Pratt Portraits/Chapter 1
AUNT BETSY lived with her mother, Old Lady Pratt, in a small house in Green Street. Small as the house was, she had never got over the impression that it was rather large, and very handsome. Forty-five years ago, before she lost her hearing, Aunt Betsy, then little Betty Pratt, had heard her mother pronounce it to be "in every respect superior" to the house they had left, though that had been "a very desirable residence in its day." It stood on a quiet little side street, where there were no pretentious neighbors to put it out of countenance; a street which slumbered on, so undisturbed by the bustle of the town a few blocks away that Aunt Betsy used sometimes to wonder whether it were not "a little hard o' hearin' too."
The "new house," as she still called it in her own thoughts, was long and rambling, presenting a narrow end to the street, upon which only the staircase windows looked, and then elongating itself surprisingly, away back into what would have been the backyard had not the wood-shed crowded itself up to the very fence. This obliged them to stretch their clothes-line across the long, narrow grass-plot, which followed the line of the house from back to front—a thing which was something of a trial to Aunt Betsy. She never thought it quite modest to hang out your undergarments in full view of the passers-by, and she had sometimes wished that a hedge might be planted across the space, just beyond the green side-door. But being very much in awe of her mother, she had never ventured to suggest any such innovation, and had contented herself with a persistent effort to have the sheets and tablecloths hung on the front line. As she did not assign any reason for this arrangement, it is no wonder that Eliza, Mrs. Pratt's "girl"—a maiden of some sixty odd summers,—regarded it as a "whim of Miss Betsy's," and was not always mindful of so arbitrary a rule.
Aunt Betsy lived in a very small world indeed, and her small world was entirely overshadowed by the strong and rather severe influence of her mother. She was but ten years old when the narrow barriers of her life were fixed irrevocably about her soul.
Only a few days after they moved into the new house the little daughter, the youngest of six children, slipped on the steep, narrow backstairs, and fell from top to bottom. From that time she became almost totally deaf. Whether at the same time her faculties were deadened, or whether they had become dull from want of incentive from without, no one knows. Certain it is that she was never the lively, intelligent child that Mrs. Pratt had every right to expect a child of hers to be.
She was now a tall, rather corpulent woman, with somewhat flabby cheeks, and little appearance of "backbone," wherein she presented a striking contrast to her small, upright mother, who even in her eighty-fifth year never leaned back in her chair, and whose bright black eyes could startle Betsy, with a look which seemed positively shrill to the poor old woman, in the eternal silence of her consciousness.
For she grew to be an old woman after a time. See saw her brothers and sisters leave their home, one after another, and make new homes for themselves; her father, who had been gentle with her, "departed hence," and, last of all, Ben, her favorite brother, took to himself a wife, and moved into Bliss Street.
Ben was a kindly soul, of few words, who had always got on better than any one else with Betsy. For instead of trying to talk to her, and getting impatient when she did not hear, he had a way of turning upon her now and then a broad, beaming smile as delightful as a whole conversation. On his wedding day he made Betsy a present, which remained her dearest possession as long as she lived. It was a large glass pin, containing a lock of her father's hair, and bordered with a row of small seed-pearls. On the golden back was inscribed, in old English letters.
B. P. from B. P.
A Parting Gift.
She wore it on Sundays, and when the minister came to tea, and at the christenings and weddings of her nieces and nephews. The rest of the time it reposed in a small satin-lined box, together with a carnelian ring which her mother thought she was too old to wear, and a stray onyx sleeve-button which had belonged to her father.
She felt sorry to have Ben go, and she told him so, in an unsteady voice that went to the kind fellow's heart; but then she supposed it was "natural enough," and she submitted, quite uncomplainingly, to the life alone with her sharp-eyed mother, which was to reach on and on into the future.
Happily, Betsy did not think much about the future. She was a placid soul, not realizing very clearly how much brighter other lives were than hers. She loved her canary-bird and the great "Malty" cat, Topsy by name, which attained to a fabulous age, living in undisputed possession of the one really comfortable chair in the sitting-room. And, above all, she found companionship in her flowers. Every one gave her slips and seedlings, and marvelled at her success in raising them. The sunny south window in the wood-shed was the nursery for these pets of hers, and not until they were fairly flowering were they promoted to the green wire stand in the sitting-room. The neighbors used to praise her skill and ask her advice, and even her mother would sometimes betray a pride in this "faculty" of Betsy's.
"Betsy," she would say, when Mrs. Baxter had come in with her knitting to pass the afternoon—"Betsy, you go out into the wood-shed and fetch in that little flower that blowed this mornin'. Mis' Baxter would like to see it, mebbe."
She did not succeed so well with the children growing up about her. She was a little shy of them, of their gay chatter, which she could not understand, and their childish egotism. They all loved Grandma, or, as she had now become, Great-grandmamma Pratt. She made such good jokes, and laughed, and was interested in all their doings. But Aunt Betsy just sat there with her worsted-work, and didn't hear when she was spoken to unless you quite shouted in her ear, and then she jumped in such a funny way, and seemed so flustered. Why, she couldn't even "make a cheese" for them, when the big hoops came into fashion, by twirling round and round and then suddenly sitting plump down on the floor with her skirts rising in billows about her. Aunt Emmeline could do it, and Aunt Martha, and 'most any body, but Aunt Betsy said it made her head giddy. Aunt Betsy was "no good."
Sometimes, when Betsy found how startling and troublesome these small specimens of humanity were, she was almost reconciled to being an old maid. She knew that her mother was a good deal mortified at having a child who had never "had an offer," and she felt hot and uncomfortable as often as she thought of a certain temptation which had assailed her many years ago. It was when the neighborhood was stirred and shocked by the sudden death of young Alfred Williams, an amiable though impecunious member of Green Street society, who had been left over, as it were, from among her sister Jane's admirers. Betsy was at that time about twenty-one years old, and Alfred had continued coming in pretty regularly to tea of an evening after the disappearance of Jane from the family circle. The goodness of the fare may have been an attraction, or perhaps he really liked Betsy, though he gave no sign. However that may have been, his visits had not passed unnoted by the neighbors, and the morning he died Mrs. Baxter came in to discuss the news.
"He was a very well favored young man, I am sure," said she, "and a great loss to our circle. Dr. Baxter says he has heard that his employers had entire confidence in him. And, by-the-way," she added, turning to Betsy, and raising her voice to its highest pitch, "I always thought that Alfred had rather a leaning to you, Betsy."
This speech threw Betsy into such an unwonted tremor and flutter that she blushed violently, and looked guilty of a hundred tender passages.
The moment their visitor had departed, Mrs. Pratt beckoned her daughter to her side on the sofa and asked, in her penetrating voice, "Did he ever say anything, Betsy?"
I fancy that Betsy, at the moment, would have given half her life's purchase to say "Yes"; but something within her which no limitations could stunt, a perfectly well developed New England conscience, compelled her to answer:
"No, Mother, he never said a word."
So the stigma of the unsought rested upon poor Betsy, and her last chance was lost of rising in her mother's esteem.
Before she was forty her mother put her into caps, which she never changed the fashion of. They were flat on top and very bunchy at the sides, with purple or green ribbons, which bobbed up and down when she moved her head. She got a habit of letting her head "joggle" a little as she bent over her worsted-work or tatting, much to the disgust of her mother, who tried to break her of it. But her mother's admonitions used to frighten her so that she lost control of herself in that peremptory little woman's presence, and her head only shook the harder. When she was alone in her room she could almost always get it steady again. She used to sit in front of the glass, seeing how still she could hold her head; and, curiously enough, this study of her own countenance, so new and yet so fascinating, developed a singular vanity in her which no one would have dreamed of suspecting. Especially of a Sunday, when she had on her "shot-silk" gown, with Brother Ben's pin fastening the broad flat collar, and when her best cap rested on her gray locks, she would look deprecatingly at her fat, amiable old face, and wonder if blue eyes were not "'most as pretty as black," and whether, if she had not been so deaf, she too might not have had offers like the other women she knew.
It was about this time—that is, when Aunt Betsy was well on in the fifties—that photography was first invented, and her brothers and sisters began coming in with little card pictures of themselves and their families. All the neighborhood was excited about these wonderful likenesses, to be got at three dollars a dozen, and so much more satisfactory than the old daguerreotypes, which one had to turn this way and that to see them at all. Even Grandma was at last persuaded to sit for hers, and it had been in such demand that two dozen had been ordered on the spot, and they had "gone off like hot cakes," as Brother Ben kept saying over and over again.
Aunt Betsy was never tired of studying these black-and-white representations of her relatives, and she secretly cherished a hope that some one would propose her sitting for hers. Nobody thought of such a thing, however, though one of her sisters gave her a small photograph album bound in purple cloth. This did not fill up very fast, as Grandma always had to have the new photographs, and not many people were prepared to squander two specimens on one family. She had her mother, looking unnaturally meek without her spectacles, and Brother Ben and Sister Harriet, besides the youngest babies in the family, whose mothers really could not refuse the lovely things to any one who asked for them. But this was all.
By and by the new sensation was a little past, and other subjects of interest came up, lacking pictorial illustration—subjects in which Aunt Betsy could not take so intelligent a part.
Now Aunt Betsy had always a little store of money, which her well-to-do brothers and sisters kept her supplied with. Her sister Harriet particularly was "quite a rich woman," as Old Lady Pratt took some pride in stating, and rode in her carriage; and not infrequently she made her sister Betsy a present of a quarter or even half a dollar. Betsy, who was a hospitable soul, used to wait upon their guests to the door, and say, in a tone of mild entreaty, no matter what the length of the visit might have been:
"Do come agin, when you can stay longer."
In response to which little formula Sister Harriet would often slip a bit of paper currency into her hand, and say;
"Thank you, Betsy. There! There's a trifle for your worsted-work."
And to that purpose the money was usually devoted; for, so small was Aunt Betsy's world, that even objects of charity seldom found their way into it, and the contribution box, with its mute appeal, never crossed her vision. Her mother had long ago decreed that "there was no sense in Betsy's goin' to meetin'. She could n't hear a syllable, and it was a shame to go to the Lord's House jest to stare about you."
So the money which might have swelled the missionary exchequer went to the purchase of very brilliant colored worsteds, which were always utilized in the following manner: Aunt Betsy would work on canvas, in black cross-stitch, the outline of hearts, ingeniously arranged, so that the lobe of one furnished the point for the next above it. These hearts were filled in, each with a different colored worsted, the small diamond-shaped spaces between being wrought in bright yellow silk, and thus pin-cushions and sofa pillows were made and sown broadcast throughout the family.
Betsy was also skilled in making tape trimming for underclothes, and she had a wooden frame on which she sometimes embroidered rather unsubstantial lace. But she much preferred to work in colors. "Colors are so speaking," as she used to say to herself. Her special pride was a sofa cushion she once worked for Sister Harriet, which contained three hundred and twenty-four hearts, no two of which were done in the same shade of worsted.
There came a time when Aunt Betsy felt that if she did not have her picture taken before she grew any older and shakier, it would be too great a disappointment; and one day, when her mother was gone to "pass the afternoon with Harriet," Aunt Betsy, feeling as though she were committing a theft, took three dollars from her upper bureau drawer, tied up the bandbox containing her best cap, and, arrayed in her "shot silk" gown and Brother Ben's pin, set out with palpitating heart for the photograph saloon. It was her first visit to the place, but she knew the entrance well.
The short walk was accomplished all too soon, and long before she had gathered courage she found herself confronted with the great glass case, filled with specimens of the photographer's art, on which she had often gazed with admiration. As she stopped a moment to study the stony or smirking features of her fellow-townsmen, she received an unexpected shock. In the very middle of the case, a strangely familiar countenance met her eye, and seemingly returned her gaze with the light of recognition. The photograph was enlarged to about ten times its normal size, and had thus become a startlingly realistic presentment of the original. It was no other than Sister Harriet, with her jet-black "false front," her white muslin "bosom," and the large diamond ring on the forefinger of her right hand. Betsy's heart almost stopped beating as she gazed, fascinated, into the familiar face; but its expression of fixed self-complacency could not, even to her guilty conscience, seem disapproving, and somewhat encouraged she respectfully took her leave of it, and began the ascent of the four flights of stairs which led to the photographic Parnassus.
Arrived, panting and perturbed, at the door, which opened directly at the head of the stairs, it was some time before she could make up her mind to go into the mysterious sanctuary where occult arts were practised; and besides, she kept telling herself that if she were to meet one of her acquaintances she should "sink through the floor." In this respect Fate was kind; for when at last she summoned courage to open the door and go in, she found the room untenanted. A strange uncanny odor greeted her entrance into the bare, empty room, and she looked about her with a vague uneasiness, half expecting to see a wicked magician emerge from the curtained glass door in one corner of the room. To her infinite relief, a meek-looking little man of a blond complexion came forward and politely offered his services.
"Is this Mr. Billings, the photographer?" she asked, in an awe-struck tone.
"At your service, madam," he replied. If only Aunt Betsy could have heard the deferential words and tone!
"I came to sit for my photograph."
"Certainly, madam; certainly. Will you step into the operating-room?"
"I am a little hard of hearing," said Aunt Betsy, with an inclination of the head; and perceiving, after several attempts, that she was indeed "a little hard of hearing," the little man shouted, in a voice that would have done credit to a mastodon: "The operating-room is this way."
The ghastly word struck terror to Aunt Betsy's soul, and her head began to shake nervously. "There must be some mistake," she faltered, though speaking with all the dignity she could command. "I wish to sit for my photograph."
"Certainly, madam; certainly. Just step this way, if you please"; and with a reassuring smile and a cheerful alacrity not to be resisted, he led the way into the adjoining room.
It was a dazzlingly bright apartment, with a bare yet cluttered look, which Aunt Betsy could not approve. There were chairs and tables in meaningless situations, pictured screens leaning helplessly against one another, and the evil-looking tripod mysteriously draped in green baize.
"Mr. Billings, the photographer," disappeared behind the screens, and left Aunt Betsy standing, dazed, in the middle of the room.
Suddenly the mastodon voice at her ear shouted: "Are you fond of foreign travel, ma'am? Here is a very handsome ruin for a background."
Turning, with a start, Aunt Betsy beheld a screen decorated with broken Corinthian columns and a Roman aqueduct. She thought it very fine, but before she had time to confess that she had never been out of Middlevale County, the obliging young man had whisked out a wonderful landscape, representing a majestic water-fall and several impossible trees.
"Perhaps you prefer a bit of nature, ma'am," he roared. That, too, was very beautiful, but both seemed to her a little ambitious for a person who had never seen a water-fall, nor dreamed of a Roman aqueduct. There was a familiar look about those Corinthian pillars, which she associated with Sister Harriet's picture; but then, it would not be presumptuous in Sister Harriet, who might have travelled in foreign parts any time these ten years, if it had not been for that dangerous ocean.
While she was pondering thus on the fitness of things, the indefatigable Mr. Billings produced another screen, covered with grape-vines such as grew on the wood-shed at home. And then, oh, wonder of wonders! he drew forth a wicket gate of the most picturesque description, and placed it alluringly before the grape-vine.
"There, madam!" he shouted, "if you would stand in a natural attitude behind that gate, with your right hand upon the top, as though about to pass through, I think you would find the effect artistic."
This was a long effort for the mastodon voice, but the word "artistic" was distinctly audible, and the young man placed his own hand upon the gate in a manner which appealed so strongly to Aunt Betsy's imagination that she assented timidly to the arrangement. Mr. Billings then kindly anticipated a difficulty which would have seemed to Aunt Betsy insurmountable, by showing her into a small closet, furnished with a looking glass and a gas-jet, where she could remove her bonnet and don her cap without "exposing" herself.
When she returned she found Mr. Billings handling some queer little slates resembling those which the children carried to school. He slipped one into the camera, and then, coming forward, proceeded to station his "subject" in front of the grape-vine, her right hand, in a black lace mitt, reposing upon the wicket gate, and her voluminous skirts spreading on either side. Then a tall iron stand was placed at her back, and a pair of cold prongs inserted under the purple ribbons behind each ear; after which Mr. Billings withdrew behind his camera and enveloped his head in the green baize. For a moment it seemed to Aunt Betsy almost as though he were trifling with her, but when he again emerged, with his face very red and his hair much dishevelled, there was a look of professional gravity and concentration upon his amiable countenance which dispelled such thoughts; and even when he tripped back to her and took her temples delicately between his thumbs and lightly chucked her under the chin to improve the pose, she felt convinced that the sudden flush which mounted to her brow was quite uncalled for.
Having moved off a little, cocked his head first on one side and then on the other, Mr. Billings again retreated beneath the green baize. In a moment he came smiling back, rubbing his hands together and murmuring: "Excellent, really excellent"; and then, in stentorian tones he shouted: "Would you be kind enough to moisten your lips, madam? Thank you. Now fix your eyes on that black spot on the wall. Look pleasant. Yes—very good, very good. Wink freely, but do not move your head."
Oh, the comfort of those iron tongs!
Vaguely wishing that she had such a pair at home, Aunt Betsy braced her untrustworthy head against them and stood in the glaring light, her eyes fixed upon the foolish black spot which danced perplexingly before her, her lips tightly closed, and a strange, unearthly look graven upon her countenance.
When release came, the poor old lady was almost too cramped to move or to feel the exultation natural to a released victim. Truly, the "operating-room" was aptly named, in those first stages of the black-and-white art.
But, a few minutes later, when Aunt Betsy paid her three dollars in advance and engaged to call for the photographs,—"Thank you, I would rather not give my address or have them sent home—I want to surprise my folks,"—a delicious feeling came over her of living in a wonderful age, and of being, at last, fully abreast of the times.
Some days of suppressed excitement passed, and at last the photographs were finished and delivered into her hands, and she knew, with a guilty knowledge, that the time had come for her to "surprise her folks." She hurried home, looking neither to the right nor to the left, the precious package buried in the depths of her pocket, entered the house surreptitiously as a burglar, and crept up to her own room. When the door was securely fastened, she took a long breath, and then proceeded, not to examine the pictures, but to put her bonnet and shawl carefully away, smooth her hair with a fine-tooth comb, and adjust her cap before the glass; then she tied on her black silk apron, and sat down by the open window, holding the little package in her hand.
It was a brilliant September day, and she sat looking out into the great horse-chestnut tree before the window. Her father had planted it forty-five years ago, for he liked to have horse-chestnuts "handy." He firmly believed that they would ward off rheumatism if carried in the pocket; and sure enough, as Aunt Betsy reflected, he had never had a twinge of rheumatism in the sixty odd years of his life!
In the horse-chestnut tree was a bird-cote in the shape of a white-steepled "meeting-house." A fat little sparrow, perched on the door-sill of this minute edifice, was chirping sharply. Aunt Betsy watched his agitated little body, but did not hear him chirp. In the yard Eliza, the "girl," was vigorously pumping, causing a stream of water to gush noisily into the pail, and Aunt Betsy could see the neighbor's dog barking vociferously at a cat in a tree. But none of these sounds penetrated the heavy silence in which she was wrapped about. Only the beating of her pulse throbbed in her ears, and in a nervous tremor she delayed opening the package, much as a young girl might delay breaking the seal of a love-letter when once she had it in secure possession. So alike are sensations from totally different causes, and sensations of any kind being rare in Aunt Betsy's experience, she might well linger a little over this one.
But at last she had drawn one of the little cards from the package, and held it in her hand, and as the pleasant south wind fluttered her cap ribbons, and the afternoon sun shone kindly upon her, she looked shyly at her pictured countenance, and a sense of deep satisfaction transfused itself through her.
There was no mistaking the contour of her best cap; and as for the breastpin, she could almost count the seed-pearls in the rim, while the "artistic effect" of that wicket-gate seemed to her "too pretty for anything." The rigidity of the attitude quite escaped her uncritical eye, and she failed to observe that the accustomed look of mild benevolence which sat so well on her plain face was here turned to an expression of almost savage intensity, as much out of place as a frown on a rabbit's countenance.
Yes, Aunt Betsy's dream was realized. She held in her hand twelve unmistakable likenesses of her "Sunday things," and they gave her as much pleasure as the most brilliant colored paper-doll had caused her when she was a little girl in the old house, and could hear the delightful rattle of the blue and red and yellow papers. Even a bit of color was not lacking to her new treasures, for the photographer had touched the cheeks of the counterfeit Aunt Betsy with spots of vivid carmine.
A spot almost as bright glowed in each cheek of the flesh-and-blood Aunt Betsy as she descended into the sitting-room, not, indeed, to "surprise her folks." She could not yet rid herself of the feeling of guilt connected with the whole transaction, and she dreaded lest her mother should call her a fool, as she had promptly done whenever her docile daughter had committed any mild indiscretion, such as wishing for a "false front" when her hair became gray, or wondering whether the minister, when he came to tea, might not prefer fancy tarts, such as Sister Harriet's new-fangled cook made, to the old-fashioned mince-pies.
"Betsy, you're a fool!" when pronounced by Old Lady Pratt, never failed to penetrate the muffled hearing like a gun-shot, and Betsy used to wish within herself that her mother would put it a little differently.
Poor Aunt Betsy had been so promptly put down in her life that she had never before had the sensation of committing an out-and-out indiscretion. Now, at least, she had it, and her mother's quick eye instantly detected the unwonted flush.
"Betsy," cried the alert old lady, "come here. Let me feel your pulse! Goodness me, child! You're in a high fever! You've caught a cold! You ain't been settin' by an open window?"
The gray-haired culprit admitted that she had.
"Betsy, you're a fool! You al'ays was full of romantic notions about open windows. You'll jest go right straight to bed, and drink a cup of pennyr'yal tea. Do you hear?"
Betsy heard. Old Lady Pratt's reproofs were always audible, even to her, and her commands were not to be questioned. So Aunt Betsy was packed away to bed, while the exultation died out within her, and the old patient compliance returned in its place. She lay there in a gentle apathy, watching the last ray of sunlight die away on the flowered wall, and waiting resignedly for the unsavory dose.
Presently the door opened, and the straight little figure of Mrs. Pratt entered, well lighted up by the candle she held in one hand, while in the other she bore a smoking bowl of tea. Her own cheeks were somewhat flushed from bending over the fire. She set the candle on the high bureau, tasted the tea herself once or twice, and then, without much ceremony, poured the scalding draught down her patient's throat; after which she felt her pulse again, and asked to see her tongue.
"I declare for 't" she cried, "if you're not better a'ready! There never was anything like my pennyr'yal tea for stoppin' a cold off short! Now you turn over and go right to sleep, and you'll be as good as new in the mornin'."
The old lady meant kindly; but what words could sound kind, spoken in a high falsetto? Poor Aunt Betsy! I wonder if she herself realized what she missed in never hearing the voices of her fellow-creatures in their natural tones. No one could ever speak tenderly to her, nor soothingly, nor confidentially. All those softer accents, so much more eloquent than words, must be forever lost to her; she could only know the voices of her friends in the harsh, strained pitch which they must take to reach her ears.
Days and weeks went by after Betsy's wonderful cure and the secret of her escapade was still her own. She shrank more and more from confessing what she had done, and yet she was tortured by the feeling that it had been a "dreadful waste of money," if she was going to keep those twelve photographs for herself. She sometimes thought of confessing the whole thing to kind Brother Ben, or of boldly offering a "picture" to Sister Harriet; but, at the very suggestion, her whole family seemed to rise before her in scorn and derision, and she seemed to hear a chorus of brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, joining in her mother's piercing denunciation.
"You're a fool, Betsy! you're a fool!"
She began to have a distaste for the things, and to entertain daring thoughts of putting them all into the kitchen fire. But she knew that would be an abominably weak and wicked proceeding, and she was not sufficiently hardened to do it.
It was really wearing upon her. She did not sleep, as she had been used, from ten o'clock at night till five or six in the morning; she lost her appetite little by little, and her grateful smile came less readily in response to unintelligible remarks addressed to her by afternoon callers. Old Lady Pratt confided to Harriet that she was "afeard Betsy was goin' to break up early; she seemed to be losing her sperit."
Poor Betsy, as though she had ever had any spirit to lose!
So nearly three months wore away, and Aunt Betsy began to fear that she had sacrificed her peace of mind for good and all.
One Sunday afternoon in December, Brother Ben came in with his youngest daughter Hattie, a girl about twelve years old. They were both lightly sprinkled with snow, and after tramping about a good deal on the oil-cloth in the entry, they came smiling in, bringing a gust of cold air with them.
"Well, Mother; well Betsy," Ben began, immediately. "Hattie's got a surprise for you. She's been having her picture taken again, all dressed up in her Red Riding-hood cape. She looks mighty cute; you just see if she don't."
And Hattie, proud and pleased, exhibited the picture to her admiring elders. The slender, hooded form in the photograph was standing behind the little wicket gate which Aunt Betsy knew so well, and Grandma was much taken with it.
"Well, I never!" she cried. "How cute it is, to be sure! Who but Hattie Pratt would have thought of being taken comin' through a gate?"
And impressed with the weight of her own remark, she repeated it in her shrillest tones to Betsy.
"Who indeed?" thought Betsy, longing, but not daring to lay claim to equal brilliancy.
"It was a pretty idea," she said, meekly. "I wish you'd give me one, Hattie, to put in my photograph album.'
Hattie looked up brightly at her deaf old aunt, and said, with decision, "I don't give these away; I only exchange."
"But, Hattie," said her father, "you'd give your Aunt Betsy one! You know she never had her picture taken."
"Then she'll have to, if she wants mine," said the pert little person.
"What did she say?" asked Aunt Betsy, a great resolution already half formed in her mind.
"She says you'd better have your own picture taken before you go askin' other people for theirs," said Grandma, not ill-pleased to hear Betsy snubbed for her unreasonableness in wanting a picture all to herself.
It was now or never, and Betsy knew it.
"Very well," she said, rising, and looking an inch taller. "I'll exchange with you." And she marched out of the room, erect and determined leaving her family speechless with astonishment.
Without giving herself time to think of consequences, she seized her twelve photographs, and hurried back to the sitting-room.
"There!" she said, rather explosively, "you can have your choice, Hattie."
Old Lady Pratt, doubting her senses, seized one of the pictures, looked at it, then looked at Betsy. The likeness was unmistakable; it was "Betsy all over," as she admitted to herself. But she was so divided in her mind between horror at her daughter's duplicity, and admiration of her "smartness," that she let Ben have the first word. He came nobly to the rescue.
"Well, Betsy!" he cried. "If you ain't a sly one! Think of that, Mother. To go all by herself, as independent as a chipmunk, and have her picture taken! Well, you have given us a surprise, Betsy!"
Betsy heard nothing of this, and not daring to look at her mother and Ben, she watched Hattie, who was gazing with the greatest interest at the picture. Presently Hattie looked up into her aunt's troubled face, and with a sudden intuition, perhaps the first movement of genuine sympathy she had ever known, the girl took in the situation. She jumped up, and giving her aunt a hearty kiss, cried:
"Thank you so much, Aunt Betsy. It's ever so good. I believe I'd rather have a picture of you than of 'most any body—that I haven't got," she added, truthfully.
Aunt Betsy heard every word of this kind little scream, but she was almost too embarrassed to answer.
"Why, Hattie," she stammered, "I'm so glad! I did n't know"
"Oh! you're a sly one," roared Ben. "I always said you were a sly one, and didn't tell all you knew! Isn't she a sly one, Mother?"
"Well," screamed Mrs. Pratt, "it was mighty clever of you to be taken behind that wicket gate, I must say. And your shot silk has come out beautifully."
Aunt Betsy felt very much as a released convict must feel if met by a band of music and a delegation of distinguished citizens, announcing to him that he had been elected mayor of the city. From the very start she perceived that those photographs were to be the success of her life. Each member of the family insisted upon having one, and all the neighbors admired them and offered to exchange. Aunt Betsy's album filled up fast. Brother Ben had two dozen more struck off at his own expense, and for days and days Aunt Betsy lived in a delightful flutter of excitement. The most indolent of their visitors would exert herself to scream, "Betsy, I hear you've been sitting for your picture"; and not a day went by without an exhibition of the ever dwindling number.
The crowning moment came on New Year's Day, when Brother Ben arrived, bringing a mysterious flat parcel, which he presented to his mother, with a roguish side glance at Betsy. She looked on with lively curiosity, but little prepared for what was coming. There, in a shiny black frame, was an enormously enlarged copy of Betsy's picture, in which the pin seemed almost life-size, and the expression of stern determination was fairly appalling.
Perhaps Old Lady Pratt had never felt so fond and proud of Betsy since she was a bright little child like other children, as she did when she gazed upon that "handsome picture."
It was hung up in the best parlor, over the hair-cloth sofa; and later in the day, when mother and daughter stood side by side before it, the sharp little old lady laid her hand with an affectionate pressure on the other's shoulder, and said: "That's about the smartest thing you ever did, Betsy, I declare for 't."
And I think Betsy went to bed that night the happiest old woman in Green Street.