Betsy-Tacy (3 page)

B
ETSY AND Tacy soon had places which belonged to them. The bench on the hill was the first one. The second one, and the dearest for several years, was the piano box. This was their headquarters, their playhouse, the center of all their games.

It stood behind Betsy's house, for it had brought that same piano on which Julia practiced her music
lesson and which Betsy's mother had played for Betsy's party. It was tall enough to hold a piano; so of course it was tall enough to hold Betsy and Tacy. It wasn't so wide as it was tall; they had to squeeze to get in. But by squeezing just a little, they could get in and sit down.

Julia and Katie couldn't come in unless they were invited. This was Betsy's and Tacy's private corner. Betsy's mother was a great believer in people having private corners, and the piano box was plainly meant to belong to Betsy and Tacy, for it fitted them so snugly. They decorated the walls with pictures cut from magazines. Tacy's mother gave them a bit of rug for the floor. They kept their treasures of stones and moss in a shoe box in one corner.

One side of the piano box was open. As Betsy and Tacy sat in their retreat they had a pleasant view. They looked into the back yard maple, through the garden and the little grove of fruit trees, past the barn and buggy shed, up to the Big Hill. This was not the hill where the picnic bench stood. That was the little hill which ended Hill Street. Hill Street ran north and south, but the road which climbed the Big Hill ran east and west. At the top stood a white house, and the sun rose behind it in the morning.

Sitting in their piano box one day, Betsy and Tacy
looked at the Big Hill. Neither of them had ever climbed it. Julia and Katie climbed it whenever they pleased.

“I think,” said Betsy, “that it's time we climbed that hill.” So they ran and asked their mothers.

Betsy's mother was canning strawberries. “All right,” she said. “But be sure to come when I call.”

“All right,” said Tacy's mother. “But it's almost dinner time.”

Betsy and Tacy took hold of hands and started to climb.

The road ran straight to the white house and the deep blue summer sky. The dust of the road was soft to their bare feet. The sun shone warmly on Betsy's braids and on Tacy's bright red curls.

At first they passed only Betsy's house and her garden and orchard and barn. They had gone that far before. Then they came to a ridge where wild roses bloomed in June. They had gone that far, picking roses. But at last each step took them farther into an unknown country.

The roadside was crowded with mid-summer flowers…big white daisies and small fringed daisies, brown-eyed Susans and Queen Anne's lace. On one side of the road, the hill was open. On the other it was fenced, with a wire fence which enclosed a cow pasture. A brindle cow was sleeping under a scrub oak tree.

“Just think!” said Betsy. “We don't even know whose cow pasture that is.”

“We don't even know whose cow that is,” said Tacy. “Of course it
might
be Mr. Williams' cow.”

“Oh, no,” said Betsy. “We've come too far for that.”

They plodded on again.

The sun seemed warmer and warmer. The dust began to pull at their feet. They turned and looked back. They could look down now on the roofs of their homes, almost as they had done the night they rode the feather.

“We've come a dreadful way,” said Tacy. “If we were sitting in our piano box, we could see ourselves up here.”

“We would wonder who were those two children climbing the Big Hill.”

“Maybe we ought to stop,” said Tacy.

“Let's go just a little farther,” Betsy said. But in a moment she pointed to a fat thorn apple tree on the
unfenced side of the road. “That would be a nice place to stop,” she suggested. And they stopped.

Under the thorn apple tree was a deep, soft nest of grass. The two little girls sat down and drew their knees into their arms. They could see farther now than the treetops of Hill Street. They could see the roof of the big red schoolhouse where Julia and Katie went to school.

A squirrel whisked down the tree to look at them. A phoebe sang, “Phoebe! Phoebe!” over and over again. A hornet buzzed in the noonday heat, but did not come too near.

“Let's live up here,” Betsy said suddenly.

Tacy started. “You mean all the time?”

“All the time. Sleep here and everything.”

“Just you and me?” Tacy asked.

“I think it would be fun,” said Betsy. She jumped up and found a broken branch. “This is the front of our house,” she said, laying it down.

Tacy brought a second branch and laid it so that the two ends left a space between. “This is our front door,” she said.

“This is our parlor,” said Betsy. “Where this stone is. Company can sit on the stone.”

“And this is our bedroom,” said Tacy. “If your mother will let us have her big brown shawl to sleep on, my mother will give us a pillow, I think.”

They worked busily, making their house.

“But Betsy,” said Tacy after a time. “What will we have to eat?”

Betsy looked thoughtfully about her. “Why, we'll milk the cow,” she said.

“Do you think we could?”

“'Course we could. You hold him and I'll milk him.”

“All right,” said Tacy. “Only not just yet. I'm not hungry yet.”

Betsy rolled her eyes upward. “We can have thorn apples too,” she said.

“That's right,” said Tacy happily. “We can have thorn apple pie.”

They started picking thorn apples. But after a
moment Betsy interrupted the task.

“And I like eggs,” she said.

Something firm and determined in her tone made Tacy look around hurriedly. Betsy was looking at a hen. It was a red hen with a red glittery breast. It had wandered up the hill from some back yard in Hill Street, perhaps. Or down the hill from the big white house. Betsy and Tacy could not tell. But Betsy was looking at the hen so firmly, there was no mistaking her intention.

“We'll catch that hen,” said Betsy, “and keep him in a box. And whenever we get hungry he can lay us an egg.”

“That will be fine,” said Tacy.

They began to hunt for a box.

With great good fortune they found one. It was broken and old and water-soaked, but it was a box. It would hold a hen.

“Now,” said Betsy, “we have to catch him. I'll say, ‘Here chickabiddie, chickabiddie! Here chickabiddie, chickabiddie!' like I've heard my Uncle Edward do, and when he comes right up to my hand, you grab him.”

“All right,” said Tacy.

So Betsy called, “Here chickabiddie, chickabiddie! Here chickabiddie, chickabiddie!” just as she had heard her Uncle Edward do. And she called so
well and made such inviting motions with her hand (as though she were scattering feed) that the hen came running toward her. And Tacy swooped down on it with two thin arms and Betsy bundled it up in two plump ones. Somehow, although it flapped and clawed, they got it into the box.

But the hen was very angry. It glared at them with furious little eyes and opened and shut its sharp little beak and made the most horrid, terrifying squawks.

“Lay an egg, chickabiddie! Lay an egg, chickabiddie!” said Betsy over and over.

But the hen didn't lay a single egg.

About this time voices rose from Hill Street.
“Betsy!” “Tacy!” “Betsy!” “Tacy!” One voice added, “Dinner's ready.”

“I don't believe he's going to lay an egg,” said Tacy.

“Neither do I,” said Betsy. “He isn't trained yet.”

“Maybe,” said Tacy, “our piano box is a nicer place to live after all.”

Betsy thought it over. The hen kept making that horrid, squawking sound. Probably there would be strawberry jam for dinner, left over from what went into the jars. And the piano box was a beautiful place.

“Our piano box,” she agreed, jumping up, “has a roof for when it rains.”

So they ran down the Big Hill.

“We climbed the Big Hill,” they shouted joyously to Julia and Katie who had been doing the calling.

“Pooh! We climb it often,” Julia and Katie said.

W
HEN SEPTEMBER came, Betsy and Tacy started going to school. Julia took Betsy and Katie took Tacy, on the opening day. Betsy's mother came out on the steps of the little yellow house to wave good-by, and Tacy's mother came out on her steps, too, along with Tacy's brother Paul and Bee, the baby, who weren't old enough yet to go to school.

Betsy was beaming all over her round rosy face. Her tightly braided pigtails, with new red ribbons
on the ends, stuck out behind her ears. She wore a new plaid dress which her mother had made, and new shoes which felt stiff and queer.

Tacy's mother had brushed the ringlets over her finger 'til they shone. They hung as neat as sausages down Tacy's back. Tacy had a new dress, too; navy blue, it was, because she had red hair. But where Betsy was beaming, Tacy was frowning. She held her head down and dragged from Katie's hand.

She was bashful; that was the trouble. Betsy had almost forgotten how bashful Tacy could be. Tacy wasn't bashful with Betsy any more, but she was very bashful starting to school. “She'll get over it,” said Katie, and they set off down Hill Street. The maples were beginning to turn yellow but the air was soft and warm. It smelled of the smoke from Grandpa Williams' bonfire.

“We're going to school, Grandpa Williams,” Betsy called to him.

“That's fine,” said Grandpa Williams.

Tacy said nothing.

They went down Hill Street to the vacant lot. It was knee deep with goldenrod and asters. It would have been fun to stop and play there, if they hadn't been going to school. But they cut through by a little path and came out on Pleasant Street.

There on the corner on a big green lawn stood a chocolate-colored house. It had porches all around it, a tower on the side, and a pane of colored glass over the front door. It was a beautiful house but they had no time to look at it. They were busy going to school.

They crossed the street and turned the corner and came to a little store.

“That's Mrs. Chubbock's store,” Julia explained. “That's where you go to buy gum drops and chocolate men if anyone's given you a penny.”

“I wish that someone had given me a penny. Don't you, Tacy?” Betsy asked.

Tacy didn't answer.

Just beyond Mrs. Chubbock's store, they came to the school yard. They came first to the boys' yard, a big sandy yard with one tree. On the other side of the schoolhouse was the girls' yard which looked much the same. But the girls' yard had more trees. The schoolhouse was built of red brick trimmed with yellow stone. A steep flight of steps led up to the door.

At the top of the steps stood a boy, holding a big bell. When he rang that bell, Julia explained, it was time for school to begin.

“Oh, oh!” said Betsy. “I wish that I could be the one to ring the bell. Don't you, Tacy?”

Tacy didn't say a word.

The girls playing in the school yard came crowding around Julia and Katie to see their little sisters. Tacy shook her long red curls over her face. Between the curls her face was as red as a beet. She wouldn't look up.

She didn't look up until the boy at the head of the steps began to ring the bell. Ding, dong, ding, dong, went the bell. Tacy jumped like a scared rabbit and pulled at Katie's hand. She pulled away from the schoolhouse because she didn't want to go in. But
Katie was stronger than Tacy; besides, she was the kind of person who never gave up. So she pulled harder than Tacy and got her to the Baby Room door.

Julia had already taken Betsy to the door, and had said to Miss Dalton, the teacher: “This is my little sister Betsy.”

Now Katie said, “This is my little sister Tacy.” And she added, “She's very bashful.”

“Never mind,” said Miss Dalton, smiling brightly. “I'll take care of that. I'll put her right by me.” And she placed a little chair beside her desk and put Tacy into that.

Tacy didn't like it. Betsy could tell from the way she scrunched down and hid herself beneath her curls. She liked it less than ever when Betsy was put
far away at a regular desk in one of the rows of desks which filled the room. But Miss Dalton was too busy to notice; Julia and Katie went out; the door closed, and school began.

If it hadn't been for Tacy's looking so forlorn, Betsy would have liked school. The windows were hung with chains made from shiny paper. On the blackboard was a calendar for the month of September drawn with colored chalk. And Miss Dalton was pretty; she looked like a canary. But it was hard for Betsy to be happy with Tacy such a picture of woe.

Instead of looking better, Tacy looked worse and worse. She gazed at Betsy with pleading eyes, and her face was screwed up as though she were going to cry.

“She's going to cry,” someone whispered in Betsy's ear. It was the little boy named Tom.

“Oh!” cried Betsy. “You've got your teeth.” She knew because now he said “s” as well as she did. Besides, she could see them, two brand-new teeth, right in the front of his mouth.

“Yes, I got them young,” said Tom.

He sat at the desk behind Betsy's.

Betsy was glad when recess time came. They formed in two lines and marched out of the room and through the front door and down the stairs. The girls skipped off to the playground at the left,
the boys to the one at the right. Now, thought Betsy, she would find Tacy and tell her not to be bashful. But when she looked about for Tacy, Tacy was nowhere to be seen.

Betsy ran to the sidewalk and looked down the street. Flying red ringlets and twinkling thin black legs were almost out of sight.

“Stop, Tacy! Stop!” cried Betsy. She ran in pursuit. But it was no use. Tacy could always run faster than Betsy. She ran faster now. At last, however, she slowed down so that Betsy could catch up.

They had reached Mrs. Chubbock's store.

“Tacy!” cried Betsy. “We're not supposed to leave the yard.”

“I'm going home,” said Tacy. She was crying.

“But you can't. It's not allowed.”

Tacy only cried.

She cried harder than Betsy had ever seen her cry. She wrinkled up her little freckled face. Tears ran over her cheeks and dropped into her mouth and spotted the navy blue dress.

Ding, dong, ding, dong, went the schoolhouse bell. It meant that recess time was over.

“Come on, Tacy. We've
got
to go back.”

Tacy cried harder than ever.

The lines of marching children vanished into the schoolhouse. A strange calm settled upon the empty
yard. From an open window came the sound of children singing.

“We're supposed to be in there,” Betsy said. She felt a queer frightened lump inside.

“You go back if you want to,” said Tacy between sobs.

“I won't go back without you,” said Betsy. She sat down miserably on Mrs. Chubbock's steps.

The door of the little store opened and Mrs. Chubbock came out. She was large and stout, with a small soft mustache. She leaned on a cane when she walked.

“What's this? What's this?” she asked. “Why aren't you in school?”

“We…we…” said Betsy. Her lip trembled.

“Aren't you supposed to be in school?”

“Yes, we are. But she…she's bashful.”

“Runaways, eh?” said Mrs. Chubbock.

At the sound of the dread word, Betsy's eyes filled with tears. That was what they were exactly. Runaways. That was a terrible thing to be. How could she go home from school and tell her mamma? Would they ever be allowed to go to school again? Betsy too began to cry.

Once started, Betsy cried as hard as Tacy. Harder, perhaps. And when Tacy heard Betsy cry, she took a fresh start. They held each other tight and wailed.

“Now, now,” said Mrs. Chubbock. She limped back
into her store. When she came out, she opened her two hands and each of them held a little chocolate man.

“Do you eat the head first or the legs first?” Mrs. Chubbock asked.

Betsy ate the head first and Tacy ate the legs first. They couldn't very well eat and cry together. So they were eating and not crying when they saw Miss Dalton hurrying across the schoolhouse yard. The sun was shining on her canary-colored hair. She looked pretty but very worried.

“Oh, there you are!” she cried gladly when she saw them. “You weren't supposed to go home, my dears. That was only recess.”

The tears began to trickle again.

“I know,” said Betsy. “But Tacy doesn't like school. She's bashful.”

“And she won't go if I won't,” said Tacy.

“No, I won't go if she won't,” said Betsy. They lifted anxious faces, smeared with chocolate and tears.

Miss Dalton stooped down and put an arm around each of them. She smiled up at Mrs. Chubbock.

“Tacy,” she said. “How would you like to sit with Betsy? Right in the same seat?”

So they went back to school. Tacy sat with Betsy, right in the same seat. They were crowded, but no more so than they were in the piano box. The little boy named Tom sat right behind them.

And after that Tacy liked school.

Betsy had liked it all the time.