BETTY AND CO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12225, 21 March 1903, Page 3 (Supplement)

BETTY AND CO.

[ALL EIGHTS RESERVED.]

BY ETHEL TURNER Author of " Seven Little Australians," Family at Misrule," etc.

CHAPTER I. THE DOCTOR'S CHILDREN,

Ah. why shouldst thou be dead When common men Are busy with their trivial affairs Having and holding? Os the tnird day the' housemaid pulied up the blinds, and let the sunshine in to the little darkness-wearied children.

Outside, on the red, clayey drive, deep, great ruts ran down to the gate ; they were left by the carriage-wheels that had borne the father away to be laid in the quiet cemetery at the further end of the town.

Inside, the mother, Bern, and Betty were sitting in the little study, comforting each other as best they might. But Nora and little Tom had crept away from them, and had followed the maid round the house, while she let the light into the dull rooms once more, and put away the last sigus'of illness and death.

" Oh," said little Tom from the window of the dining-room, a world of longing in his voice. "do you think, Mary, my daddie would mind if I had just one little run round the garden.'"

Nora looked at him severely. She had safe down, bolt upright, and with her lands on her knees, -at the end of the big sofa.

"What did you say, Tommie?" she asked, her eyes threatening him. The little boy shuffled uncomfortably.

"I only thought there might be one of my brown pansies out," he said, forlornly ; "and it might want a flower-pot over it."

Norn's aspect looked severer than ever. She was a sharp-faced little thing, with wellopened grey eyes, a pointed, determined chin, and rather short, dark hair, that was dragged back from her face and plaited in a tight, thin little plait, tied at the end with Mack ribbon. On one slevee of her blue serge frock she had tied a bit of black cloth that she had begged from rook. " He oughtn't to want to look at pansies ■when father's dead," said Nora. "In my bed there may be some of my blue cues out, which are much better than his little brown ones ; but I don't want .to go and look at them."

"Betty likes mine just as well," said Tommi e. "Yours are the same all over, and mine have yellow mouths and eyes. An' you played with your doll, Nollie, this morning, 'cos I saw you " "I didn't do any such tiling," Nora said, indignantly. "I never played with her a second. She'd got her party dress on, and I just took it off and put a plain one on, with a black sash. No one could call that playing, could they, Mary?" . " Well," said Mary, who had a wealth of tenderness for Tommie, and very little for his shnrp-tongued sister, " I call it worse than Master Tommie just looking at his pansies ; a good deal worse." . Nora looked at her incredulouslv.

" Why," she said, " I simply couldn't have left her like she was ; she looked dreadful in that frock, when everyone was crying and miserable. You must own, Tommie, that 1 had to do that."

Little Tom spoke judicially. " P'raps 'twas all right to put the other dress on ; but you needn't have bathed it, Nollie. and done its hair," he said.

Nora grew rather pink. "I've got into the way of doing it," she said; "and it didn't take a minute." Tommie's longing eyes went to the sunshine that bathed the garden and made the commonest flowers glorious. "I shouldn't take a minute," he said.

Then along the hall came the sound of light wheels, and the faint creaking of strained wicker-work.

" Well, here's Miss Betty," Mary said. "Ask her, Master Tommie." The doorhandle was turned, and the door pushed open slowly, and into the room there came a little brown wicker chair on wheels.

Tommie sprang to it, sudden tears of selfpity in his eyes. "Oh," he said, "I am so miserable, Betty! Can't I go and have a little look at my brown pansies? I won't run a bit, and I ■won't let Tippie bark, truly, really." "But. why shouldn't you run?" said Betty. Little Tom's round face grew grave. He answered almost in 1 whisper. "Daddie vVauld think 1 had forgotten him, wouldn't he?" "Oh, Nollie," Betty said. " you shouldn't tell him things like that! If you were dead, little Tom, you wouldn't mind me making doll's clothes', and reading, would you? As long as you knew I loved you just as much, and° thought about you often?" ■ " There!" said little Tom 2 with a defiant look at Nora. "I"ll tell you," said Betty ; "we'll all go down, the garden, and then, when we come back, mother wants us all for a particular talk." Her little chair moved on ahead, up the hall, down the step, that had a contrivance at each end for the wheels, acrossjhe verandah, and down two more steps. Nora walked with her .hand on the s.de of the chair as they went down the paths ; but the new elastic'feeling in Tommie's feet carried him a little ahead. . Betty was thirteen, and had never walked since she was six ; some form of spina! paralysis had taken hold of her then, and robbed her little bounding limbs of all their power. She suffered little, and was seldom ill ; Bern and Nora and Tommie had grown so used to her moving about with them, sharing their work and games, even racing with them in her swift-moving little chair, that they stared when anyone referred to their sister's " affliction," or asked how she was. Her face had the hue of health—a brown, sweet little face it was. with happy-looking, dark eyes and an almost merry mouth. Dark hair' curled about her forehead, and fell in soft, thick waves over her shoulders. Five of Tommie's pansies were out. The Sight brought a hurrah to his lips, but Nora's glance quelled a reception of it. Bettv had gone to her own garden, that was the best attended to of all the four plots ; for everyone was willing to dig and weed for her, and she raked it herself, and even scattered the seeds, and, when the plants were high enough, gathered the flowers. But now two tears ran down her cheeks, and two others sprang unbidden to follow them. It was daddie who had dug it last for her, because Bern was too lazy, and Tommie and Nora not to be found, and she •was anxious to set her seeds. He had dug so deep and well, and flung out the stones, and detected the tiniest weed! And Ik was raking it over and making a heap of the rubbish when Mary came down from the house to tell him he 'was wanted ; for he was a busy doctor, and seldom had an unbroken hour. A heavy rainstorm had come on while he was out. and he was in wet clothes for nearly two hours. A severe cold followed, but he still attended to his work, and would not give up. Then a sharp attack of pneumonia set in, and he was dead in a week. Betty's tears ran fast as she looked at the heap of rubbish, and saw the garden-fork just as he had flung it down, and said, "Little woman, that man" might have put off "his fit for an hour, mightn't he?" But Tommie was at her elbow. " Oh, Betty," he said, his heart heavy again When he saw her tears, "don't cry again, please, Betty! Do look at the pansies ! Oh, I am so tired of being misrubble, Betty ' ':< , , , , So Betty dried up her, tears, and choked the lumps out of her throat, and admired the pansies. Had not mother begged her to come and cheer the little ones up? -. Then down the path to them came Bern. A week ago he had been a harum-scarum schoolboy, as it was reasonable he should be, seeing he wat only fourteen. But this morning he had been chief mourner in the long funeral procession that had moved away from the' house, and he felt he could never be light-hearted again while he lived. He came slowly, his young face sober, his eyes rimmed with red.' For the last hour he had been kneeling by his mother, trying to comfort her'; and she had clung to him, and had talked to him in such a way, he felt from henceforth he must be a man.. 'His ' heart swelled as he looked at his sisters and •brother—little, helpless Betty, difficult . Nora, and little Tom. It was for him now to protect them, and watch over them since his father was gone. ' ' i "Betty," he said, and his voice had a . strangle in it, " come on— of you—mother wants as ail."

Betty turned her chair in the direction of the house, and started it. , " I'll push you, said the little big brother, stepping hastily up to her and putting out his muscular arm, gladness in his heart that it was muscular. And Betty, who always scorned assistance, rubbed* her curly head against the dear arm, and gave herself up to his guidance. Down the hall they went again, to the little study where the father had smoked and rested every evening after his tirin<* day. * - ° _ The mother ws sitting there, such a slim, girlish-looking mother! Something like Betty she was, with hei brown eyes and her clear brown skin, but her resolute mouth and chin made people say 't was Nora who bore the strongest resemblance to her. Tommie ran into her arms. " Poor Brummie," he said, and squeezed close up to her before Nora could get the place. Then emotion made him unselfish, and he moved away an inch. " You can come too, Nollie," he said.

" Lift Betty to me here," the mother said, and she had put tears away, and made her trembling mouth brave, and her voice quite calm ; " then there will be room for vou the other side, Bernie; I want us all to be close together." Bern lifted his little sister on the sofa, and sat on the head of it himself, with his hand caressing his mother's neck. ' " Darlings,'' she said, "I am going to talk to you all as if you were years older. Now father has gone I shall have no one to go to for help but you, and will have no one but me. So we must stick very close together, mustn't we? To-night I want to deefde the hardest question that has ever come to me yet, and 1 can't do it alone. I want all -of you to help me, not only Betty and my big laddie, but Nora too, and even "little Tom." Little Tom surreptitiously dropped the brown pansy he had held in his hand all the time, and tried hard to look as sober and responsible as Bernie did.

CHAPTER 11. THEIR DEBT OF HONOTTK. 01), live and love worthily, bear, and be bold. The mother's arm went closer round her little son. "Do you remember," she said, " a few months ago, how worried and busy father was? Just about Nora's birthday, when I couldn't let her have a party, and she only got a tea-set instead of the doll's house she had been hoping foi." " I r'mber,"' Tommie said ; " an' you took my drum away 'cos it made a noise!" The mother nodded. " Father had lost a lot of money then," she said, " and was worrying himself to death because it made him unable to pay money he himself owed to the tradesmen and other people. He began to work harder than ever to make up, for the thought of debt was a nightmare to him. He had paid a part of it, and was struggling, oh, so hard, to pay the rest, when God took him away." " I s'pose God couldn't have knowed how 'portant it was for him to stop?" said Tommie. The mother shook her head sadly. " No, He knew, darling," she said, " and He had some great, wise reason that we can't. even attempt to guess. While he was ill father kept worrying and worrying; even the last few days, every time he was conscious, I know he thought of it. And once he whispered to me, " Don't look so Nellie. I shall pull round; I can't die till I've made that money up and cleared my name.'" A little silence fell, and Tommie clung closer, and Nora and Betty squeezed each other's hands. Then the quiet, sad voice went on again. " My greatest comfort now is that after that he was unconscious again to the end, and could not trouble any more about it. It helps me to bear what would otherwise be so —the thought that after he kissed us all on Wednesday night he never knew any of us again." Bernie's arm passed strengtheningly round her shoulder, and she found her voice again that had fallen away, away. " This afternoon I have been going through papers, and Mr. Parkins has; been explaining the will and other matters to me; I wanted to know the worst ab once. At this minute we owe five hundred pounds." Bernie drew a hard breath. A short time before the father of one of bis schoolfellows had been declared bankrupt, and he remembered the scornful remarks that had been made by one of the boys. His heart grew sick at the thought of the fellows bandying his father's name about.

" How much have we got towards it, mother?" he asked,- his face white.

" There is the five hundred pounds in the bank that grandfather left me," she answered. ■

His face regained its colour. a?" Oh," he said, "then it's all right; you can easily pay it all." " And what are we to live upon, -my son ?" | "Oh, we'll think about that afterwards,, of course," he said. "What a jolly good thing gran'dad's money was never touched before!" . "It belongs entirely to me now. The creditors cannot claim a penny of it," the mother said. " Oh, but I say Bern flushed and stood away from the sofa, Very upright. "Of course you'll let them kave it, mother?" . His mother looked at him steadily, then from him to Betty. " If I don't keep it bow am I to take care of you all?" she said. " You are a. boy, Bern, and will be able to do something soon ; but think of Betty, of Nora, of little Tom. Apart from that money there is nothing but the life insurance, which will come to about fifty pounds a year;" "A pound a week," said Nora, who had a gift for calculation. "That's a good lot, isn't it?" " At present we are spending ten pounds a week," the mother said. You can imagine the difference nine pounds less will make." The children's respect for the value of tv sovereign decreased. "But if we left this house and took a little one, and didn't have expensive things, and I left school, and we sacked Mary and Jane and Johnson, then it would be all right, wouldn't it?" Bernie said. " No, it wouldn't be all right," the mother said. "It means actual poverty, Bern. Hard work 'or me, for you, discomfort for little Betty, who ought to have everything made easy for her, and a spoilt childhood for Nora and Tom. If we had the five hundred we should sti!ll be poor, but there would always be that much between us and the world. And Mr. ,Parkins said no one would think of expecting me to give it up; that it would be madlness for me to do so. If I keep it yon can finish your education properly, and Betty can have some of the comforts shfe has been accustomed to." / " And what will people say ' about father?" Bern said hotly. "I'd rather be an errand by far." ■ "I don't want any comforts," said little Betty. I "I could do all the work," Noira said eagerly. can sweep as well aj'i Mary, and I can make rice pudding and drop cakes, and lots 01 things." I'd never tear my clothes any more," was Tommie's promise of help. "Betty," cried the mother ; nd there was a look of agonised anxiety on her —"what am I to do? Betty, are you afraid of the future? Dare you'"let me do this thing?" All their eyes were on the /little helpless girl. Bernie moved closer to her, and patted her on the shoulder. "Go on, Bet," he said. "I'll look after yon like anything." " Oh," said Betty, and her voice sounded quite choked. "Oh, mamma, did you really think I'd be frightened? I want you to do it even more than Bennie does." f A red spot burned on the mother'* cheek. " You have said just what I hoped you would say," she said. " I may be wrong in letting you decide when you- are all too young to know what, hardship really means. People will blame me—you may, even, when you are older, blame me yourselves. But I can't help it, I ton'thelp ! it. I must clear father's name,. and let everyone only' remember him with respect and love. If there was not one other penny I should feel I must do it all the same. I ought to tremble at the thought of facing the world with, four of you dependent on ' me. But I don't. I. an) young yet and strong ; you are all brave and willing. We are doing what must be the one right thing in the sigh' - of heaven, paying what we owe for things-we have had and enjoyed; and the God ' who has made you fatherless and me a /widow will show us a path." . v.: -f' (To be continued daily.)