Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm: or, The Mystery of a Nobody

"Oh, Bob!" Betty cried miserably, "I didn't mean you were like Mr. Peabody – you know I didn't. I'm so sorry! I always say things I don't mean when I'm mad. Uncle Dick told me to go out and chop wood when I get furious, and not talk. I am so sorry!"

"We've got a wood pile," grinned Bob. "I'll show you where it is. The rest of it's all right, Betty. I'd probably have stayed awake all night if I'd driven by those women. Only I suppose Peabody will be in a towering rage. It must be noon."

If Betty was not afraid of Mr. Peabody, it must be confessed that she looked forward with no more pleasure than Bob to meeting him. Still she was not prepared for the cold fury with which he greeted them when they drove into the yard.

"Just as I figured," he said heavily. "Here 'tis noon, and that boy hasn't done a stroke of work since breakfast. Gallivanting all over town, I'll be bound. Going to be like his shiftless, worthless father and mother – a charge on the township all his days. You take that pail of whitewash and don't let me see you again till you get the pig house done, you miserable, sneaking poorhouse rat! You'll go without dinner to pay for wasting my time like this! Clear out, now."

"How dare you!" Betty's voice was shaking, but she stood up in the wagon and looked down at Mr. Peabody bravely. "How dare you taunt a boy with what he isn't responsible for? It isn't his fault that he was born in the poorhouse, nor his fault that we're late. I made him stop and help put a buggy wheel on. Oh, how can you be so mean, and close and hateful?"

Betty's eyes overflowed as she gathered up her bundles and jumped to the ground. Mrs. Peabody, standing in the doorway, was a silent witness to her outburst, and the two hired men, who had come up to the house for dinner, were watching curiously. Bob had disappeared with the bucket of whitewash. No one would say anything, thought Betty despairingly, if a murder were committed in this awful place.

"Been spending your money?" sneered Mr. Peabody, eyeing the bundles with disfavor. "Never earned a cent in your life, I'll be bound, yet you'll fling what isn't yours right and left. Let me give you a word of advice, young lady; as long as you're in my house you hold your tongue if you don't want to find yourself in your room on a diet of bread and water. Understand?"

Betty Gordon fled upstairs, her one thought to reach the haven of her bed. Anger and humiliation and a sense of having lowered herself to the Peabody level by quarreling when in a bad temper swept over her in a wave. She buried her head in the hard little pillow.

CHAPTER XI

A KEEN DISAPPOINTMENT

"I'm just as bad as he is, every bit," sobbed poor little Betty. "Uncle Dick would say so. I'm in his house, much as I hate it, and I hadn't any right to call him names – only he is so hateful! Oh, dear, I wonder if I shall ever get away from here!"

She cried herself into a headache, and had no heart to open the parcel of groceries or to go down to ask Mrs. Peabody for something to eat, though indeed the girl knew she stood small chance of securing as much as a cracker after the dinner hour.

Suddenly some one put a soothing hand on her hot forehead, and, opening her swollen eyes, Betty saw Mrs. Peabody standing beside the bed.

"You poor lamb!" said the woman compassionately. "You mustn't go on like this, dear. You'll make yourself sick. I'm going to close the blinds and shut out the sun; then I'll get a cold cloth for your head. You'd feel better if you had something to eat, though. You mustn't go without your meals, child."

"I've got some crackers and bouillon cubes," replied Betty wearily. "I suppose Mr. Peabody wouldn't mind if I used a little hot water from the tea kettle?"

She bit her tongue with vexation at the sarcasm, but Mrs. Peabody apparently saw no implication.

"The kitchen fire's gone out, but the kettle's still hot," she answered. "I'll step down and get you a cup. I have just ninety cobs to get supper on, or I'd build up a fresh fire for you. Joe counts the cobs; he wants they should last till the first of July."

"Oh, how do you stand it?" burst from Betty. "I should think you'd go crazy. Don't you ever want to scream?"

Mrs. Peabody stopped in the doorway.

"I used to care," she admitted apathetically. "Not any more. You can get used to anything. Besides, it's no use, Betty; you'll find that out. Flinging yourself against a stone wall only bruises you – the wall doesn't even feel you trying."

"Bring up two cups," called Betty, as Mrs. Peabody started down stairs.

"I'll bet she flung herself against the stone wall till all the spirit and life was crushed out of her," mused the girl, lying flat on her back, her eyes fixed on the fly-specked ceiling. "Poor soul, it must be awful to have to give up even trying."

Mrs. Peabody came back with two cracked china cups and saucers, and a tea kettle half full of passably hot water. Betty forgot her throbbing head as she bustled about, spreading white paper napkins on the bed – there was no table and only one chair in the room – and arranging her crackers and a package of saltines which she deftly spread with potted ham.

"We'll have a make-believe party," she declared tactfully, dropping a couple of soup cubes in each cup and adding the hot water. "I'm sure you're hungry; you jump up so much at the table, you don't half eat your meals."

Mrs. Peabody raised her eyes – faded eyes but still honest.

"I've no more pride left," she said quietly.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Betty, "I bought you something this morning, and haven't given it to you."

Mrs. Peabody was as pleased as a child with the pretty bottle of toilet water, and Betty extracted a promise from her that she would use it for her headaches, and not "save" it.

"If I was going to stay," thought Betty, stowing her packages of goodies under the bed as the most convenient place presenting itself, "I might be able to make things a little pleasanter for Mrs. Peabody. I do wonder when Uncle Dick will write."

She had allowed four days as the shortest time in which her uncle could possibly get an answer to her, so she was agreeably delighted when, on going out to the mailbox at the head of the lane the third morning, she found a letter addressed to her and postmarked "Philadelphia." There was no other mail in the box. The Peabodys did not even subscribe for a weekly paper.

"Bob!" shouted Betty, hurdling a fence and bearing down upon that youth as he hoed corn in a near by field. "Bob, here's a letter from Uncle Dick! He's answered so soon, I'm sure he says I can come to him. Won't that be great?"

Bob nodded grimly and went on with his work while Betty eagerly tore open her envelope. After she had read the first few lines the brightness went out of her face, and when she looked up at Bob she was crying.

"What's the matter, is he sick?" asked the boy in alarm.

"He hasn't had my letter at all!" wept Betty. "He never got it! This was written the same day I wrote him, and he says he's going out to the oil wells and won't be in touch with civilization for some weeks to come. His lawyer in Philadelphia is to hold his mail, and send the checks for my board. And he thinks I'm having a good time with his old friend Agatha and encloses a check for ten dollars for me to spend. Oh, Bob!" and the unhappy Betty flung her arms around the neck of the astonished Bob and cried as though her heart would break.

"There, there!" Bob patted her awkwardly, in his excitement hitting her with the hoe handle, but neither of them knew that. "There, Betty, maybe things won't be as bad as you think. You can go to Glenside and get books from the library – they've got a right nice little library. It would be nice if you had a bicycle or something to go on, but you haven't."

"Uncle's sending me a riding habit," said Betty, wiping her eyes. "And a whole bundle of books and a parcel of magazines. He says he never yet saw a farm with enough reading material on the parlor table. I will be glad to have something to read."

"Sure. And Sundays I can borrow a magazine," and Bob's eyes shone with anticipated enjoyment. "Sunday's the one day I have any time to myself and there's never much to do."

Betty slipped the letter into her blouse pocket. She was bitterly disappointed to think that she must stay at Bramble Farm, and she did not relish the idea of having to confess to the Peabodys that her plans for leaving them had been rather premature.

"I say," Bob looked up from his hoeing, the shrewd light in his eyes that made him appear older than his thirteen years. "I say, Betty, if you're wise, you won't say anything about this letter up at the house. Old Peabody doesn't know you've written to your uncle, and he'll think you changed your mind. I half believe he thinks you were only speaking in a fit of temper, anyway. If you tell him you can't reach your uncle by letter, and have to stay here for the next few weeks whether you will or no, he'll think he has you right where he wants you. He can't help taking advantage of every one."

"Doesn't any one ever come to call?" Betty asked a day or two later, following Bob out to the pasture to help him salt the sheep.

It was a Sunday morning, and even Mr. Peabody so far respected the Sabbath that he exacted only half as much as usual from his help. The milking, of course, had to be done, and the stock fed, but that accomplished, after breakfast, Wapley and Lieson, the hired men, had set off to walk to Glenside to spend their week's wages as they saw fit. They had long ago, after wordy battles, learned the futility of trying to borrow a horse from Mr. Peabody.

Bob had finished his usual chores, and after salting the sheep would be practically free for the day. He and Betty had planned to take their books out into the orchard and enjoy the peaceful sunniness of the lovely June weather.

"Come to call?" repeated Bob, letting down the bars of the rocky pasture. "What would they come to call for? No one would be civil to 'em, and Mrs. Peabody runs when she sees any one coming. She hasn't got a decent dress; so I don't blame her much. Here, you sit down and I'll call them."

Betty sat down on a flat rock and Bob spread out his salt on another. The sheep knew his voice and came slowly toward him.

"Come on now, Betty, and let's have a whack at that magazine, the one about out West," said Bob at last.

The promised package of books and magazines had arrived, and Betty had generously placed them at the disposal of the household. Wapley and Lieson had displayed a pathetic eagerness for "pictures," and sat up after supper as long as the light lasted, turning over the illustrated pages. Betty doubted if they could read.

CHAPTER XII

BETTY DEFENDS HERSELF

Apparently Mr. Peabody had never taken Betty's threat to ask her uncle to take her away seriously, and her presence at the farm soon came to be an accepted fact. Conditions did not improve, but Betty developed a sturdy, wholesome philosophy that helped her to make the best of everything. Uncle Dick wrote seldom, but packages from Philadelphia continued to come at intervals, and always proved to be practical and needful.

"Though as to that, he couldn't have the lawyer send me anything that wouldn't be useful," said Betty to herself. "I never saw a place where there was so much nothing as here at Bramble Farm."