Betty's Happy Year

So the ever polite and ready Jack, aided by Stub when the gifts were flung high, took down the presents one by one, and delivered them to those whose names were written on them.

Somehow there seemed to be lots of gifts. For five people, each giving to every one else, made a good many, and then there were a lot of extra ones that just seemed to come from Santa Claus himself.

Of course Lisette was not forgotten, and she stood in the background, delighted beyond words to see Betty’s pleasure in her beautiful Christmas tree.

Mrs. McGuire’s present to her daughter was a gold locket containing a miniature of her own lovely face. It hung from a slender gold chain, and no gift could have pleased Betty more.

“I shall always wear it,” she said, as her mother clasped it round her throat; “and, Mother, you must always wear my gift.”

Her mother was greatly surprised at the diamond brooch, and wondered how Betty had sufficient taste and judgment to select such a beauty. So Betty told how Mrs. Sanderson had helped her, and all admired the lovely jewel when it was pinned at the top of its owner’s delicate lace bodice.

The tables were filled with the various trinkets and knickknacks, and the floor was strewn with tissue-papers and narrow red ribbons. Then Jack and Stub brought in the big Christmas greeting Betty and the others had made, and her mother was delighted at the pretty attention.

It was late indeed when they sought their beds, for a refection of ices and cakes had to be attended to, and some Christmas carols sung, and a Christmas dance indulged in. But at last all the lights were out, and the stars twinkled down on one of the happiest girls in the great city, a girl who was restfully sleeping after the joys of her first real Christmas.

III

BETTY AT BOARDING-SCHOOL

It was New Year’s eve, and Betty, with her mother and Jack, was spending a few days at the Irvings’ in Boston. Betty was a great favorite with her grandfather, and the two spent delightful hours together as the old gentleman showed Betty the many places of interest in the city.

Mr. Irving was of somewhat eccentric nature, and he declared that he much preferred Betty’s frank and sometimes blunt straightforwardness to what he called the “airs and graces” of more fashionably trained young girls.

But Mrs. Irving did not share her husband’s views. She thought Betty decidedly lacking in many details of correct deportment, and she urged Mrs. McGuire to send Betty to a boarding-school for a year or two, that she might be properly trained to take her place in society later, with the demeanor becoming a well-bred young lady and an heiress.

“But Betty isn’t a young lady yet,” said Mrs. McGuire, looking troubled when these arguments were laid before her.

“Not exactly, perhaps,” returned her mother. “But she will live in a city ere long, and, as our descendant, should be made familiar with the finer points of correct behavior. Jack seems to pick up such things immediately, but Betty, though a dear child, is crude in her manner.”

“Small wonder,” said Mrs. McGuire, thinking of the lack of advantages in Betty’s early life.

“True enough; and that’s all the more reason why she should be placed in an atmosphere of correct deportment at once. She will learn much more by association with cultured young girls of her own age than by your individual tuition. You spoil her by letting her have her own way entirely too much, and you are blind to her faults. You know perfectly well, my dear, I have only Betty’s good at heart in the matter.”

Mrs. McGuire did know this, and yet she could not bear the idea of separation from her daughter, with whom she had been so lately reunited.

On New Year’s eve the Irvings had made a party for Betty. They had invited young people from some of the best families they knew, and both Betty and Jack were greatly pleased when they learned of it.

It was a very citified party, and quite unlike the merry gatherings of Greenborough children. The hours were from seven to ten, and the first part of the evening the guests sat round the rooms, in small gilt chairs that had been brought in for the occasion, and listened to the songs and stories of a professional entertainer.

It was a charming young woman who told the stories and sang the songs, and after each number the children clapped their hands sedately and waited for the next.

Secretly Betty thought it rather tame, and would have preferred a rollicking game or a merry dance. But she applauded with the others and tried to appear politely pleased.

After the program all marched decorously to the dining-room, where a pleasant little supper was served. Then the guests took leave, each making a correct courtesy to the hostess, and expressing their pleasure as if by rote.

“Well, if that wasn’t the stiffest party!” said Betty to her mother, when they were alone later. “Those children were just like wooden images.”

Mrs. McGuire looked troubled.

“Betty dear,” she said, “you don’t see these things quite rightly. Your grandmother thinks those children act correctly, and that you don’t. But, you see, city life is quite different from that of a small village. How would you like to move to live in a big city, Betty?”

“And give up Denniston? My beautiful home! Oh, Mother, I don’t want to do that!”

“No, and I don’t want you to. Well, we’ll see what can be done.”

The “seeing” resulted in long talks by the elders of the family, and these talks resulted in a decision to send Betty at once to a boarding-school at Hillside Manor, a fine country place about a hundred miles away.

As the winter term was just beginning, she was to go directly, without returning to Greenborough.

The school was most highly recommended, and Mrs. McGuire was persuaded that it would give Betty the “finish” she needed.

But the plan did not please Betty at all. She did not rebel, – that was not her way, – but she expressed her feelings in the matter so clearly that there was no doubt as to her state of mind.

“I don’t want to go, Mother,” she said; “I hate to be with a lot of girls – I want my own family and my home. Oh, Mother, must I leave my home when I love it so?”

“Yes, Betty darling,” said her mother, though strongly tempted to say “No”; “I see it is for your good to send you away, and I’m sure you ought to go. But I shall miss you dreadfully, and just count the days till your return.”

“It’s hard lines, Betty,” said Jack; “but as long as they all think you ought to go, I should think you’d be glad to go and learn the right sort of thing, whatever it is. Old Tutor Nixon is wise and all that, but he can’t fill the bill in other ways. At least that’s what Grandma Irving thinks, and so do I, too.”

In fact, there was no one who agreed with Betty’s ideas except her grandfather.

“All bosh,” he said. “My granddaughter is a natural, unaffected, unspoiled girl. You send her off to Madam Tippetywitch, or whoever she is, and she’ll come back an artificial young miss, with no thought but for fashions and foolishness.”

But the old gentleman was entirely overruled by the determination of his wife, and Betty was sent away.

None of the family accompanied Betty to the school, as Mrs. Irving felt sure the child would be less homesick if she started off with a gay party of girls who were going back to their classes.

And so good-bys were said at the station in Boston, and Betty made the trip to Hillside in company with half a dozen school-girls, in charge of one of the teachers. It was a strange position in which Betty found herself. An heiress in her own right, she yet felt a sense of inferiority which she herself could not explain.

Her Irish ancestry revealed itself in her warm-hearted willingness to be friends with the girls, and her inherited New England nature made her reserved and sensitive to either real or apparent slights from them. The girls, notwithstanding their inborn good breeding and their past seasons at Hillside Manor, looked at Betty with ill-concealed curiosity. They knew she was an heiress, and that very fact made them hold aloof from her, lest they be suspected of a spirit of toadying to wealth.

But Betty did not appreciate this point, and assumed that the girls were not very cordial because they considered themselves her superiors. Each one spoke to her, politely enough, but in constrained, perfunctory fashion, and then, feeling their duty done, they resumed their own chatter about matters unknown to Betty. Miss Price, the teacher, was a pleasant-faced lady, but, after a few courteous words, she became absorbed in a book, looking up only now and then to glance at her young charges. After a time Betty’s spirit of independence became aroused. She wondered if she were excluded from the girls’ sociability because she herself was lacking in cordiality. Smiling pleasantly, she said to Ada Porter, who sat next to her: “Are you in my classes?”

“I don’t know, really,” said Ada, not unkindly, but entirely uninterested. “What classes are you in?”

“I don’t know,” said Betty, smiling at the absurdity of the conversation.

But Ada didn’t seem to think it humorous, and merely stared at Betty, as she said, “How queer!”

Betty colored. She felt awkward and tongue-tied, and yet, the more she realized her inability to impress these girls pleasantly, the more she determined to do so.

Then Betty bethought herself of a box of fine candies in her satchel, and taking it out, she passed it around to the other girls.

Murmuring conventional thanks, each accepted one bonbon, but declined a second one, and then Betty found herself with her box in her lap, gazing out of the window, as much alone as if there had been no one in the car.

But at last the three hours’ ride was over, and Betty’s hopeful nature looked forward to finding some among the pupils who would be more friendly than her traveling associates.

Omnibuses from the school met them at the station, and by chance Betty was put in with a dozen girls none of whom had been with her in the car.