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CHAPTER V
MRS. PEABODY WRITES

The bad, little stubborn horse standing on the track at the mercy of the coming comet! That was Betty's thought as she sped down the road. In the hope that a sense of the danger might have reached the animal's instinct, she gave the bridle a desperate tug when she reached the horse, but it was of no use. Feverishly Betty set to work to unharness the little bay horse.

She was unaccustomed to many of the buckles, and the harness was stiff and unyielding. Working at it in a hurry was very different from the few times she had done it for fun, or with some one to manage all the hard places. She had finished one side when the whistle sounded again. To the girl's overwrought nerves it seemed to be just around the curve. She had no thought of abandoning the animal, however, and she set her teeth and began on the second set of snaps and buckles. These, too, gave way, and with a strong push Betty sent the buggy flying backward free of the tracks, and, seizing the bridle, she led the cause of all the trouble forward and into safety. For the third time the whistle blew warningly, and this time the noise of the train could be plainly heard. But it was nearly a minute before the glare of the headlight showed around the curve.

"Look what didn't hit you, no thanks to you," Betty scolded the horse, as a relief to herself. "I 'most wish I'd left you there; only then we never would get Uncle Dick home."

Poor Betty had now the hardest part of her task before her. She went back and dragged the buggy over the tracks, up to the horse and started the tedious business of harnessing again. She was not sure where all the straps went, but she hoped enough of them would hold together till they could get home. When she had everything as nearly in place as she could get them she climbed down into the pit.

To her surprise, her uncle's eyes were open. He lay gazing at the buggy lamp she had left.

"Uncle Dick," she whispered, "are you hurt? Can you walk? Because you're so big, I can't pull you out very well."

"Why, I can't be hurt," said her uncle slowly in his natural voice. "What's happened? Where are we? Goodness, child, you look like a ghost with a dirty face."

Betty was not concerned with her looks at that moment, and she was so delighted to find her uncle conscious that she did not feel offended at his uncomplimentary remark. In a few words she sketched for him what had happened.

"My dear child!" he ejaculated when she had told him, "have you been through all that? Why, you're the pluckiest little woman I ever heard of! No wonder you look thoroughly done up. All I remember is whistling for you to come ahead and then taking a step that landed me nowhere. In other words, I must have stepped into this pit. I'm not hurt – just a bit dazed."

To prove it, he got to his feet a trifle shakily. Declining Betty's assistance, he managed to scramble out of the pit, up on to the road. His head cleared rapidly, and in a few more moments he declared he felt like himself.

"In with you," he ordered Betty, after a preliminary examination of the harness which, he announced, was "as right as a trivet." "You've done your share for to-night. Go to sleep, if you like, and I'll wake you up in time to hear Mrs. Arnold send Ted out to take the horse around to the livery stable. It wouldn't do for me to do it – I might murder the owner!"

Betty leaned her head against her uncle's broad shoulder, for a minute she thought, and when she woke found herself being helped gently from the buggy.

"You're all right, Betty," soothed Mrs. Arnold's voice in the darkness. "I've worried myself sick! Do you know it's one o'clock?"

Mr. Gordon took the wagon around to the stable, and Betty, with Mrs. Arnold's help, got ready for bed.

Betty was fast asleep almost before the undressing was completed, and she slept until late the next morning. When she came down to the luxury of a special breakfast, she found only Mrs. Arnold in the house.

"Your uncle's gone out to post a letter," that voluble lady informed her. "Both boys have gone fishing again. I'm only waiting for their father to come home and straighten 'em out. Will you have cocoa, dearie?"

Before she had quite finished her breakfast, Mr. Gordon came back from the post-office, and then, as Mrs. Arnold wanted to go over to a neighbor's to borrow a pattern, he sat down opposite Betty.

"You look rested," he commented. "I don't like to think what might have happened last night. However, we'll be optimistic and look ahead. I've written to Mrs. Peabody, dear, and to-morrow I think you and Mrs. Arnold had better go shopping. I'll write you a check this morning. Agatha will want you to come, I know. And to tell you the truth, Betty, I've had a letter that makes me anxious to be off. I want to stay to see you safely started for Bramble Farm, and then I must peg away at this new work. Finished? Then let's go into the sitting room and I'll explain about the check."

The next morning Betty and Mrs. Arnold started for Harburton with what seemed to Betty a small fortune folded in her purse. Mrs. Arnold had shown her how to cash the check at the Pineville Bank, and she was to advise as to material and value of the clothing Betty might select; but the outfit was to represent Betty's choice and was to please her primarily – Uncle Dick had made this very clear.

Betty had learned a good deal about shopping in the last months of her mother's illness, and she did not find it difficult to choose suitable and pretty ginghams for her frocks, a middy blouse or two, some new smocks, and a smart blue sweater. She very sensibly decided that as she was to spend the summer on a farm she did not need elaborate clothes, and she knew, from listening to Mrs. Arnold, that those easiest to iron would probably please Mrs. Peabody most whether she did her own laundry work or had a washerwoman.

When the purchases came home Uncle Dick delighted Betty with his warm approval. For a couple of days the sewing machine whirred from morning to night as the village dressmaker sewed and fitted the new frocks and made the old presentable. Then the letter from Mrs. Peabody arrived.

"I will be very glad to have your niece spend the summer with me," she wrote, in a fine, slanting hand. "The question of board, as you arrange it, is satisfactory. I would not take anything for her, you know, Dick, and for old times' sake would welcome her without compensation, but living is so dreadfully high these days. Joseph has not had good luck lately, and there are so many things against the farmer… Let me know when to expect Betty and some one will meet her."

The letter rambled on for several pages, complaining rather querulously of hard times and the difficulties under which the writer and her husband managed to "get along."

"Doesn't sound like Agatha, somehow," worried Uncle Dick, a slight frown between his eyes. "She was always a good-natured, happy kind of girl. But most likely she can't write a sunny letter. I know we used to have an aunt whose letters were always referred to as 'calamity howlers.' Yet to meet her you'd think she hadn't a care in the world. Yes, probably Agatha puts her blues into her letters and so doesn't have any left to spill around where she lives."

Several times that day Betty saw him pull the letter from his pocket and re-read it, always with the puzzled lines between his brows. Once he called to her as she was going upstairs.

"Betty," he said rather awkwardly, "I don't know exactly how to put it, but you're going to board with Mrs. Peabody, you know. You'll be independent – not 'beholden,' as the country folk say, to her. I want you to like her and to help her, but, oh, well, I guess I don't know what I am trying to say. Only remember, child, if you don't like Bramble Farm for any good reason, I'll see that you don't have to remain there."

A brand-new little trunk for Betty made its appearance in the front hall of the Arnold house, and two subdued boys – for Mr. Arnold had returned home – helped her carry down her new treasures and, after the clothes were neatly packed, strap and lock the trunk. There was a tiny "over-night" bag, too, fitted with toilet articles and just large enough to hold a nightdress and a dressing gown and slippers. Betty felt very young-ladyish indeed with these traveling accessories.

"I'll order a riding habit for you in the first large city I get to," promised her uncle. "I want you to learn to ride – I wrote Agatha that. She doesn't say anything about saddle horses, but they must have something you can ride. And you'll write to me, my dear, faithfully?"

"Of course," promised Betty, clinging to him, for she had learned to love him dearly even in the short time they had been together. "I'll write to you, Uncle Dick, and I'll do everything you ask me to do. Then, this winter, do let's keep house."

"We will," said Uncle Dick, fervently, "if we have to keep house on the back of a camel in the desert!" At this Betty giggled delightedly.

Betty's train left early in the morning, and her uncle went to the station with her. Mrs. Arnold cried a great deal when she said good-bye, but Betty cheered her up by picturing the long, chatty letters they would write to each other and by assuring her friend that she might yet visit her in California.

Mr. Gordon placed his niece in the care of the conductor and the porter, and the last person Betty saw was this gray-haired uncle running beside the train, waving his hat and smiling at her till her car passed beyond the platform.

"Now," said Betty methodically, "if I think back, I shall cry; so I'll think ahead."

Which she proceeded to do. She pictured Mrs. Peabody as a gray-haired, capable, kindly woman, older than Mrs. Arnold, and perhaps more serene. She might like to be called "Aunt Agatha." Mr. Peabody, she decided, would be short and round, with twinkling blue eyes and perhaps a white stubby beard. He would probably call her "Sis," and would always be studying how to make things about the house comfortable for his wife.

"I hope they have horses and pigs and cows and sheep," mused Betty, the flying landscape slipping past her window unheeded. "And if they have sheep, they'll have a dog. Wouldn't I love to have a dog to take long walks with! And, of course, there will be a flower garden. 'Bramble Farm' sounds like a bed of roses to me."

The idea of roses persisted, and while Betty outwardly was strictly attentive to the things about her, giving up her ticket at the proper time, drinking the cocoa and eating the sandwich the porter brought her (on Uncle Dick's orders she learned) at eleven o'clock, she was in reality busy picturing a white farmhouse set in the center of a rose garden, with a hedge of hollyhocks dividing it from a scarcely less beautiful and orderly vegetable kingdom.

Day dreams, she was soon to learn.

CHAPTER VI
THE POORHOUSE RAT

"The next station's yours, Miss," said the porter, breaking in on Betty's reflections. "Any small luggage? No? All right, I'll see that you get off safely."

Betty gathered up her coat and stuffed the magazine she had bought from the train boy, but scarcely glanced at, into her bag. Then she carefully put on her pretty grey silk gloves and tried to see her face in the mirror of the little fitted purse. She wanted to look nice when the Peabodys first saw her.

The train jarred to a standstill.

Betty hurried down the aisle to find the porter waiting for her with his little step. She was the only person to leave the train at Hagar's Corners, and, happening to glance down the line of cars, she saw her trunk, the one solitary piece of baggage, tumbled none too gently to the platform.

The porter with his step swung aboard the train which began to move slowly out. Betty felt unaccountably small and deserted standing there, and as the platform of the last car swept past her, she was conscious of a lump in her throat.

"Hello!" blurted an oddly attractive voice at her shoulder, a boy's voice, shy and brusque but with a sturdy directness that promised strength and honesty.

The blue eyes into which Betty turned to look were honest, too, and the shock of tow-colored hair and the half-embarrassed grin that displayed a set of uneven, white teeth instantly prepossessed the girl in favor of the speaker. There was a splash of brown freckles across the snub nose, and the tanned cheeks and blue overalls told Betty that a country lad stood before her.

"Hello!" she said politely. "You're from Mr. Peabody's, aren't you? Did they send you to meet me?"

"Yes, Mr. Peabody said I was to fetch you," replied the boy. "I knew it was you, 'cause no one else got off the train. If you'll give me your trunk check I'll help the agent put it in the wagon. He locks up and goes off home in a little while."

Betty produced the check and the boy disappeared into the little one-room station. The girl for the first time looked about her. Hagar's Corners, it must be confessed, was not much of a place, if one judged from the station. The station itself was not much more than a shanty, sadly in need of paint and minus the tiny patch of green lawn that often makes the least pretentious railroad station pleasant to the eye. Cinders filled in the road and the ground about the platform. Hitched to a post Betty now saw a thin sorrel horse harnessed to a dilapidated spring wagon with a board laid across it in lieu of a seat. To her astonishment, she saw her trunk lifted into this wagon by the station agent and the boy who had spoken to her.

"Why – why, it doesn't look very comfortable," said Betty to herself. "I wonder if that's the best wagon Mr. Peabody has? But perhaps his good horses are busy, or the carriage is broken or something."

The boy unhitched the sorry nag and drove up to the platform where Betty was waiting. His face flushed under his tan as he jumped down to help her in.

"I'm afraid it isn't nice enough for you," he said, glancing with evident admiration at Betty's frock. "I spread that salt bag on the seat so you wouldn't get rust from the nails in that board on your dress. I'm awfully sorry I haven't a robe to put over your lap."

"Oh, I'm all right," Betty hastened to assure him tactfully. Then, with a desire to put him at his ease, "Where is the town?" she asked.

They had turned from the station straight into a country road, and Betty had not seen a single house.

"Hagar's Corners is just a station," explained the lad. "Mostly milk is shipped from it. All the trading is done at Glenside. There's stores and schools and a good-sized town there. Mr. Peabody had you come to Hagar's Corners 'cause it's half a mile nearer than Glenside. The horse has lost a shoe, and he doesn't want to run up a blacksmith's bill till the foot gets worse than it is."

Betty's brown eyes widened with amazement.

"That horse is limping now," she said severely, "Do you mean to tell me Mr. Peabody will let a horse get a sore foot before he'll pay out a little money to have it shod?"

The boy turned and looked at her with something smoldering in his face that she did not understand. Betty was not used to bitterness.

"Joe Peabody," declared the boy impressively, "would let his own wife go without shoes if he thought she could get through as much work as she can with 'em. Look at my feet!" He thrust out a pair of rough, heavy work shoes, the toes patched abominably, the laces knotted in half a dozen places; Betty noticed that the heel of one was ripped so that the boy's skin showed through. "Let his horse go to save a blacksmith's bill!" repeated the lad contemptuously. "I should think he would! The only thing that counts with Joe Peabody in this world is money!"

Betty's heart sank. To what kind of a home had she come? Her head was beginning to ache, and the glare of the sun on the white, dusty road hurt her eyes. She wished that the wagon had some kind of top, or that the board seat had a back.

"Is it very much further?" she asked wearily.

"I'll bet you're tired," said the boy quickly. "We've a matter of three miles to go yet. The sorrel can't make extra good time even when he has a fair show, but I aim to favor his sore foot if I do get dished out of my dinner."

"I'm so hungry," declared Betty, restored to vivacity at the thought of luncheon. "All I had on the train was a cup of chocolate and a sandwich. Aren't you hungry, too?"

"Considering that all I've had since breakfast at six this morning, is an apple I stole while hunting through the orchard for the turkeys, I'll say I'm starved," admitted the boy. "But I'll have to wait till six to-night, and so will you."

"But I haven't had any lunch!" Betty protested vigorously. "Of course, Mrs. Peabody will let me have something – perhaps they'll wait for me."

The boy pulled on the lines mechanically as the sorrel stumbled.

"If that horse once goes down, he'll die in the road and that'll be the first rest he's known in seven years," he said cryptically. "No, Miss, the Peabodys won't wait for you. They wouldn't wait for their own mother, and that's a fact. Don't I remember seeing the old lady, who was childish the year before she died, crying up in her room because no one had called her to breakfast and she came down too late to get any? Mrs. Peabody puts dinner on the table at twelve sharp, and them as aren't there have to wait till the next meal. Joe Peabody counts it that much food saved, and he's got no intentions of having late-comers gobble it up."

Betty Gordon's straight little chin lifted. Meekness was not one of her characteristics, and her fighting spirit rose to combat with small encouragement.

"My uncle's paying my board, and I intend to eat," she announced firmly. "But maybe I'm upsetting the household by coming so late in the afternoon; only there was no other train till night. I have some chocolate and crackers in my bag – suppose we eat those now?"

"Gee, that will be corking!" the fresh voice of the boy beside her was charged with fervent appreciation. "There's a spring up the road a piece, and we'll stop and get a drink. Chocolate sure will taste good."

Betty was quicker to observe than most girls of her age, her sorrow having taught her to see other people's troubles. As the boy drew rein at the spring and leaped down to bring her a drink from its cool depths, she noticed how thin he was and how red and calloused were his hands.

"Thank you." She smiled, giving back the cup. "That's the coldest water I ever tasted. I'm all cooled off now."

He climbed up beside her again, and the wagon creaked on its journey. As Betty divided the chocolate and crackers, unobtrusively giving her driver the larger portion, she suggested that he might tell her his name.

"I suppose you know I'm Betty Gordon," she said. "You've probably heard Mrs. Peabody say she went to school with my Uncle Dick. Tell me who you are, and then we'll be introduced."

The mouth of the boy twisted curiously, and a sullen look came into the blue eyes.

"You can do without knowing me," he said shortly. "But so long as you'll hear me yelled at from sun-up to sun-down, I might as well make you acquainted with my claims to greatness. I'm the 'poorhouse rat' – now pull your blue skirt away."

"You have no right to talk like that," Betty asserted quietly. "I haven't given you the slightest reason to. And if you are really from the poorhouse, you must be an orphan like me. Can't we be good friends? Besides, I don't know your name even yet."

The boy looked at the sweet girl face and his own cleared.

"I'm a pig!" he muttered with youthful vehemence. "My name's Bob Henderson, Miss. I hadn't any call to flare up like that. But living with the Peabodys doesn't help a fellow when it comes to manners. And I am from the poorhouse. Joe Peabody took me when I was ten years old. I'm thirteen now."

"I'm twelve," said Betty. "Don't call me Miss, it sounds so stiff. I'm Betty. Oh, dear, how dreadfully lame that horse is!"

The poor beast was limping, and in evident pain. Bob Henderson explained that there was nothing they could do except to let him walk slowly and try to keep him on the soft edge of the road.

"He'll have to go five miles to-morrow to Glenside to the blacksmith's," he said moodily. "I'm ashamed to drive a horse through the town in the shape this one's in."

Betty thought indignantly that she would write to the S. P. C. A. They must have agents throughout the country, she knew, and surely it could not be within the law for any farmer to allow his horse to suffer as the sorrel was plainly suffering.

"Is Mr. Peabody poor, Bob?" she ventured timidly. "I'm sure Uncle Dick thought Bramble Farm a fine, large place. He wanted me to learn to ride horseback this summer."

"Have to be on a saw-horse," replied Bob ironically. "You bet Peabody isn't poor! Some say he's worth a hundred thousand if he's worth a penny. But close – say, that man's so close he puts every copper through the wringer. You've come to a sweet place, and no mistake, Betty. I'm kind of sorry to see a girl get caught in the Peabody maw."

"I won't stay 'less I like it," declared Betty quickly. "I'll write to Uncle Dick, and you can come, too, Bob. Why are we turning in here?"

"This," said Bob Henderson pointing with his whip dramatically, "is Bramble Farm."