She dropped off to sleep.
And next morning when she woke up she was ten years old.
Betsy, Tacy, and Tib were ten years old at last.
2
Ten Years Old
IN THE MORNING it seemed thrilling to be ten years old.
Betsy jumped out of bed and ran to the window. The lawn, the road, the branches of the trees, and Tacy’s roof across the street were skimmed with snow. But she knew it could not last, in April.
“Happy birthday!” said Julia, struggling into her underwear beside the warm chimney which angled up from the hard coal heater downstairs. She spoke politely. She did not pound Betsy on the back as on other birthday mornings. But Betsy suspected that Julia was thinking more of the dignity of her own twelve years than of Betsy’s ten.
Betsy answered carelessly, “That’s right. It is my birthday.”
She dressed and went humming carelessly down the stairs.
Her father pounded her plenty. And he held her while Margaret pounded. She was pounded and tickled and kissed. Of course it was hard to act careless during such a rumpus, but after it was over Betsy acted careless again. She crooked her finger when she lifted her milk glass, but just a little; she was afraid that Julia would notice.
“Don’t you feel well, Betsy?” asked her mother.
“Why, yes,” said Betsy. “I feel fine.”
“She’s very quiet,” said her father. “It’s the weight of her years.”
Betsy was startled until she saw that her father was joking. Her father was a great one to joke.
The pounding and joking showed that her birthday was remembered but still nobody mentioned asking Tacy and Tib to supper. Betsy got ready for school slowly. When her father left for the shoe store, she was still dawdling over her coat and stocking cap, tangling her mitten strings, and losing her rubbers. She gave her mother plenty of chance to bring up the subject. But it didn’t do any good.
At last Betsy said, “Hadn’t I better ask Tacy and Tib over to supper, Mamma?”
“Not today,” answered Mrs. Ray. She sounded for all the world as though any other day would do as well.
“Mamma’s pretty busy today. You know Friday’s cleaning day,” Julia said importantly.
Cleaning day! Betsy could hardly believe her ears.
She tried to act as though it didn’t matter.
“When I was only nine I would have teased,” she thought.
She kissed her mother good-by and went humming out the door and across the street to Tacy’s.
Mrs. Kelly came to the door and said, “Isn’t this your birthday, Betsy?”
“Indeed it is,” said Betsy, stressing the “indeed” and looking hard at Tacy. Her manner was light and careless, very grown-up.
Mrs. Kelly did not seem to notice the grownupness. She took Betsy’s round red cheeks in her hands and said, “It’s five years today that you and Tacy have been friends.”
“Goodness!” said Betsy, forgetting to act old for a minute because she felt so old.
But she and Tacy acted old all the way down Hill Street, and even more so after they had cut through the vacant lot to Pleasant Street and called for Tib at her beautiful chocolate-colored house. It was fun to watch Tib’s round blue eyes grow rounder as she listened to them talk.
“Will you both come to tea some day this week?” Betsy asked carelessly.
“Yes indeed,” said Tacy. “I’d love to. Wouldn’t you, Tib?”
“Um-hum,” said Tib.
“When I get some money,” said Betsy, “I’m going to buy some nail powder. I’m going to start buffing my nails. I think we all ought to.”
“So do I,” said Tacy. “I think my sister Mary would lend us a little nail powder, maybe.”
“Do you really?” asked Betsy.
“Yes indeed,” said Tacy. Tacy loved to say “indeed.”
Tib didn’t know how to talk in the new way. She hadn’t learned yet. But she tried.
“I borrowed my mamma’s nail powder once and I spilled it,” she said.
Betsy and Tacy hurried over that.
“We must buy some hair pins too,” said Betsy. “Of course we’re not quite ready to put up our hair, but we shall be soon.”
“I can hardly wait to get my skirts down,” Tacy said. “Ankle length is what I prefer.”
“What do you prefer, Tib?” asked Betsy.
“I don’t know what ‘prefer’ means, exactly,” said Tib. “Betsy, do you think I still look like a baby?”
Betsy glanced at her and hastily glanced away.
“Not so much as you did yesterday,” she said.
“Try to talk like us, Tib,” Tacy advised. “It’s easy when you get started.”
They talked grown-up all the way to school; and they kept on doing it coming home from school at noon, and going back after dinner, and coming home again at three o’clock.
On that trip, when they reached the corner by Tib’s house, Betsy felt a strong return of that queer feeling inside. The snow was melting and the ground was slushy and damp. It wasn’t a good time for playing out. Today of all days, she should be asking Tacy and Tib to come to her house. And her mother had told her not to!
Tacy and Tib acted embarrassed. Tacy looked at Tib and Tib looked at Tacy and said, “Why don’t you come into my house to play?”
“I’d like to. Wouldn’t you, Betsy?” Tacy asked.
“There are some funny papers you haven’t seen,” said Tib. “Is it all right for us to look at them, now we are ten?”
“Of course,” said Tacy hastily. “Lots of grown people read the funny papers. Don’t they, Betsy?”
“Oh, of course!” Betsy said.
So they went into Tib’s house where they always loved to go; it was so beautiful with a tower on the front and panes of colored glass in the front door. They sat on the window seat and looked at the funny papers, crooking their fingers when they turned the pages. Betsy began to feel better. She had an idea.
“I think we’re too old,” she said, “to call each other by our nicknames any more. I think we ought to start using our real names. For instance, you should call me Elizabeth.”
“Yes,” said Tacy. “And you should call me Anastacia.”
“And you should call me Thelma,” said Tib. “Hello, Anastacia! How-de-do, Elizabeth?”
The big names made them laugh. Whenever they said “Anastacia” they laughed so hard that they rolled on the window seat.
Matilda, the hired girl, came in from the kitchen.
“What’s going on in here?” she asked, looking cross. Matilda almost always looked cross.
“Anastacia and Elizabeth are making me laugh,” said Tib.
“No. It’s Thelma acting silly,” cried Betsy and Tacy.
“Where are all those folks?” asked Matilda, looking around. Betsy, Tacy, and Tib shouted at that.
They had such a good time that Betsy almost forgot how strange it was not to have Tacy and Tib come to supper on her most important birthday. But when the time came to go home she remembered.
“Tacy,” she said, as they walked through the vacant lot, “people don’t make as much fuss about birthdays after other people grow up. Have you noticed that?”
“Um—er,” said Tacy. She acted embarrassed again.
“Not that it matters, of course,” said Betsy. “It doesn’t matter a bit.”
It did, though.
It was dusk when she reached home but no lamps had been lighted except in the kitchen where Mrs. Ray was bustling about getting supper. She wore a brown velvet bow in her high red pompadour and a fresh brown checked apron tied around her slender waist.
Julia was scrubbing Margaret at the basin. And Julia too looked very spic and span.
“Clean up good for supper, Betsy,” her mother said.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Betsy.
“Mamma,” said Julia, “don’t you think Betsy ought to put on her new plaid hair ribbons?”
“Yes, that’s a
good idea,” said Mrs. Ray.
“After all, it’s her birthday,” said Julia, and Margaret clapped her wet hand over her mouth and said, “Oh! Oh!” Margaret was only four years old.
“Probably she thinks Julia is giving something away. Probably she thinks I don’t know we’ll have a birthday cake,” thought Betsy. And then she thought, “Maybe we won’t. Things get so different as you get older.” She felt gloomy.
But she scrubbed her face and hands. And Julia helped her braid her hair and even crossed the braids in back; they were just long enough to cross. Julia tied the plaid bows perkily over Betsy’s ears.
When she was cleaned up, Betsy went into the back parlor. The fire was shining through the isinglass windows of the hard coal heater there. It looked cozy and she would have enjoyed sitting down beside it with a book. But her mother called out:
“Betsy, I borrowed an egg today from Mrs. Rivers. Will you return it for me, please?”
“Right now?” asked Betsy.
“Yes, please,” her mother answered.
“Of all things!” said Betsy to herself.
It seemed to her that she might return the egg tomorrow. It seemed to her that Julia might do the errands on this particular day. It was a nuisance getting into outdoor clothes when she had just taken them off.
“What must I wear?” she asked, trying not to show she was cross because it was her birthday.
“You’ll only need your coat and rubbers. Go out the back way,” her mother said.
So Betsy put on her coat and rubbers and took an egg and went out the back way.
Mrs. Rivers lived next door, and she was very nice. She had a little girl just Margaret’s age, and a still smaller girl, and a baby. The baby was sitting in a high chair eating his supper and Mrs. Rivers asked Betsy to stay a moment and watch him. He was just learning how to feed himself and he was funny.
Betsy stayed and watched him. And she said “indeed” and “prefer” to Mrs. Rivers and that cheered her up a little. Mrs. Rivers kept looking out of the window. At last she said:
“I’m afraid your mother will be expecting you now. Good-by, dear. Go out the back way.”
So Betsy went out the back way and climbed the little slope which led to her house. The ground was slippery, for the melted snow had frozen again. The stars above the hill were icy white.
She went into the house dejectedly. There was no one in the kitchen. The door which led to the dining room was closed.
“They’ve started supper without me. On my birthday!” Betsy thought. She felt like sitting down and crying.
She opened the dining room door and then stopped. No wonder she stopped! The room was crowded with children. They called, “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise on Betsy!”
Betsy’s father stood there with his arm around Betsy’s mother and both of them were smiling. Tacy and Tib rushed over to Betsy and began to pound her on the back, and Julia ran into the front parlor and started playing the piano. Everybody sang:
“Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday, dear Betsy,
Happy birthday to you!”
“It’s a surprise party,” cried Margaret, red-faced from joyful suspense.
It was certainly a surprise.
There were ten little girls at the party because Betsy was ten years old. Ten little girls, that is, without Margaret who was too little to count. Betsy made one, and Julia made two, and Tacy made three, and Katie made four, and Tib made five, and a little girl named Alice who lived down on Pleasant Street made six, and Julia’s and Katie’s friend Dorothy who also lived down on Pleasant Street made seven, and three little girls from Betsy’s class in school made eight, nine, and ten.
There were ten candles on the birthday cake, but before they had the birthday cake they had sandwiches and cocoa; and along with the birthday cake they had ice cream; and after the birthday cake they played games in the front and back parlors. Betsy’s father played with them; Betsy’s mother played the piano for Going to Jerusalem; and when Betsy’s father was left without a chair how everybody laughed!
Betsy and Tacy and Tib played harder than anyone. They forgot to crook their fingers and to say “indeed” and “prefer.” They forgot to call one another Elizabeth and Anastacia and Thelma. In fact, after that day, they never did these things again.
But just the same, in the midst of the excitement, Betsy realized that she was practically grown-up.
Flushed and panting from Blind Man’s Buff, her braids loose, and her best hair ribbons untied, she found her mother.
“Mamma,” she said, “this is the first party I ever had at night.”
“That’s right,” her mother answered. “The children are staying until nine o’clock, and Papa is taking them home.”
“Is it because I’m ten years old?” asked Betsy.
“Of course it is,” her mother answered.
Betsy rushed to find Tacy and Tib. She drew them into a corner.
“You notice,” she whispered proudly, “that we’re having this party at night.”
“What about it?” asked Tib.
“What about it?” repeated Betsy. “Why, it’s a grown-up party.”
“It’s practically a ball,” said Tacy.
“Oh,” said Tib.
“Of course,” she pointed out after a moment, “tomorrow isn’t a school day.”
Tib always mentioned things like that. But Betsy and Tacy liked her just the same.
3
The King of Spain
THE FIRST THING Betsy and Tacy and Tib did after they were ten years old was to fall in love. They all fell in love at once … with the same person too. It happened this way.
Betsy was eating her supper. She was hurrying in order to get out to play, for on May evenings all the children of Hill Street gathered in the street to play. They played Run-Sheep-Run and Prisoners’ Base and Pom-Pom-Pullaway and many other games, until the sun finally set behind Tacy’s house and the first stars appeared in the sky. Betsy loved this wild hour of play and she usually thought about it all through supper, but tonight her attention was caught by something her father was saying.
“Sixteen years old. It’s pretty young to be a king.”
“Has he had his birthday yet?” Betsy’s mother asked.
“Not yet. But they’re making great preparations. You see, he comes to the throne that day.” Mr. Ray folded the paper and handed it to his wife. “There’s his picture. Handsome boy, isn’t he?”
Julia and Betsy jumped up and looked over their mother’s shoulder. They saw the picture of a slim dark boy on horseback. The line beneath the picture read:
“Alphonso the Thirteenth.”
“Do you mean he’s living some place? Right now?” asked Betsy.
“Yes,” her mother answered. “He lives in Spain.”
“That country we had the war with,” said Julia. “It’s your turn to wipe the dishes, Betsy.”
“It is not,” said Betsy. “I wiped them last night.”
“But that was making up for the night before, when I did them for you, while you and Tacy practiced the ‘Cat Duet.’”
Betsy could not deny it.
“And tonight,” said Julia, “I have to practice my recitation.”
There was lots of practicing going on, for there was to be a big Entertainment on the Last Day of School.
“All right,” said Betsy. She didn’t mind staying in to wipe dishes as much as usual. It was a chance to ask her mother about the King of Spain.
She had known, of course, that there were kings and queens outside of fairy tales and histories. But she had never thought much about them before. It was strange to think now of a real live boy being a king.
She listened eagerly while her mother told her all she knew about him.
His father had died many years before; his mother, the Queen, had been acting as regent; but on May seventeenth he would be sixteen years old, and then he would ascend the thro
ne and rule the country himself.
“Madrid … that’s the capital of Spain … is turned inside out with excitement,” Betsy’s mother said.
Betsy felt turned inside out with excitement too. After the towels had been hung to dry, she ran into the back parlor to find the newspaper. Fortunately her father had finished with it; he had gone to work in the garden. Clutching the paper, Betsy ran outdoors.
Games had begun but Tacy was not playing. She was sitting on the hitching block waiting for Betsy. The sun was low and the new leaves on the trees shimmered in a golden light.
“Tacy!” cried Betsy. “Did you know there was a king in Europe … alive and everything … only fifteen years old?”
“I’ve heard about him,” Tacy said.
“Here’s a picture of him,” said Betsy. She sat down beside Tacy on the hitching block and they looked at the picture together.
“Just think!” said Betsy. “We’re sitting here on the hitching block and at this very minute he’s somewhere, doing something.”
“Maybe he’s eating his supper,” Tacy said.
“Maybe he’s out horseback riding, like he was when this picture was taken.”
“Maybe he’s saying his prayers.”
“Maybe he’s blowing his nose.”
“It seems queer to have him blowing his nose,” said Tacy, looking displeased.
“Oh, probably he has an embroidered handkerchief,” said Betsy. “I imagine he does.”
They looked at the picture again.
“Tacy,” said Betsy. “Do you know what?”
“What?” asked Tacy.
“I’m in love with him,” said Betsy. “It’s the first time I’ve ever been in love.”
“Do you want to marry him?” asked Tacy.
“Yes,” said Betsy. “I do. Do you?”
“I certainly do,” Tacy said.
The games on the street were going full swing now, but neither Betsy nor Tacy cared about joining in. They sat looking at the King of Spain’s picture which was gilded by the sunset light.
Just then Tib ran up, breathless.