returned, continuing to rest his hands on her shoulders, while she looked up into the eyes set generously apart under level brows.

      “He ain’t any job lot,” she thought for the hundredth time, “he’s a masterpiece.” But all the time she was trying to frown.

      “We ain’t ready for you,” she repeated. “The cook hasn’t come.”

      “Bully!” ejaculated the unwelcome one. “It’s the aim of my existence to catch you where there isn’t any cook. Are the mackerel running?”

      “You’ll have to ask Cap’n Salter or some other lazy coot about that. Mackerel running! Humph! My own running has been all I could attend to the last two days. Mrs. Pogram’s supposed to look after the cottage – air it and so on; but she always was slower’n molasses and I s’pose she don’t get any younger nor spryer as the years СКАЧАТЬ