Understood Betsy Part 6

"Yes, it used to have a great big chimney and fireplace in it. It was built long before stoves were invented, you know."

"Why, I thought stoves were ALWAYS invented!" cried Elizabeth Ann. This was the most startling and interesting conversation she had ever taken part in.

Aunt Abigail laughed. "Mercy, no, child! Why, _I_ can remember when only folks that were pretty well off had stoves and real poor people still cooked over a hearth fire. I always thought it a pity they tore down the big chimney and fireplace out of the schoolhouse and put in that big, ugly stove. But folks are so daft over new-fangled things. Well, anyhow, they couldn't take away the sun-dial on the window-sill. You want to be sure to look at that. It's on the sill of the middle window on the right hand as you face the teacher's desk."

"Sun-dial," repeated Betsy. "What's that?"

"Why to tell the time by, when--"

"Why didn't they have a clock?" asked the child.

Aunt Abigail laughed. "Good gracious, there was only one clock in the valley for years and years, and that belonged to the Wardons, the rich people in the village. Everybody had sun-dials cut in their window-sills. There's one on the window-sill of our pantry this minute.

Come on, I'll show it to you." She got up heavily with her pan of apples, and trotted briskly, shaking the floor as she went, over to the stove. "But first just watch me put these on to cook so you'll know how." She set the pan on the stove, poured some water from the tea-kettle over the apples, and put on a cover. "Now come on into the pantry."

They entered a sweet-smelling, spicy little room, all white paint, and shelves which were loaded with dishes and boxes and bags and pans of milk and jars of preserves.

"There!" said Aunt Abigail, opening the window. "That's not so good as the one at school. This only tells when noon is."

Elizabeth Ann stared stupidly at the deep scratch on the window-sill.

"Don't you see?" said Aunt Abigail. "When the shadow got to that mark it was noon. And the rest of the time you guessed by how far it was from the mark. Let's see if I can come anywhere near it now." She looked at it hard and said: "I guess it's half-past four." She glanced back into the kitchen at the clock and said: "Oh pshaw! It's ten minutes past five!

Now my grandmother could have told that within five minutes, just by the place of the shadow. I declare! Sometimes it seems to me that every time a new piece of machinery comes into the door some of our wits fly out at the window! Now I couldn't any more live without matches than I could fly! And yet they all used to get along all right before they had matches. Makes me feel foolish to think I'm not smart enough to get along, if I WANTED to, without those little snips of pine and brimstone.

Here, Betsy, take a cooky. It's against my principles to let a child leave the pantry without having a cooky. My! it does seem like living again to have a young one around to stuff!"

Betsy took the cooky, but went on with the conversation by exclaiming, "HOW could ANY-body get along without matches? You HAVE to have matches."

Aunt Abigail didn't answer at first. They were back in the kitchen now.

She was looking at the clock again. "See here," she said; "it's time I began getting supper ready. We divide up on the work. Ann gets the dinner and I get the supper. And everybody gets his own breakfast. Which would you rather do, help Ann with the dinner, or me with the supper?"

Elizabeth Ann had not had the slightest idea of helping anybody with any meal, but, confronted unexpectedly with the alternative offered, she made up her mind so quickly that she didn't want to help Cousin Ann, and declared so loudly, "Oh, help YOU with the supper!" that her promptness made her sound quite hearty and willing. "Well, that's fine," said Aunt Abigail. "We'll set the table now. But first you would better look at that apple sauce. I hear it walloping away as though it was boiling too fast. Maybe you'd better push it back where it won't cook so fast. There are the holders, on that hook."

Elizabeth Ann approached the stove with the holder in her hand and horror in her heart. n.o.body had ever dreamed of asking her to handle hot things. She looked around dismally at Aunt Abigail, but the old woman was standing with her back turned, doing something at the kitchen table.

Very gingerly the little girl took hold of the handle of the saucepan, and very gingerly she shoved it to the back of the stove. And then she stood still a moment to admire herself. She could do that as well as anybody!

"Why," said Aunt Abigail, as if remembering that Betsy had asked her a question. "Any man could strike a spark from his flint and steel that he had for his gun. And he'd keep striking it till it happened to fly out in the right direction, and you'd catch it in some fluff where it would start a smoulder, and you'd blow on it till you got a little flame, and drop tiny bits of shaved-up dry pine in it, and so, little by little, you'd build your fire up."

"But it must have taken forEVER to do that!"

"Oh, you didn't have to do that more than once in ever so long," said Aunt Abigail, briskly. She interrupted her story to say: "Now you put the silver around, while I cream the potatoes. It's in that drawer--a knife, a fork, and two spoons for each place--and the plates and cups are up there behind the gla.s.s doors. We're going to have hot cocoa again tonight." And as the little girl, hypnotized by the other's casual, offhand way of issuing instructions, began to fumble with the knives and forks she went on: "Why, you'd start your fire that way, and then you'd never let it go out. Everybody that amounted to anything knew how to bank the hearth fire with ashes at night so it would be sure to last.

And the first thing in the morning, you got down on your knees and poked the ashes away very carefully till you got to the hot coals. Then you'd blow with the bellows and drop in pieces of dry pine--don't forget the water-gla.s.ses--and you'd blow gently till they flared up and the shavings caught, and there your fire would be kindled again. The napkins are in the second drawer."

Betsy went on setting the table, deep in thought, reconstructing the old life. As she put the napkins around she said, "But SOMETIMES it must have gone out ..."

"Yes," said Aunt Abigail, "sometimes it went out, and then one of the children was sent over to the nearest neighbor to borrow some fire. He'd take a covered iron pan fastened on to a long hickory stick, and go through the woods--everything was woods then--to the next house and wait till they had their fire going and could spare him a pan full of coals; and then--don't forget the salt and pepper--he would leg it home as fast as he could streak it, to get there before the coals went out. Say, Betsy, I think that apple sauce is ready to be sweetened. You do it, will you? I've got my hands in the biscuit dough. The sugar's in the left-hand drawer in the kitchen cabinet."

"Oh, MY!" cried Betsy, dismayed. "_I_ don't know how to cook!"

Aunt Abigail laughed and put back a strand of curly white hair with the back of her floury hand. "You know how to stir sugar into your cup of cocoa, don't you?"

"But how MUCH shall I put in?" asked Elizabeth Ann, clamoring for exact instruction so she wouldn't need to do any thinking for herself.

"Oh, till it tastes right," said Aunt Abigail, carelessly. "Fix it to suit yourself, and I guess the rest of us will like it. Take that big spoon to stir it with."

Elizabeth Ann took off the lid and began stirring in sugar, a teaspoonful at a time, but she soon saw that that made no impression.

She poured in a cupful, stirred it vigorously, and tasted it. Better, but not quite enough. She put in a tablespoonful more and tasted it, staring off into s.p.a.ce under bended brows as she concentrated her attention on the taste. It was quite a responsibility to prepare the apple sauce for a family. It was ever so good, too. But maybe a LITTLE more sugar. She put in a teaspoonful and decided it was just exactly right!

"Done?" asked Aunt Abigail. "Take it off, then, and pour it out in that big yellow bowl, and put it on the table in front of your place. You've made it; you ought to serve it."

"It isn't done, is it?" asked Betsy. "That isn't all you do to make apple sauce!"

"What else could you do?" asked Aunt Abigail.

"Well...!" said Elizabeth Ann, very much surprised. "I didn't know it was so easy to cook!"

"Easiest thing in the world," said Aunt Abigail gravely, with the merry wrinkles around her merry old eyes all creased up with silent fun.

When Uncle Henry came in from the barn, with old Shep at his heels, and Cousin Ann came down from upstairs, where her sewing-machine had been humming like a big bee, they were both duly impressed when told that Betsy had set the table and made the apple sauce. They p.r.o.nounced it very good apple sauce indeed, and each sent his saucer back to the little girl for a second helping. She herself ate three saucerfuls. Her own private opinion was that it was the very best apple sauce ever made.

After supper was over and the dishes washed and wiped, Betsy helping with the putting-away, the four gathered around the big lamp on the table with the red cover. Cousin Ann was making some b.u.t.tonholes in the shirt-waist she had constructed that afternoon, Aunt Abigail was darning socks, and Uncle Henry was mending a piece of harness. Shep lay on the couch and snored until he got so noisy they couldn't stand it, and Cousin Ann poked him in the ribs and he woke up snorting and gurgling and looking around very sheepishly. Every time this happened it made Betsy laugh. She held Eleanor, who didn't snore at all, but made the prettiest little tea-kettle-singing purr deep in her throat, and opened and sheathed her needle-like claws in Betsy's dress.

"Well, how'd you get on at school?" asked Uncle Henry.

"I've got your desk," said Elizabeth Ann, looking at him curiously, at his gray hair and wrinkled, weather-beaten face, and trying to think what he must have looked like when he was a little boy like Ralph.

"So?" said Uncle Henry. "Well, let me tell you that's a mighty good desk! Did you notice the deep groove in the top of it?"

Betsy nodded. She had wondered what that was used for.

"Well, that was the lead-pencil desk in the old days. When they couldn't run down to the store to buy things, because there wasn't any store to run to, how do you suppose they got their lead-pencils!" Elizabeth Ann shook her head, incapable even of a guess. She had never thought before but that lead-pencils grew in gla.s.s show-cases in stores.

"Well, sir," said Uncle Henry, "I'll tell you. They took a piece off the lump of lead they made their bullets of, melted it over the fire in the hearth down at the schoolhouse till it would run like water, and poured it in that groove. When it cooled off, there was a long streak of solid lead, about as big as one of our lead-pencils nowadays. They'd break that up in shorter lengths, and there you'd have your lead-pencils, made while you wait. Oh, I tell you in the old days folks knew how to take care of themselves more than now."

"Why, weren't there any stores?" asked Elizabeth Ann. She could not imagine living without buying things at stores.

"Where'd they get the things to put in a store in those days?" asked Uncle Henry, argumentatively. "Every single thing had to be lugged clear from Albany or from Connecticut on horseback."

"Why didn't they use wagons?" asked Elizabeth Ann.

"You can't run a wagon unless you've got a road to run it on, can you?"

asked Uncle Henry. "It was a long, long time before they had any roads.

It's an awful ch.o.r.e to make roads in a new country all woods and hills and swamps and rocks. You were lucky if there was a good path from your house to the next settlement."

"Now, Henry," said Aunt Abigail, "do stop going on about old times long enough to let Betsy answer the question you asked her. You haven't given her a chance to say how she got on at school."

"Well, I'm AWFULLY mixed up!" said Betsy, complainingly. "I don't know what I am! I'm second-grade arithmetic and third-grade spelling and seventh-grade reading and I don't know what in writing or composition.

We didn't have those."

n.o.body seemed to think this very remarkable, or even very interesting.