Betty Gordon in Washington Part 10

Betty smiled into the rebellious blue eyes and was rewarded by a sudden, radiant smile. She closed her magazine and found the mother gazing at her with a look almost as childlike in its friendly curiosity as her little daughter's.

"You've got a way with children, haven't you?" said the woman wistfully. "I guess everybody on this train will be glad when we get off. The children have been perfect torments, and Lottie cried half the night. We're none of us used to traveling, and they're so mussed up and dirty I could cry. At home I keep 'em looking as neat as wax.

We're going to see my husband's mother, and I know she'll think I started with 'em looking like this."

Betty was far older than many girls her age in some things. She was self-reliant and used to observing for herself, and she had a rich fund of warm and ready sympathy that was essentially practical. She saw that the mother of these lively, untidy children was very young, hardly more than a girl, and worn-out and nervous as a result of taking a long journey with no help and little traveling experience.

She was probably, and naturally, anxious that her children should impress their father's mother favorably, and it took little imagination to understand that in her home the young mother had been used to praise for her excellent management. Betty, added to her qualities of leadership and sound judgment, had a decided "knack"

with children. In Pineville she had been a general favorite with the little ones, and many a mother had secretly marveled at the girl's ability to control the most headstrong youngster. Now she seized the opportunity presented to help a fellow-pa.s.senger.

"Have you had your breakfast?" she asked. "No? I thought not. Well, I had mine before I got on the train. If you are willing to trust the children with me, I'll amuse them while you go into the diner and have a quiet meal. You'll feel much better then."

"Oh, it's been a nightmare!" confided the young mother with a sudden rush of feeling. "n.o.body ever told me what it would be like to travel with two children. Lottie upset her milk and Baby spilled her supper on the floor. And people just glare at me and never offer to help. It will be heavenly to eat my breakfast without them, but I feel that I'm imposing on you."

Betty managed to send her off convinced that everything was as it should be, and to the mother's surprise the children snuggled down like little mice to listen to the honorable and ancient story of the Three Bears. By the time a rested and radiant mother came back to them, for she had stolen a little time in the dressing room and rearranged her fair hair and adjusted her trim frock, something she had found it impossible to accomplish with two restless children clinging to her skirts, Lottie and Baby were firm friends with Miss Betty.

"I never knew any one as lovely as you are!" The grat.i.tude of the woman was touching. "I was just about crazy. My husband tipped the porter, and he did try to look after me, but he didn't know what to do. Usually there is a maid on this train, they told us, but she was taken sick, and there wasn't time to get any one to fill her place.

Now don't let the children bother you. They had their breakfast early, and I can read to them till we get to Willowvale where their grandmother will meet us."

But Betty had not finished. She loved the feel of soft little arms about her neck and there was not much connected with a baby's welfare she did not know about. Many a Pineville baby she had washed and dressed and fed as correctly as a model baby should be.

"Let me take them one at a time and tidy them up?" she suggested.

"They'll take to it kindly, because I am new and that will lend to the washing a novelty. If we go in relays, we can't upset the whole car."

So first with Lottie, and then with Baby, who seemed to be without other name, Betty went into the dressing-room and there washed pink and white faces and hands till they shone, and brushed silk locks till they lay straight and shining. Clean frocks were forthcoming, and two spick and span babies emerged to beam upon a transformed world no longer seen through a veil of tears. This new friend could tell the most wonderful stories, invent delightful games, and sing dozens of foolish little rhymes in a low sweet voice that disturbed no one and yet allowed every word to be distinctly understood.

Both children went to sleep during the morning, and then Betty heard that Mrs. Clenning, as the mother introduced herself, lived in the West and that this journey to Willowvale was the first she had taken since the birth of the babies.

"My husband's mother is crazy to see them because they are her only grandchildren," she explained. "I didn't want to come without Mr.

Clenning, but he couldn't get away for a couple of months. He is to come after us and take us home. If he didn't, I'm sure I'd live East the rest of my days, or at least till the children are grown up. I'll never have the courage to try a long train trip with them again."

Before Willowvale was reached Betty helped Mrs. Clenning get her wraps and bags together and tied the babies into bewitching white bonnets with long fluted strings. The porter came for the bags, but Betty carried the younger child to the car door and handed her down to the mother, who had gone first with Lottie. She saw a tall, stately, white-haired woman, dressed all in white from her shoes to her hat, gather all three into her arms, and then went back to her seat satisfied that the mother's troubles were over.

"Parlor car's ready, Miss," announced the porter, coming up to her.

"Shall I take you on in?"

Betty followed him, to be established comfortably on the shady side of the car, with the window adjusted at the most comfortable height.

She did not hear the porter's comment to the conductor when he pa.s.sed him in the vestibule of the parlor car.

"That girl in seat fourteen, she's one perfect little lady," said the dusky porter earnestly. "You jest observe her when you takes her ticket. 'Member that lady with the two children what racketed all day and all night? Well, she done fix those two kids up till you wouldn't know 'em, and cheered their mother up, too. And all jest as pretty and like a lady. That mighty fine lady in the red hat (I give her a seat on the sunny side of the car a-purpose) wouldn't do nothing yesterday when I axted her to hold a gla.s.s of milk while I went to get a extra pillow. Said she wasn't going to be nursemaid to no stranger's brats!"

So Betty was zealously looked after by the whole train crew, for the story had spread, and the siege of Clenning had been a protracted one with a corresponding fervency of grat.i.tude for release; and at six o'clock that night the attentive porter handed her down the steps to the platform of the beautiful Union Station in Washington.

She had only her light traveling bag to carry, so she followed the crowd through the gates, walking slowly and scanning the faces anxiously in order that she might not pa.s.s her uncle. She did not wish to go through the station out on the plaza, lest she make it more difficult for him to find her, and she was keenly disappointed that he had not been at the gate, for the train was half an hour late and she had confidently expected him to be waiting. She took up her stand near the door of the waiting room and scanned the eddying circles of travelers that pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed her.

"Something must have delayed him," she thought uneasily. "He couldn't miss me even in a crowd, because he is so careful. I hope he got the telegram."

She had turned to compare her wrist-watch with the station clock when a voice at her back said half-doubtfully, "Betty?"

CHAPTER XI

A SERIOUS MIX-UP

"You are Betty, aren't you?" the girlish voice insisted, and this time Betty identified it as belonging to a girl a year or two older than herself who stood smiling uncertainly at her.

"Yes, of course I'm Betty," said Betty Gordon smiling.

The face of her questioner cleared.

"All right, girls," she called, beckoning to two others who stood a little way off. "She's Betty. I was sure I hadn't make a mistake."

Betty found herself surrounded by three laughing faces, beaming with good-will and cordiality.

"We must introduce ourselves," said the girl who had first spoken to her. "This is Louise," pointing to a gray-eyed miss apparently about Betty's age. "This is Esther." A girl with long yellow braids and pretty even white teeth bobbed a shy acknowledgment. "And of course I'm Roberta, Bobby for short."

"And if we don't hurry, we'll be late for dinner," suggested the girl who had been called Louise. "You know Carter isn't as patient as he once was; he hates to have to wait."

Bobby thrust her arm through Betty's protectingly.

"Come on, Betty," she said comfortably. "Never mind about your trunk check. Carter will drive down after it early in the morning."

Betty's bewildered mind was vaguely appreciative of the wide sweep of open plaza which lay before them as they came out on the other side of the station, but before she could say a word she was gently bundled into a handsome automobile, a girl on either side of her and one opposite, and the grim-faced, silver-haired old chauffeur, evidently slightly intolerant of the laughter and high spirits of his young pa.s.sengers, had started to thread his way through the lane of taxicabs and private cars.

Betty was intensely puzzled, to put it mildly. Her uncle had mentioned no girls in his letters to her, and even supposing that she had missed some letters, it was hardly possible that he should not have let fall an explanatory word or two from time to time.

"I thought Uncle d.i.c.k would come down to meet me," she said, voicing her surprise at last.

"Oh, poor dear, his heart is almost broken to think he has to stay cooped up in the house," answered Bobby, who seemed to be the general spokesman. "But how stupid of us--of course you don't know that he hurt his foot!"

"Is he hurt?" Betty half rose from her seat in alarm. "Is he badly injured? When did it happen?"

Bobby pulled the excited girl down beside her.

"You see it happened only yesterday," explained Louise, finding her voice with a rush. "You'd better believe we were frightened when they brought him to the house in the ambulance. His foot has some little bones broken in it, the doctor says, but he'll be all right in a month or so. He has to hobble around on crutches till the bones knit."

"But it isn't serious, so don't look like that," urged Bobby. "Why, Betty, your lips are positively white. We're so thankful it was his foot and not his head--that would have been something to worry about."

"How--how did it happen?" gasped Betty, anxious and worried in spite of these a.s.surances. "Was he in an accident?"

"He was the whole accident," announced Bobby cheerfully. "You see he's completely wrapped up in these new buildings they're putting up on the outskirts. We'll take you out to see 'em while you're here and perhaps you'll understand the construction, which is more than I do.

Anyway, the whole firm and every workman is absorbed in the experiment, and they're burnt as red as the bricks from working outdoors all day."

"Uncle d.i.c.k does love to be outdoors," murmured Betty.

"He sure does," agreed Bobby. "Well, nothing would do yesterday but that he must climb up on the roof of one they've just started and take a peek at the chimney. I guess it needed looking after, for the whole thing tumbled over on him, coming down full-weight on his right foot. Forcet, the foreman, had an awful time getting him down from the roof, and instead of telephoning for the car, some nervous person sent for the ambulance and scared us all into fits."

Betty blinked again. No mention of building houses had been made in Uncle d.i.c.k's letters to her.