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

Betty shook back her hair from a damp forehead.

"For mercy's sake," she demanded with heat, "is there one pleasant, kind thing connected with this place? Who was that awful man I met in the kitchen?"

"Guess it was Lieson, one of the hired men," replied Bob. "He came down to the house to get a drink a few minutes ago. He's all right, Betty, though not much to look at."

"You, Bob!" came a stentorian shout that shot Bob through the gate and in the general direction of the voice with a speed that was little less than astonishing.

Betty stood up, shook the earth from her skirt, and, guided by the shrill cackle of a proud hen, picked her way through a rather cluttered barn-yard till she came to a wire-enclosed space that was the chicken yard. Mrs. Peabody, staggering under the weight of two heavy pails of water, met her at the gate.

"How nice you look!" she said wistfully. "Don't come in here, dear; you might get something on your dress."

"Oh, it washes," returned Betty carelessly. "Do you carry water for the chickens?"

"Twice a day in summer," was the answer. "Before Joe, Mr. Peabody, had water put in the barns, it was an awful job; but he couldn't get a man to help him with the cows unless he had running water at the barn, so this system was new last year. It's a big help."

Silently, and feeling in the way because she could not help, Betty watched the woman fill troughs and drinking vessels for the parched hens that had evidently spent an uncomfortable and dry afternoon in the shadeless yard. Scattering a meager ration of corn, Mrs. Peabody went into the hen house and reappeared presently with a basket filled with eggs.

"They'd lay better if I could get 'em some meat scraps," she confided to Betty as they walked toward the house. "But I dunno – it's so hard to get things done, I've about given up arguing."

She would not let Betty help her with the supper, and was so insistent that she should not touch a dish that Betty yielded, though reluctantly. The heat of the kitchen was intense, for Mrs. Peabody had built a fire of corn cobs in the range. Gas, of course, there was none, and she evidently had not an oil stove or a fireless cooker.

Precisely at six o'clock the men came in.

"They milk after supper, summers," Mrs. Peabody had explained. "The milk stays sweet longer."

Betty watched in round-eyed amazement as Mr. Peabody and the two hired men washed at the sink, with much sputtering and blowing, and combed their hair before a small cracked mirror tacked over the sink. If she had not been very hungry, she was sure the sight would have taken her appetite away. Bob did not come in till they were seated. He had washed outside, he explained, and Betty cherished the idea that perhaps he had acted out of consideration for her.

"What's that?" demanded Mr. Peabody, pointing his fork at a tiny pat of butter before Betty's plate.

There was no other butter on the table, and only a very plain meal of bread, fried potatoes, raspberries and hot tea.

"I – I had a little butter left over from the last churning," faltered Mrs. Peabody. "'Twasn't enough to make even a quarter-pound print, Joe."

"Don't believe it," contradicted her husband. "I told you flat, Agatha, that there was to be no pampering. Betty can eat what we eat, or go without. Take that butter off, do you hear me?"

A sallow flush rose to Mrs. Peabody's thin cheeks, and her lips moved rebelliously. Evidently her husband was practiced at reading her soundless words.

"Board?" he cried belligerently. "What do I care whether she's paying board or not? Don't I have to be the judge of how the house should be run? Food was never higher than 'tis now, and you've got to watch every scrap. You take that butter off and don't let me catch you doing nothin' like that again."

The men were eating stolidly, evidently too used to quarrels to pay any attention to anything but their food. Betty had listened silently, but the bread she ate seemed to choke her. Suddenly she rose to her feet, shaking with rage.

"Take your old butter!" she stormed at the astonished Mr. Peabody. "I wouldn't eat it, if you begged me to. And I won't stay in your house one second longer than it takes to have Uncle Dick send for me – you – you old miserable miser!"

CHAPTER VIII

BETTY MAKES UP HER MIND

Betty had a confused picture of Mr. Peabody staring at her, his fork arrested half way to his mouth, before she dashed from the kitchen and fled to her room. She flung herself on the bed and burst into tears.

She lay there for a long time, sobbing uncontrollably and more unhappy than she had ever been in her short life. She missed her mother and father intolerably, she longed for the kindness of the good, if querulous, Mrs. Arnold and the comfort of Uncle Dick's tenderness and protection.

"He wouldn't want me to stay here, I know he wouldn't!" she whispered stormily. "He never would have let me come if he had known what kind of a place Bramble Farm is. I'll write to him to-night."

A low whistle came to her. She ran to the window.

"Sh! Got a piece of string?" came a sibilant whisper. Bob Henderson peered up at her from around a lilac bush. "I brought you some bread with raspberries mashed between it. Let down a cord and I'll tie it on."

"I'll come down," said Betty promptly. "Can't we take a walk? It looks awfully pretty up the lane."

"I have to clean two more horses and bed down a sick cow and carry slops to the pigs yet," recited Bob in a matter of fact way, as though these few little duties were commonly performed at the close of his long day. "After that, though, we might go a little way. It won't be dark."

"Well, whistle when you're ready," directed Betty. "I won't come down and run the risk of having to talk to Mr. Peabody. And save me the bread!"

It seemed a long time before Bob whistled, and the gray summer dusk was deepening when Betty ran down to join him. He handed her the bread, wrapped in a bit of clean paper, diffidently.

"I didn't touch it with my hands," he assured her.

Bob's face was shining from a vigorous scrubbing and his hair was plastered tight to his head and still wet. He had so evidently tried to make himself neat and his poor frayed overalls and ridiculous shoes made the task so hopeless that Betty was divided between pity for him and anger at the Peabodys who could treat a member of their household so shabbily.

"I guess you kind of shook the old man up," commented Bob, unconscious of her thoughts. "For half a minute after you slammed the door, he sat there in a daze. Mrs. Peabody wanted to take some supper up to you, but he wouldn't let her. She's deathly afraid of him."

"Did he ever hit her?" asked Betty, horrified.

"No, I don't know that he ever did. He doesn't have to hit her; his talk is worse. They say she used to answer back, but I never heard her open her mouth to argue with him, and I've been here three years."

"Do they pay you well?"

The boy looked at Betty sharply.

"I thought you were kidding," he said frankly. "Poorhouse children don't get paid. We get our board till we're eighteen. We're not supposed to do enough work to cover more'n that. Just the same, I do as much as Wapley or Leison, any day."

Betty walked along eating her bread and wondering about Bob Henderson. Who, she speculated, had been his father and mother, and how had he happened to find himself in the poorhouse? And why, oh, why, should such a boy have had the bad luck to be "taken" by a man like Mr. Peabody? Betty was a courteous girl, and she could not bring herself to ask Bob these questions pointblank, however her curiosity urged her. Perhaps when they were better acquainted, she might have a chance. But that thought suggested to Betty her letter.

"I'm going to write to Uncle Dick before I go to bed to-night," she announced. "He said I needn't stay if for any good reason I found I wasn't happy here. I can't stay, Bob, honestly I can't. He wouldn't want me to. Shall I ask him about a place for you? And where do I mail my letter?"

Bob Henderson's face fell. He had hoped that this bright, pretty girl, with her independent and friendly manner, might spend the summer at Bramble Farm. Bob had been so long cut off from communication with a companion of his own age that it was a perfect luxury for him to have Betty to talk to. Still, he could not help admitting, the Peabody circle had nothing to offer Betty.

"Don't mail your letter in the box at the end of the lane," he advised her. "Joe Peabody might see it and take it out. I'll take it to Glenside with me to-morrow – unless you want to go along? Say, that would be great, wouldn't it?"

Betty liked the idea, and so before they turned back to the house they arranged to mail the letter secretly in Glenside the following morning. Immensely cheered, Betty went in to write to her uncle and Bob disappeared up the stairs to the attic, where he and the two hired men shared quarters.

It was too dark to see clearly in her room, and after Betty had groped around in a vain hunt for a lamp and matches, she went down to the kitchen intending to ask for a light.

Mrs. Peabody stood at the table, mixing something in a pan, and a small glass lamp gave the room all the light it had.

"I'm setting my bread," the woman explained, as Betty came in. "Where have you been dear? You must be hungry."

"No, I'm not hungry," answered Betty, avoiding explanations. "I've been out for a little walk. May I have a lamp Mrs. Peabody?"