Betty's Happy Year

Wandering back to the front rooms, Betty started to go up-stairs, and then stopped. Suppose something awful had happened!

She paused with her foot on the lowest stair.

“Lena!” she called again, “Lena!”

But there was no answer, and, with a sudden impulse of bravery, Betty ran up-stairs and peeped into the first bedroom she came to. It was, without doubt, Lena’s own room.

She recognised her kimono flung on the bed, and her little Japanese slippers, which had evidently been kicked off across the room. Surely Lena had dressed in a hurry.

Cheered by these visible signs of her friend’s recent presence here, Betty went on through the other rooms.

She found nothing unusual, merely the sleeping-rooms of the Carey family, fairly tidy, but by no means in spick-and-span order.

In fact, they looked as if the whole family had gone away in haste.

“To meet me at the station, I suppose,” cogitated Betty. “Well, I’m here, and I can’t help it, so I may as well make myself at home. I think I’ll bring my suitcase up, and select a room, and put on a cooler dress.”

She went down-stairs more blithely than she had come up. It was all very mysterious, to be sure, but there had been no tragedy, and the Careys must come back soon, wherever they might have gone.

She paused again in the living-room, and sitting down at the open piano, she sang a few lively little songs.

Then, feeling quite merry over her strange experience, she went out to the front porch for her suitcase.

It was just where she had left it. Nobody was in sight. She gazed again over the lovely, serene landscape, and, taking the suitcase, she went, singing, up-stairs.

The guest-room was easily recognized and Betty felt at liberty to appropriate it for her own use. She was an invited guest, and if no hostess or servant was present to conduct her to her room, she must look after her own rights.

“I’m just like Robinson Crusoe,” she chuckled to herself. “I’m stranded on a desert island, with not a human being near. But, luckily, there’s food in the pantry, for really, with all these exciting experiences, I’m getting hungry.”

She opened her suitcase and shook out her pretty dresses. Then she changed her traveling-frock for the light organdie, and having bathed, and brushed her hair, she felt rather better.

“Well, it’s nearly noon,” she said, looking at her watch, “and, as I’ve no one to consult but myself, I may as well have an early luncheon. If the Careys come in while I’m eating, I’ll invite them to lunch with me.”

So down-stairs Betty went, smiling to think of herself as Betty Crusoe.

But as she passed the door of the living-room and glanced inside, her smile faded.

Her eyes grew big with amazement, her cheeks turned pale, and a shiver of fear shook her.

On the table lay a man’s hat!

“It couldn’t have been there when I was in here before,” she thought, “for I looked into those books, and now the hat’s on top of them!”

It was a forlorn old hat, of light-gray felt, but soiled and torn, and Betty’s frightened heart told her that it was the hat of some marauder, and not of any member of the Carey family.

With a sudden scream, which she could not repress, she ran and hid behind a large Japanese screen in the corner of the room.

“Who’s there?” called a man’s voice from the hall. It was a loud, gruff voice, and poor Betty shook and shivered as she crouched behind the screen.

“Who’s there?” repeated the voice, and Betty heard heavy footsteps coming in at the living-room door.

Then there was silence. The man was apparently awaiting Betty’s next move. Then he said again: “Who screamed just now? Where are you?” and somehow this time his voice did not sound quite so ferocious. But Betty had no intention of answering, and she squeezed into her corner, hoping that he would go away.

Then suddenly the whimsical idea came to her that, as she was personating Robinson Crusoe, this was probably the Man Friday who had arrived. This amused her so much that she giggled in spite of her fear. The man heard the smothered sound, and going straight to the screen, he pulled it suddenly away.

Betty, who was sitting on the floor, looked up to see a stalwart young man of a college type staring down at her. His costume of summer outing clothes was informal, but at once betokened he was no marauder. Also, his handsome, sunburnt face and frank blue eyes showed a kindly though surprised expression.

Betty was reassured at once, and, truly glad to see a human being of her own walk in life, her face broke into smiles and merry dimples, as she said:

“Hello, Man Friday!”

“Who are you?” was his bewildered response, and then remembering himself, he added: “I beg your pardon; may I assist you to rise?”

He took Betty’s hand, and in a moment she had jumped up from her crouching position, and stood facing him.

“I’m Betty Crusoe,” she said; “I’m stranded on a desert island, and if you’re Man Friday, I hope you’ll protect me from cannibals or bears or whatever wild beasts abound here.”

“Oh, I know you,” said the young man, smiling. “You’re Miss Betty McGuire.”

“I am. I’m a guest of the Careys – only – the Careys don’t seem to be here!”

“No, they’re not. I’m Hal Pennington, at your service. I’m called Pen or Penny for short, – sometimes Bad Penny.”

“I’m sure that’s a libel,” said Betty, smiling at his kind, honest face.

“It is, I assure you, for I’m good as gold. Well, I, too, am a guest of the Careys, and, as you so cleverly observe, they don’t seem to be here!”

“Where are they?”

“Well, you see it was this way. All the servants took it into their foolish heads to leave at once. They decamped last night. So this morning the Careys started off in the motor-car to bring home a lot of new ones.”

“But why didn’t they come to the station for me, as they arranged?”

“Oh, they telegraphed you last night not to come till next week.”

“And I didn’t get the telegram!”

“Thus that explains all! How did you get here?”

“In a rumbly old wagon of a kind farmer. The front door wasn’t locked, so I walked in and made myself at home. Are you staying here?”

“Yes, for a week. I’m sketching some bits of woodland, and I stayed at home to-day rather than go with them to stalk servants. Now, let me see, – this is rather a complicated situation. Shall I, by virtue of prior residence, be host and welcome you as my visitor, or would you rather appropriate the house as your own, and let me be your guest?”

His jolly, boyish face seemed to show that he thought the whole affair a great joke, and Betty fell into the spirit of it.

“When do the Careys return?” she asked.

“Mrs. Carey said they’d surely be home by three o’clock, and I could forage in the pantry to keep myself from starving.”