Heaven to Betsy / Betsy in Spite of Herself

by Maud Hart Lovelace

  “I wish I were prettier,” she thought, depression, like a sudden fog, invading the room. She put away her manicure set, took off her kimono, turned out the gas, said her prayers and slipped into bed.

  “I wish I had golden hair,” she continued in the darkness. “Wavy golden hair, a yard long. And big blue eyes, and pink cheeks, and teeth close together like Julia’s. Or maybe it would be nicer to have heavy black ringlets, and big black eyes with curly lashes, and a white satiny skin.”

  Before she could decide which she preferred, she fell asleep.

  The next day was the first day of real school, and the prospect was almost as exciting as it had been the day before. There weren’t muffins for breakfast, but there were pancakes with sausage and maple syrup. While the Rays were at the table, the doorbell rang.

  “Tacy, probably,” Betsy said, as Margaret went to answer it, and Julia slipped into her chair, late, as usual.

  Margaret came back, looking surprised.

  “It’s a boy,” she said. “He asked for Betsy.”

  “For me?” Betsy was sure Margaret had misunderstood.

  “Ask him to come in,” said Mrs. Ray, and Margaret went back. She returned with the dark monkeyish face of Cab Edwards grinning behind her.

  “Good morning, Cab,” said Mr. Ray who had sold him his shoes for many years.

  “Good morning,” said Mrs. Ray.

  “Hello,” said Julia.

  “Hello,” said Betsy blushing. Anna who had come to the doorway rolled her eyes at Betsy.

  “Won’t you sit down?” asked Mrs. Ray. “Maybe you’d like a pancake?”

  “Gosh, I should say I would!” said Cab. He drew up a chair beside Betsy’s, and Betsy jumping up to get him a plate and knife and fork and spoon managed a hasty glance at her curls in the sideboard mirror. They were still Magically Waved, thank goodness!

  “Have you heard how your daughter treated me yesterday, Mr. Ray?” asked Cab.

  “Isn’t she behaving?”

  “Well, did you bring her up to steal? Cold bloodedly steal?”

  “She’s stolen my pencils for years,” said Mr. Ray.

  “And my perfume,” said Julia.

  “And my handkerchiefs,” said Mrs. Ray.

  “We did not steal those seats. You go jump in the lake,” said Betsy. She was enormously pleased. Cab had dropped in to walk to school with her. There was no doubt of it.

  To be sure, he wasn’t gazing at her soulfully as Julia’s beaux gazed. He was devouring pancakes and syrup, and Anna was plying him with more. But he must like her, or he wouldn’t have come.

  The doorbell rang again, and this time it was Tacy. She looked surprised and confused when she saw Cab. Then the significance of his presence dawned and she flashed Betsy a congratulatory glance. On invitation, she too sat down for a pancake.

  “Tacy,” said Cab, “was as bad as Betsy.”

  “Worse, probably,” Mr. Ray returned. “These redheads! I know all about them. I’ve been married to one for twenty years. She’s terrific to live with; isn’t she, Anna?”

  Anna was not yet accustomed to Mr. Ray’s teasing. Moreover she thought that Mrs. Ray’s beautiful red hair was a curse which it was indelicate to mention.

  “Lovey,” she said to Mrs. Ray, “I don’t think your hair is really red. Just last night, Charley said to me, ‘I think Mrs. Ray’s hair is more brown than red.’”

  “No, Anna,” said Mr. Ray. “You can’t get around it. She’s a carrot top. But I’ve stood it for twenty years, and I can stand it for twenty more if you’ll only bring me another plate of pancakes.”

  “Betsy, can I walk to school with you every day forever? I like your groceries,” said Cab.

  “Don’t they feed you at home?” asked Betsy. “If you’re coming with Tacy and me, you’ll have to hurry.”

  She tried to conceal her gratification at having a masculine escort as she and Tacy joined the river of schoolbound boys and girls.

  “Who is that girl with Caroline Sibley?” she asked as Caroline passed, arm in arm with the yellow-haired girl she had noticed before.

  “Don’t you know?” Cab replied. “Bonnie Andrews. Her father’s the new minister at the Presbyterian Church. She’s the reason all the boys have started going to Christian Endeavor.”

  “Where did she come from?”

  “Gosh, don’t you know anything? From Paris.”

  “Paris! Not Paris, France?”

  “What other Paris is there? There isn’t any Paris, Minnesota, that I’ve ever heard of.”

  Betsy was thrilled.

  “But what’s the connection between being a Presbyterian minister and living in Paris?”

  “Let’s go down to the Sibleys’ some day and ask,” Cab replied. “We’d find her there,” he added. “Everyone gangs up on the Sibleys’ lawn.”

  It was just what her mother had said. Betsy felt ashamed of the remote bad-tempered Betsy of the days before high school began. “Let’s,” she replied.

  There were real lessons today. Betsy and Tacy had enrolled for Latin, algebra, ancient history and composition. In most classes they sat together, and they needed companionship for high school subjects seemed very strange.

  Latin! A language, so Mr. Morse said, that nobody living spoke familiarly now. It was mystifying that one should have to study it. And algebra baffled Betsy from the first, but she liked the algebra teacher. Miss O’Rourke had curly hair and smiling eyes and looked trimly lovely in a white shirt waist and collar.

  Miss Clarke, the ancient-history teacher, was nice, too. She wore glasses, but she was pretty, with dark wings of hair and soft white skin. She was gentle; she trusted everyone. Ancient history, therefore, was supposed to be a snap. Mr. Gaston who taught composition had a reputation for stiffness, but that didn’t worry Betsy.

  “You’re sure to be the best in the class,” Tacy remarked, voicing Betsy’s own thought.

  Joe Willard was in the composition class. Remembering The Three Musketeers, Betsy had an idea that he too might be good; and she soon found out that he was. Several times during the first week she tried to catch his eye, but she never succeeded. He must, she thought regretfully, have thought she was snubbing him on the first day of school. He sat in the back row and always slipped out promptly, so she never found a chance to make things right.

  Returning to school after dinner one day, Betsy and Tacy went into the Social Room. Freshmen were unwelcome there usually, but not today; today they were fawned on by seniors, juniors and sophomores; for this afternoon they would choose their societies, and rivalry between Philomathians and Zetamathians was keen. Betsy and Tacy were sure to be Zetamathians, because Julia and Katie were, so no upperclassmen wasted time on them. But they basked in the short-lived popularity of freshmen and inspected the Social Room.

  It was only a classroom, furnished with desks and black boards, but it was particularly pleasant, located in one of the turrets as the library alcove was; and it was given over to social intercourse during all school intermissions.

  Julia and Katie, busily wooing Cab, waved at them. Fred hailed them, and so did Leo who went with Katie, and another friend of their sisters’, dark-eyed Dorothy Drew. Caroline Sibley was there with Bonnie Andrews and the Humphreys boys.

  “This Social Room makes school as good as a party,” Tacy observed. “Only no refreshments.”

  After the afternoon classes there was a big assembly. Miss Bangeter explained about the two societies, about the cups…for athletics, debating and essay writing…for which they annually competed. The presidents of the societies spoke, and there was rooting:

  “Zet! Zet! Zetamathian!”

  “Philo! Philo! Philomathian!”

  Then lists were passed and Betsy and Tacy became Zetamathians. They were given turquoise blue bows.

  “Zet! Zet! Zetamathian!” they chanted in the cloakroom.

  “Philo! Philo! Philomathian!” Winona, wearing an orange bow, threw her red hat in the air. “The cute new bo
y’s a Philo. Did you know?”

  She meant Joe Willard. Betsy saw him on the steps and he was wearing an orange bow.

  Cab, wearing a turquoise blue bow, joined Betsy and Tacy on High Street. They all dropped into the Ray house for cookies and some singing. Then Cab proposed, “How about going down to the Sibleys’? Find out who went what?”

  “I can’t,” said Tacy. “I have to go home.”

  “I’ll go. Love to,” said Betsy. She avoided her mother’s eyes as she fluffed up her curls in the mirror.

  Tacy walked with Cab and Betsy down the Plum Street hill to Broad Street, and left them at the Sibleys’ lawn.

  “You’ll like Carney; she’s lots of fun,” said Cab as he and Betsy strolled toward a group of boys and girls.

  “Is Carney, Caroline?”

  “Sure.”

  “I hope Bonnie Andrews is here,” Betsy remarked.

  It was exciting to be going to the Sibleys; and gratifying to have a boy by her side. But most thrilling of all was the thought of meeting someone who came from Paris, France.

  8

  The Sibley’s Side Lawn

  IT WAS TO DEVELOP LATER that the younger high school crowd had the most indoor fun at the Ray house and the most outdoor fun at the Sibleys…on the wide, trampled side lawn, and the porch running across the front and around the side of the house. The porch was unscreened and shaded by vines, now turning red. It was broad enough to hold a hammock and some chairs and a table, but nothing too good, nothing rain would hurt.

  The porch was deserted today. A bonfire smouldered in the driveway; rakes lay beside it, and a crowd composed of Caroline Sibley’s brothers, Herbert Humphreys and his older brother Lawrence, Caroline and Bonnie, were seated on the leaf-strewn lawn. Cab and Betsy dropped down beside them and no one seemed to think it strange that Betsy had come. Caroline said, “Hello,” showing a surprising solitary dimple, and introduced Bonnie.

  Caroline Sibley was the only girl Betsy had ever seen who had only one dimple. She was also the only girl Betsy had ever seen who looked prettier in glasses than she could possibly have looked without them. They were eye glasses and suited her demure, piquant face. She had slightly irregular teeth which folded over in front, twinkling eyes, and a skin like apple blossoms. Her straight brown hair was parted and combed smoothly back to an always crisp hair ribbon. Her shirt waist was unbelievably white, the slender waist-band neat. Caroline’s people came from New England, and she had a prim New Englandish air that contrasted with the dimple in a fascinating way.

  Bonnie’s blonde hair was as smooth as Caroline’s and her shirt waist as snowy and fresh. Betsy’s hair was forever coming loose, and her waists had a way of pulling out from her skirts just as soon as she forgot them and began to have a good time. She immediately admired Caroline’s and Bonnie’s trimness.

  “Of course they’re sophomores,” she told herself consolingly. “Probably by the time I’m a sophomore I can keep my waist tucked in, too.”

  Bonnie had calm blue eyes. She was short, but her figure was more mature than Caroline’s and her skirts were sedately long. She had small, plump, very soft hands, and a soft, chuckling laugh that flowed continuously through the conversation. In spite of the laugh, however, she seemed womanly and serious, as befitted a minister’s daughter.

  Lawrence Humphreys was as dark as Herbert was light, as big or bigger, and equally handsome. But he was quiet. He lacked Herbert’s wild high spirits. Not that these were apparent, today. Herbert seemed glum, subdued, and most of the time gazed moodily at Bonnie.

  “He has a crush on Bonnie,” Betsy thought, proud of her acumen.

  Lawrence, whom they all called Larry, played football on the first team. After Saturday, he said, he’d be in training and he had told the girls to spoil him while they could.

  Caroline was making a wreath of red ivy leaves from the porch. She was going to crown him, she explained, as the Romans crowned guests at their banquets. She and Bonnie and Larry were all studying Caesar or Cicero and were full of Latin quotations.

  “O di immortales!” was Caroline’s favorite exclamation. It made Betsy’s Latin come considerably alive.

  While waiting for his crown, Lawrence was being fed peanuts by Bonnie to the accompaniment of her soft giggle.

  “Heck! I’m going out for football, too. What about me?” Herbert protested.

  “And what about me?” asked Cab, flexing his muscles. “Boy, what football material!”

  Caroline’s brothers, all still in grade school, laughed appreciatively.

  The Humphreys were Philos, Betsy discovered, and Caroline and Bonnie were Zets.

  “What do Philomathian and Zetamathian mean, I wonder?” asked Betsy.

  Bonnie knew. Philomathian meant Lover of Learning and Zetamathian, Investigator.

  “My father told me,” she explained, tossing off her knowledge.

  Betsy liked her. She liked Carney, too. Already she was calling Caroline Carney, Lawrence Larry, and exclaiming O di immortales! with the rest of the crowd. At last Carney’s brothers went back to their raking which reminded Larry and Herbert that they too had a lawn.

  “And, gosh, I’ve got a paper route!” Cab said. “But if you’ll go home now, Betsy, I’ll escort you. Always the perfect gentleman, by gum!”

  “I can find my way,” said Betsy. “Me and my trained bloodhound!”

  “Betsy isn’t going to hurry,” said Carney. She smiled up at Larry. “I think you’re mean to go. You haven’t worn your wreath.”

  “You wear it. You’ll look nice in it.”

  “All right. And I’ll make one for Bonnie and one for Betsy!”

  “Hey! You’ll be a Triumvirate!” What, Betsy wondered, was a Triumvirate?

  “Girls! We’re a Triumvirate!” cried Carney, flashing her dimple. “I want to be Caesar. He’s so cute in the pictures. You can be Crassus, Bonnie, and Betsy, you can be Pompey.”

  “A Triumvirate of Lady Bugs!” jeered Larry.

  “There are three of you boys, too,” cried Bonnie, soft giggles bubbling. “You’re a Triumvirate your own selves. What’s the name of yours? Make one up, somebody.”

  “They’re a Triumvirate of Potato Bugs,” said Betsy.

  This was a triumph. The boys, departing, yelped, and Carney and Bonnie doubled up with appreciative mirth. Their laughter continued while they robbed the porch of ivy leaves and Carney made wreaths. Carney and Bonnie laughed at everything Betsy said.

  “Betsy, you’re so funny!” Bonnie kept gasping. And Betsy, delighted, laughed so hard at her own wit that she could hardly keep on being witty.

  When the wreaths were finished she put hers on askew, over the left eye. Carney put hers on over the right eye. Bonnie hung hers on one ear. They leered drunkenly, imitating Romans. Exhausted, at last, they rolled in the grass.

  Carney sat up suddenly and said, “I hereby invite the Triumvirate to go riding tomorrow after school.”

  “Will we wear crowns?” asked Betsy.

  “We ought to wrap up in bedsheets like those old Romans.”

  “O di immortales!” cried Carney, rocking back and forth. “We’d scare Dandy.”

  “Who’s Dandy?”

  “He’s our horse. All our horses are named Dandy.”

  “All our horses are named Old Mag,” said Betsy “whether they’re girls or boys.”

  This struck Carney and Bonnie as so supremely comical that they were obliged to fall shrieking into the grass again. But the Big Mill whistle, blowing for six o’clock, brought them all to their feet.

  “Gee, I didn’t know it was that late,” Betsy said.

  “I ought to be in helping my mother,” cried Carney.

  “Walk home with me, Bonnie,” Betsy urged. “I hate to think of that long walk all alone.”

  “But I’d have to walk back all alone.”

  “No you wouldn’t. I’d walk halfway back with you. That would make everything fair.”

  So Bonnie walked home with Betsy, and ha
ving gained the new green house on High Street, they turned around and Betsy walked halfway back with Bonnie. From the time they said good-by to Carney until they said good-by to each other, they didn’t laugh at all. In a sudden shift of mood, Betsy asked Bonnie about Paris, and Bonnie told her a little about it, but she failed to create any picture of Paris in Betsy’s mind.

  “There are lots of hacks,” she said. “They drive like mad. And there was a merry-go-round—carousels, they call them—in the park where I played after school.”

  “Do you speak French?”

  “Of course. Father was in the pastorate there for four years.”

  “Say some for me,” said Betsy.

  Bonnie looked embarrassed but obediently murmured something.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I like Deep Valley better than Paris.”

  Betsy remembered that many years ago Tib had said she liked Deep Valley better than Milwaukee. Deep Valley, Betsy thought, looking up at the hills and down at the town, must be a pretty nice place.

  She told Bonnie about Tib…how pretty she was, small and dainty with yellow curls. She told her that Tib was going to be a dancer.

  “She and Tacy are my two best friends,” Betsy explained.

  “Carney’s my best friend,” said Bonnie. “It’s wonderful having a chum. We’re having our Sunday dresses made just alike.”

  “Exactly alike?”

  “Exactly. Miss Mix is making them.”

  “How marvelous!” cried Betsy. She wished that she and Tacy had thought of doing that.

  “Carney’s going with Lawrence. Did you know it?”

  “I guessed it,” said Betsy.

  “Do you go with anyone?” asked Bonnie.

  With a feeling of unutterable thankfulness Betsy answered carelessly, “Only Cab. He’s just a neighbor, of course.”

  “I’ll tell you something, Betsy,” said Bonnie. “Promise not to tell a soul. Herbert has a crush on me.”

  “I noticed it,” said Betsy. “I think it’s thrilling. Herbert was just the idol of all the girls in grade school. We trembled when we saw him, practically.”

  “But he’s such a child,” cried Bonnie. “He’s such an infant. Why, he’s only a freshman, and I’m a sophomore. I wish I could hand him over to you.”