Understood Betsy | Page 4

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girl in spelling, and was indignant over the teacher's having pets.
Sometimes in telling over some very dreadful failure or disappointment
Elizabeth Ann would get so wrought up that she would cry. This
always brought the ready tears to Aunt Frances's kind eyes, and with
many soothing words and nervous, tremulous caresses she tried to
make life easier for poor little Elizabeth Ann. The days when they had
cried they could neither of them eat much luncheon.
After school and on Saturdays there was always the daily walk, and
there were lessons, all kinds of lessons--piano-lessons of course, and
nature- study lessons out of an excellent book Aunt Frances had bought,
and painting lessons, and sewing lessons, and even a little French,
although Aunt Frances was not very sure about her own pronunciation.
She wanted to give the little girl every possible advantage, you see.
They were really inseparable. Elizabeth Ann once said to some ladies

calling on her aunts that whenever anything happened in school, the
first thing she thought of was what Aunt Frances would think of it.
"Why is that?" they asked, looking at Aunt Frances, who was blushing
with pleasure.
"Oh, she is so interested in my school work! And she
UNDERSTANDS me!" said Elizabeth Ann, repeating the phrases she
had heard so often.
Aunt Frances's eyes filled with happy tears. She called Elizabeth Ann
to her and kissed her and gave her as big a hug as her thin arms could
manage. Elizabeth Ann was growing tall very fast. One of the visiting
ladies said that before long she would be as big as her auntie, and a
troublesome young lady. Aunt Frances said: "I have had her from the
time she was a little baby and there has scarcely been an hour she has
been out of my sight. I'll always have her confidence. You'll always tell
Aunt Frances EVERYTHING, won't you, darling?" Elizabeth Ann
resolved to do this always, even if, as now, she often had to invent
things to tell.
Aunt Frances went on, to the callers: "But I do wish she weren't so thin
and pale and nervous. I suppose it is the exciting modern life that is so
bad for children. I try to see that she has plenty of fresh air. I go out
with her for a walk every single day. But we have taken all the walks
around here so often that we're rather tired of them. It's often hard to
know how to get her out enough. I think I'll have to get the doctor to
come and see her and perhaps give her a tonic." To Elizabeth Ann she
added, hastily: "Now don't go getting notions in your head, darling.
Aunt Frances doesn't think there's anything VERY much the matter
with you. You'll be all right again soon if you just take the doctor's
medicine nicely. Aunt Frances will take care of her precious little girl.
SHE'll make the bad sickness go away." Elizabeth Ann, who had not
known before that she was sick, had a picture of herself lying in the
little white coffin, all covered over with white. ... In a few minutes
Aunt Frances was obliged to excuse herself from her callers and devote
herself entirely to taking care of Elizabeth Ann.

So one day, after this had happened several times, Aunt Frances really
did send for the doctor, who came briskly in, just as Elizabeth Ann had
always seen him, with his little square black bag smelling of leather, his
sharp eyes, and the air of bored impatience which he always wore in
that house. Elizabeth Ann was terribly afraid to see him, for she felt in
her bones he would say she had galloping consumption and would die
before the leaves cast a shadow. This was a phrase she had picked up
from Grace, whose conversation, perhaps on account of her asthma,
was full of references to early graves and quick declines.
And yet--did you ever hear of such a case before?--although Elizabeth
Ann when she first stood up before the doctor had been quaking with
fear lest he discover some deadly disease in her, she was very much
hurt indeed when, after thumping her and looking at her lower eyelid
inside out, and listening to her breathing, he pushed her away with a
little jerk and said: "There's nothing in the world the matter with that
child. She's as sound as a nut! What she needs is ..."--he looked for a
moment at Aunt Frances's thin, anxious face, with the eyebrows drawn
together in a knot of conscientiousness, and then he looked at Aunt
Harriet's thin, anxious face with the eyebrows drawn up that very same
way, and then he glanced at Grace's thin, anxious face peering from the
door