Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm: or, The Mystery of a Nobody

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."

CHAPTER VII

BRAMBLE FARM

The wagon was rattling down a narrow lane, for though the horse went at a snail's pace, every bolt and hinge in the wagon was loose and contributed its own measure of noise to their progress. Betty looked about her with interest. On either side of the lane lay rolling fertile fields – in the highest state of cultivation, had she known it. Bramble Farm was famed for its good crops, and whatever people said of its master, the charge of poor farming was never laid at his door. The lane turned abruptly into a neglected driveway, and this led them up to the kitchen door of the farmhouse.

"Never unlocks the front door 'cept for the minister or your funeral," whispered Bob in an aside to Betty, as the kitchen door opened and a tall, thin man came out.

"Took you long enough to get here," he greeted the two young people sourly. "Dinner's been over two hours and more. Hustle that trunk inside, you Bob, and put up the horse. Wapley and Lieson need you to help 'em set tomato plants."

Betty had climbed down and stood helplessly beside the wagon. Mr. Peabody, for she judged the tall, thin man must be the owner of Bramble Farm, though he addressed no word directly to her and Bob was too evidently subdued to attempt any introduction, but swung on his heel and strode off in the direction of the barn. There was nothing for Betty to do but to follow Bob and her trunk into the house.

The kitchen was hot and swarming with flies. There were no screens at the windows, and though the shades were drawn down, the pests easily found their way into the room.

"How do you do, Betty? I hope your trip was pleasant. Dinner's all put away, but it won't be long till supper time. I'm just trying to brush some of the flies out," and to Betty's surprise a thin flaccid hand was thrust into hers. Mrs. Peabody was carrying out her idea of a handshake.

Betty stared in wonder at the lifeless creature who smiled wanly at her. What would Uncle Dick say if he saw Agatha Peabody now? Where were the long yellow braids and the blue eyes he had described? This woman, thin, absolutely colorless in face, voice and manner, dressed in a faded, cheap, blue calico wrapper – was this Uncle Dick's old school friend?

"Perhaps you'd like to go upstairs to your room and lie down a while," Mrs. Peabody was saying. "I'll show you where you're to sleep. How did you leave your uncle, dear?"

Betty answered dully that he was well. Her mind was too taken up with new impressions to know very clearly what was said to her.

"I'm sorry there aren't any screens," apologized her hostess. "But the flies aren't bad on this side of the house, and the mosquitoes only come when there's a marsh wind. You'll find water in the pitcher, and I laid out a clean towel for you. Do you want I should help you unpack your trunk?"

Betty declined the offer with thanks, for she wanted to be alone. She had not noticed Mrs. Peabody's longing glance at the smart little trunk, but later she was to understand that that afternoon she had denied a real heart hunger for handling pretty clothes and the dainty accessories that women love.

When the door had closed on Mrs. Peabody, Betty sat down on the bed to think. She found herself in a long, narrow room with two windows, the sashes propped up with sticks. The floor was bare and scrubbed very clean and the sheets and pillow cases on the narrow iron bed, though of coarse unbleached muslin, were immaculate. Something peculiar about the pillow case made her lean closer to examine it. It was made of flour or salt bags, overcasted finely together!

"'Puts every copper through the wringer.'" The phrase Bob had used came to Betty.

"There's no excuse for such things if he isn't poor," she argued indignantly. "Well, I suppose I'll have to stay a week, anyway. I might as well wash."

A half hour later, the traces of travel removed and her dark frock changed to a pretty pink chambray dress, Betty descended the stairs to begin her acquaintance with Bramble Farm. She wandered through several darkened rooms on the first floor and out into the kitchen without finding Mrs. Peabody. A heavy-set, sullen-faced man was getting a drink from the tin dipper at the sink.

"Want some?" he asked, indicating the pump.

Betty declined, and asked if he knew where Mrs. Peabody was.

"Out in the chicken yard," was the reply. "You the boarder they been talking about?"

"I'm Betty Gordon," said the girl pleasantly.

"Yes, they've been going on for a week about you. Old man's got it all figured out what he'll do with your board. The missis rather thought she ought to have half, but he shut her up mighty quick. Women and money don't hitch up in Peabody's mind."

He laughed coarsely and went out, drawing a plug of tobacco from his hip pocket and taking a tremendous chew from it as he closed the door.

Betty felt a sudden longing for fresh air, and, waiting only for the man to get out of sight, she stepped out on the back porch. A regiment of milk pans were drying in the late afternoon sun and a churn turned up to air showed that Mrs. Peabody made her own butter. Betty was still hungry, and the thought of slices of home-made bread and golden country butter smote her tantalizingly.

"I wonder where the chicken yard is," she thought, going down to the limp gate that swung disconsolately on a rusty hinge.

The Bramble Farm house, she discovered, looking at it critically, was apparently suffering for the minor repairs that make a home attractive. The blinds sagged in several places and in some instances were missing altogether; once white, the paint was now a dirty gray; half the pickets were gone from the garden fence; the lawn was ragged and overgrown with weeds; and the two discouraged-looking flower-beds were choked this early in the season. Betty's weeding habits moved her irresistibly to kneel down and try to free a few of the plants from the mass of tangled creepers that flourished among them.

"Better not let Joe Peabody see you doing that," said Bob Henderson's voice above her bent head. "He hasn't a mite of use for a person who wastes time on flower-beds. If you want to see things in good shape, take a look at the vegetable gardens. The missis has to keep that clear, 'cause after it's once planted, she's supposed to feed us all summer from it."

Betty shook back her hair from a damp forehead.

"For mercy's sake," she demanded with heat, "is there one pleasant, kind thing connected with this place? Who was that awful man I met in the kitchen?"

"Guess it was Lieson, one of the hired men," replied Bob. "He came down to the house to get a drink a few minutes ago. He's all right, Betty, though not much to look at."

"You, Bob!" came a stentorian shout that shot Bob through the gate and in the general direction of the voice with a speed that was little less than astonishing.

Betty stood up, shook the earth from her skirt, and, guided by the shrill cackle of a proud hen, picked her way through a rather cluttered barn-yard till she came to a wire-enclosed space that was the chicken yard. Mrs. Peabody, staggering under the weight of two heavy pails of water, met her at the gate.

"How nice you look!" she said wistfully. "Don't come in here, dear; you might get something on your dress."

"Oh, it washes," returned Betty carelessly. "Do you carry water for the chickens?"

"Twice a day in summer," was the answer. "Before Joe, Mr. Peabody, had water put in the barns, it was an awful job; but he couldn't get a man to help him with the cows unless he had running water at the barn, so this system was new last year. It's a big help."

Silently, and feeling in the way because she could not help, Betty watched the woman fill troughs and drinking vessels for the parched hens that had evidently spent an uncomfortable and dry afternoon in the shadeless yard. Scattering a meager ration of corn, Mrs. Peabody went into the hen house and reappeared presently with a basket filled with eggs.

"They'd lay better if I could get 'em some meat scraps," she confided to Betty as they walked toward the house. "But I dunno – it's so hard to get things done, I've about given up arguing."

She would not let Betty help her with the supper, and was so insistent that she should not touch a dish that Betty yielded, though reluctantly. The heat of the kitchen was intense, for Mrs. Peabody had built a fire of corn cobs in the range. Gas, of course, there was none, and she evidently had not an oil stove or a fireless cooker.

Precisely at six o'clock the men came in.

"They milk after supper, summers," Mrs. Peabody had explained. "The milk stays sweet longer."

Betty watched in round-eyed amazement as Mr. Peabody and the two hired men washed at the sink, with much sputtering and blowing, and combed their hair before a small cracked mirror tacked over the sink. If she had not been very hungry, she was sure the sight would have taken her appetite away. Bob did not come in till they were seated. He had washed outside, he explained, and Betty cherished the idea that perhaps he had acted out of consideration for her.

"What's that?" demanded Mr. Peabody, pointing his fork at a tiny pat of butter before Betty's plate.

There was no other butter on the table, and only a very plain meal of bread, fried potatoes, raspberries and hot tea.

"I – I had a little butter left over from the last churning," faltered Mrs. Peabody. "'Twasn't enough to make even a quarter-pound print, Joe."

"Don't believe it," contradicted her husband. "I told you flat, Agatha, that there was to be no pampering. Betty can eat what we eat, or go without. Take that butter off, do you hear me?"

A sallow flush rose to Mrs. Peabody's thin cheeks, and her lips moved rebelliously. Evidently her husband was practiced at reading her soundless words.