Betsy was given beautiful presents at that fifth birthday party. Besides the little glass pitcher, she got colored cups and saucers, a small silk handkerchief embroidered with forget-me-nots, pencils and puzzles and balls. But the nicest present she received was not the usual kind of present. It was the present of a friend. It was Tacy.
3
Supper on the Hill
THAT SUMMER they started having picnics. At first the picnics were not real picnics; not the kind you take out in a basket. Betsy’s father, serving the plates at the head of the table, would fill Betsy’s plate with scrambled eggs and bread and butter and strawberries, or whatever they had for supper. Tacy’s father would do the same. Holding the plate in one hand and a glass of milk in the other, each little girl would walk carefully out of her house and down the porch steps and out to the middle of the road. Then they would walk up the hill to that bench where Tacy had stood the first night she came. And there they would eat supper together.
Betsy always liked what she saw on Tacy’s plate. In particular she liked the fresh unfrosted cake which Tacy’s mother often stirred up for supper for her big family. Tacy knew that Betsy liked that cake, and she always divided her piece. And if baked beans or corn bread or something that Tacy liked lay on Betsy’s plate, Betsy divided that too.
While they ate they watched the sun setting behind Tacy’s house. Sometimes the west showed clouds like tiny pink feathers; sometimes it showed purple mountains and green lakes; sometimes the clouds were scarlet with gold around the edges. Betsy liked to make up stories, so she made up stories about the sunset. When she couldn’t think what to say next, Tacy helped her.
Betsy always put herself and Tacy in the stories. Like this:
One night two little girls named Betsy and Tacy were eating their supper on the hill. The hill was covered with flowers. They smelled sweet and were pink like the sky. The sky was covered with little pink feathers.
“I wish,” said Tacy, “that I had a feather for my hat.”
“Do you really?” asked Betsy.
“Certainly I do,” said Tacy.
“I’ll get you one,” said Betsy.
She stood up on the bench. They were through eating their suppers and had put their plates down in the grass. Betsy stood up on the bench and reached her hand out for a feather.
Tacy said, “You can’t reach that feather. It’s way over our house.”
Betsy said, “I can so.”
She reached and she reached; and the first thing she knew one of the feathers had come near enough for her to touch it. But when she took hold of it, instead of coming down, it began pulling her up.
Tacy saw what was happening, and she took hold of Betsy’s feet. She was just in time too. In another minute Betsy would have been gone. Up, up, up they went on the feather into the sky.
They floated over Tacy’s house. The smoke was coming out of the chimney where her mother had cooked supper. Far below were Tacy’s pump and barn and buggy shed. They looked strange and small.
Betsy and Tacy could see Betsy’s house too. They could look all the way down Hill Street. They could see Mr. Williams milking his cow. And Mr. Benson driving home late to supper.
Betsy said, “Wouldn’t our fathers and mothers be surprised, if they could look up here and see us sitting on a feather?” For by this time they had climbed up on the feather and were sitting on it side by side. They put their arms around each other so that they wouldn’t fall. It was fun sitting up there.
“I wish Julia and Katie could see us,” said Tacy. Julia and Katie were like most big sisters. They were bossy. Of course they were eight, but even if they were eight, they weren’t so smart. They didn’t know how to float off on a feather like Betsy and Tacy were doing.
“We’d better not let anyone see us, though,” Betsy decided. “They’d think it was dangerous. They wouldn’t let us do it again, and I’d like to do it every night.”
“So would I,” said Tacy. “Tomorrow night, let’s float down over the town and see Front Street where the stores are.”
“And the river,” said Betsy.
“And the park,” said Tacy. “Page Park with the white fence around it and the picnic benches and the swings.”
“We may even go there to eat our supper some night,” Betsy said. “Let’s go some night when your mother has baked cake.”
“Do you suppose we could hold on to our plates?” asked Tacy. “When we were riding on this feather?”
“We’d have to hold tight,” Betsy said, and they looked down. It made them dizzy to look down, they were so high up.
Tacy began to laugh. “We’d have to be careful not to spill our milk,” she said.
“We might spill our milk on Julia and Katie,” Betsy cried.
“I wouldn’t care if we did.”
“It would make them mad, though.”
And at the thought of spilling milk on Julia and Katie and making them mad, they laughed so hard that they tipped their feather over. It went over quick like a paper boat, and they started falling, falling, falling. But they didn’t fall too fast. It was delicious the way they fell…like a swallow sinking down, down, down…to the very bench where they had been sitting.
Only now the sunset had dimmed a little and the grass was cold with dew and down in their dooryards Betsy’s mother and one or two of Tacy’s brothers and sisters were calling, “Betsy!” “Tacy!” “Betsy!” “Tacy!”
Betsy and Tacy looked at each other with shining eyes.
“Don’t forget it’s a secret,” Betsy said, “that we can go floating off whenever we like.”
“I won’t forget,” said Tacy.
“Tomorrow night we’d better bring jackets, if we’re going down to Front Street. I felt a little cold sitting up on that feather, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Tacy, wriggling her bare toes. “I wished I was wearing my shoes.”
“Betsy!” called Betsy’s mother.
“Tacy!” called four or five of Tacy’s brothers and sisters.
“We’re coming,” called Betsy and Tacy, and they picked up their plates and glasses and came slowly down the hill.
That was the kind of picnic they went on at first. Later, when they grew older, they packed their picnics in baskets.
4
The Piano Box
BETSY AND Tacy soon had places which belonged to them. The bench on the hill was the first one. The second one, and the dearest for several years, was the piano box. This was their headquarters, their playhouse, the center of all their games.
It stood behind Betsy’s house, for it had brought that same piano on which Julia practiced her music lesson and which Betsy’s mother had played for Betsy’s party. It was tall enough to hold a piano; so of course it was tall enough to hold Betsy and Tacy. It wasn’t so wide as it was tall; they had to squeeze to get in. But by squeezing just a little, they could get in and sit down.
Julia and Katie couldn’t come in unless they were invited. This was Betsy’s and Tacy’s private corner. Betsy’s mother was a great believer in people having private corners, and the piano box was plainly meant to belong to Betsy and Tacy, for it fitted them so snugly. They decorated the walls with pictures cut from magazines. Tacy’s mother gave them a bit of rug for the floor. They kept their treasures of stones and moss in a shoe box in one corner.
One side of the piano box was open. As Betsy and Tacy sat in their retreat they had a pleasant view. They looked into the back yard maple, through the garden and the little grove of fruit trees, past the barn and buggy shed, up to the Big Hill. This was not the hill where the picnic bench stood. That was the little hill which ended Hill Street. Hill Street ran north and south, but the road which climbed the Big Hill ran east and west. At the top stood a white house, and the sun rose behind it in the morning.
Sitting in their piano box one day, Betsy and Tacy looked at the Big Hill. Neither of them had ever climbed it. Julia and Katie climbed it whenever they pleased.
“I
think,” said Betsy, “that it’s time we climbed that hill.” So they ran and asked their mothers.
Betsy’s mother was canning strawberries. “All right,” she said. “But be sure to come when I call.”
“All right,” said Tacy’s mother. “But it’s almost dinner time.”
Betsy and Tacy took hold of hands and started to climb.
The road ran straight to the white house and the deep blue summer sky. The dust of the road was soft to their bare feet. The sun shone warmly on Betsy’s braids and on Tacy’s bright red curls.
At first they passed only Betsy’s house and her garden and orchard and barn. They had gone that far before. Then they came to a ridge where wild roses bloomed in June. They had gone that far, picking roses. But at last each step took them farther into an unknown country.
The roadside was crowded with mid-summer flowers…big white daisies and small fringed daisies, brown-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace. On one side of the road, the hill was open. On the other it was fenced, with a wire fence which enclosed a cow pasture. A brindle cow was sleeping under a scrub oak tree.
“Just think!” said Betsy. “We don’t even know whose cow pasture that is.”
“We don’t even know whose cow that is,” said Tacy. “Of course it might be Mr. Williams’ cow.”
“Oh, no,” said Betsy. “We’ve come too far for that.”
They plodded on again.
The sun seemed warmer and warmer. The dust began to pull at their feet. They turned and looked back. They could look down now on the roofs of their homes, almost as they had done the night they rode the feather.
“We’ve come a dreadful way,” said Tacy. “If we were sitting in our piano box, we could see ourselves up here.”
“We would wonder who were those two children climbing the Big Hill.”
“Maybe we ought to stop,” said Tacy.
“Let’s go just a little farther,” Betsy said. But in a moment she pointed to a fat thorn apple tree on the unfenced side of the road. “That would be a nice place to stop,” she suggested. And they stopped.
Under the thorn apple tree was a deep, soft nest of grass. The two little girls sat down and drew their knees into their arms. They could see farther now than the treetops of Hill Street. They could see the roof of the big red schoolhouse where Julia and Katie went to school.
A squirrel whisked down the tree to look at them. A phoebe sang, “Phoebe! Phoebe!” over and over again. A hornet buzzed in the noonday heat, but did not come too near.
“Let’s live up here,” Betsy said suddenly.
Tacy started. “You mean all the time?”
“All the time. Sleep here and everything.”
“Just you and me?” Tacy asked.
“I think it would be fun,” said Betsy. She jumped up and found a broken branch. “This is the front of our house,” she said, laying it down.
Tacy brought a second branch and laid it so that the two ends left a space between. “This is our front door,” she said.
“This is our parlor,” said Betsy. “Where this stone is. Company can sit on the stone.”
“And this is our bedroom,” said Tacy. “If your mother will let us have her big brown shawl to sleep on, my mother will give us a pillow, I think.”
They worked busily, making their house.
“But Betsy,” said Tacy after a time. “What will we have to eat?”
Betsy looked thoughtfully about her. “Why, we’ll milk the cow,” she said.
“Do you think we could?”
“’Course we could. You hold him and I’ll milk him.”
“All right,” said Tacy. “Only not just yet. I’m not hungry yet.”
Betsy rolled her eyes upward. “We can have thorn apples too,” she said.
“That’s right,” said Tacy happily. “We can have thorn apple pie.”
They started picking thorn apples. But after a moment Betsy interrupted the task.
“And I like eggs,” she said.
Something firm and determined in her tone made Tacy look around hurriedly. Betsy was looking at a hen. It was a red hen with a red glittery breast. It had wandered up the hill from some back yard in Hill Street, perhaps. Or down the hill from the big white house. Betsy and Tacy could not tell. But Betsy was looking at the hen so firmly, there was no mistaking her intention.
“We’ll catch that hen,” said Betsy, “and keep him in a box. And whenever we get hungry he can lay us an egg.”
“That will be fine,” said Tacy.
They began to hunt for a box.
With great good fortune they found one. It was broken and old and water-soaked, but it was a box. It would hold a hen.
“Now,” said Betsy, “we have to catch him. I’ll say, ‘Here chickabiddie, chickabiddie! Here chickabiddie, chickabiddie!’ like I’ve heard my Uncle Edward do, and when he comes right up to my hand, you grab him.”
“All right,” said Tacy.
So Betsy called, “Here chickabiddie, chickabiddie! Here chickabiddie, chickabiddie!” just as she had heard her Uncle Edward do. And she called so well and made such inviting motions with her hand (as though she were scattering feed) that the hen came running toward her. And Tacy swooped down on it with two thin arms and Betsy bundled it up in two plump ones. Somehow, although it flapped and clawed, they got it into the box.
But the hen was very angry. It glared at them with furious little eyes and opened and shut its sharp little beak and made the most horrid, terrifying squawks.
“Lay an egg, chickabiddie! Lay an egg, chickabiddie!” said Betsy over and over.
But the hen didn’t lay a single egg.
About this time voices rose from Hill Street. “Betsy!” “Tacy!” “Betsy!” “Tacy!” One voice added, “Dinner’s ready.”
“I don’t believe he’s going to lay an egg,” said Tacy.
“Neither do I,” said Betsy. “He isn’t trained yet.”
“Maybe,” said Tacy, “our piano box is a nicer place to live after all.”
Betsy thought it over. The hen kept making that horrid, squawking sound. Probably there would be strawberry jam for dinner, left over from what went into the jars. And the piano box was a beautiful place.
“Our piano box,” she agreed, jumping up, “has a roof for when it rains.”
So they ran down the Big Hill.
“We climbed the Big Hill,” they shouted joyously to Julia and Katie who had been doing the calling.
“Pooh! We climb it often,” Julia and Katie said.
5
The First Day of School
WHEN SEPTEMBER came, Betsy and Tacy started going to school. Julia took Betsy and Katie took Tacy, on the opening day. Betsy’s mother came out on the steps of the little yellow house to wave good-by, and Tacy’s mother came out on her steps, too, along with Tacy’s brother Paul and Bee, the baby, who weren’t old enough yet to go to school.
Betsy was beaming all over her round rosy face. Her tightly braided pigtails, with new red ribbons on the ends, stuck out behind her ears. She wore a new plaid dress which her mother had made, and new shoes which felt stiff and queer.
Tacy’s mother had brushed the ringlets over her finger ’til they shone. They hung as neat as sausages down Tacy’s back. Tacy had a new dress, too; navy blue, it was, because she had red hair. But where Betsy was beaming, Tacy was frowning. She held her head down and dragged from Katie’s hand.
She was bashful; that was the trouble. Betsy had almost forgotten how bashful Tacy could be. Tacy wasn’t bashful with Betsy any more, but she was very bashful starting to school. “She’ll get over it,” said Katie, and they set off down Hill Street. The maples were beginning to turn yellow but the air was soft and warm. It smelled of the smoke from Grandpa Williams’ bonfire.
“We’re going to school, Grandpa Williams,” Betsy called to him.
“That’s fine,” said Grandpa Williams.
Tacy said nothing.
They went down Hill Street to the va
cant lot. It was knee deep with goldenrod and asters. It would have been fun to stop and play there, if they hadn’t been going to school. But they cut through by a little path and came out on Pleasant Street.
There on the corner on a big green lawn stood a chocolate-colored house. It had porches all around it, a tower on the side, and a pane of colored glass over the front door. It was a beautiful house but they had no time to look at it. They were busy going to school.
They crossed the street and turned the corner and came to a little store.
“That’s Mrs. Chubbock’s store,” Julia explained. “That’s where you go to buy gum drops and chocolate men if anyone’s given you a penny.”
“I wish that someone had given me a penny. Don’t you, Tacy?” Betsy asked.
Tacy didn’t answer.
Just beyond Mrs. Chubbock’s store, they came to the school yard. They came first to the boys’ yard, a big sandy yard with one tree. On the other side of the schoolhouse was the girls’ yard which looked much the same. But the girls’ yard had more trees. The schoolhouse was built of red brick trimmed with yellow stone. A steep flight of steps led up to the door.
At the top of the steps stood a boy, holding a big bell. When he rang that bell, Julia explained, it was time for school to begin.
“Oh, oh!” said Betsy. “I wish that I could be the one to ring the bell. Don’t you, Tacy?”
Tacy didn’t say a word.
The girls playing in the school yard came crowding around Julia and Katie to see their little sisters. Tacy shook her long red curls over her face. Between the curls her face was as red as a beet. She wouldn’t look up.
She didn’t look up until the boy at the head of the steps began to ring the bell. Ding, dong, ding, dong, went the bell. Tacy jumped like a scared rabbit and pulled at Katie’s hand. She pulled away from the schoolhouse because she didn’t want to go in. But Katie was stronger than Tacy; besides, she was the kind of person who never gave up. So she pulled harder than Tacy and got her to the Baby Room door.