The Prodigal Girl (24 page)

Well, it was a relief to have the atmosphere cleared again, of whatever it was. She almost felt like singing herself, or whistling or something. Perhaps she didn’t want to go away. But of course that was nonsense. She must. She had promised. But now she could show Mums the doll’s dress. It certainly was pretty. Mums would like it. And she had made it all herself.

It was like having life freed from some great obstruction. Now things could go sparkling on like a stream in the summer sunshine. Jane appeared at the door, her face full of satisfied curiosity. “Oh, Betts! You’ve dropped the dishcloth! That means company, and we’re going to have it. The minister from that funny little white church down in the village, with the sharp steeple and the big bell in a square box under it, is coming to call. He just telephoned, and Daddy said it was all right to come. He’s coming
this afternoon!”
“Oh, heck!” said Betty ungraciously. “Let’s go down and skate!” “We can’t!” said Jane. “Daddy said the ice is all slushy on top. He says we’ll get our feet awful wet. And he says if it’ll only be a nice still night and turn cold without any wind that the ice’ll be good again.”

“Jane, have you heard what’s been the matter? What’s Chris been up to?”

“Oh, that!” said Jane nonchalantly. “Didn’t you find that out yet? You aren’t very keen, Betts. It’s something about Jim Disston’s

Packard that Chrissie has been buying with some money that wasn’t his, or a check or something.”

“For cat’s sake! I thought Chris had more sense!” said Betty, looking off at the hills with her cheeks growing red. What would they all say when it was discovered that she had run away and got married?

“Well,” she went on after a minute, “we can go somewhere when that minister comes. I’ve had all the glooms I can stand for one week. When we see him coming we’ll beat it out the back door and run down the hill out of sight. Get your coat and galoshes and leave them down in the kitchen so you won’t have to go back after them.”

There was no opportunity however to disappear when the minister arrived, for he came walking up the snowy lane with no sleigh bells to announce his coming.

Betty and Jane had been kept busy all the afternoon in the kitchen. Eleanor had come out with her face wreathed in thankful smiles and put the finishing touches to the lunch that Betty had prepared, and immediately after lunch she challenged them to help her do some baking.

It really was almost interesting, with their mother in such a mood, to put on big aprons and roll up their sleeves and learn how to make real pies and cookies and biscuits. Betty made a cake, too: chocolate layer with the black butter frosting, and it turned out wonderfully. She was so proud of it that her eyes took on their old childish shine, and her cheeks were glowing, and when Chris came in from his long walk of six miles, hungry as a bear, he stood in the door and admired it.

“Oh, boy!” he said, licking his lips eagerly. “Oh, boy! Some cake! When ya going to give us a sample, Betts? You don’t mean you made it all by yourself? Sure ‘nough? No kiddin’?”

Suddenly the home seemed dear. Just because she had contributed to its comfort. She had forgotten that she was leaving it so soon. She had a choking feeling in her throat as if she was going to cry.

“Well,” she said to herself, “at least we won’t starve. Mums always said people had to learn cooking before they got married. I guess I’ll try pie. Though I don’t really suppose I’ll ever have to cook. The Westons have plenty of servants, more than we ever had. But it’s likely I might have to tell a servant how to make a chocolate cake someday. Anyway, it’s fun!”

And right at that point the minister walked into the kitchen!

“Excuse me!” he said. “I knocked several times but nobody seemed to hear, so I just followed your voices. I’m Dr. Dunham. Is this Mrs. Thornton?”

Eleanor dried her hands and greeted the minister, introducing the children.

“Shall we go into the sitting room?” she said, preparing to lead the way.

“Well, it smells mighty good out here,” said the minister, looking around with a twinkle in his eyes. “I’d be entirely satisfied to sit right down here and let you go on with your work.”

Jane slid up to him in her elfish way and presented a plate of hot cookies just out of the oven that she had been helping to make, and they each took a cookie and went munching into the sitting room.

The minister won Betty’s heart by pausing at the table where she had just finished icing her wonderful chocolate cake.

“Well, that certainly is a cake to be proud of!” he said. “Are you the cook that made that work of art?”

Betty swelled proudly and forgot that she had meant to be haughty and superior if any minister tried to make up to her.

Chester appeared on the scene with a hearty welcome, and Chris entered a moment later with an armful of wood. He had just finished building up the fire on the hearth, and the flames snapped and roared up the great old chimney with old-time good cheer. Betty slid into a chair, pleased, interested, just tired enough with her cake making to be glad to sit down and listen.

She saw Chester turn to Chris with a quick flash of anxiety: “Did you make the train, my boy?” he asked in a low tone. “I didn’t know you had got back.”

“I sure did!” said Chris with a proud ring to his voice. Betty looked up at him wonderingly. It seemed almost as if Chris had added a year or two to his voice, it sounded so manly. She caught a quick glance of relief from her father before he turned back to talk with the minister. How glad Chester had looked! Did he care so much about what Chris did as all that? He would care a lot about her, too. It was a rotten deal she was going to hand him! But why did she have to keep thinking of those things all the time? There was a whole week before she had to go, and she wanted to enjoy it as much as she could. She must keep such thoughts out of her mind or she would be turning “yellow,” and that would never do. She would lose all her reputation at school for being “hard boiled,” and she was very proud indeed of that, though it must be admitted that she had a very vague idea of what it really was intended to mean.

The minister had beautiful silver hair, and keen blue eyes that could either twinkle or look straight through one. His cheeks were rosy like two winter apples, and his shoulders were sturdy as if he knew how to carry burdens as well as stand in the pulpit.

He showed at once that he had a sense of humor by telling two or three stories that fascinated the children and sent them off into peals of laughter. Betty found herself wondering why a perfectly good, fine gentleman like that wasted himself in being a minister; it seemed such a dull profession.

He spoke of his son as being away studying for the Christian ministry, and Betty thought:

Oh, how poky! How perfectly poisonous for any man to wish that on a young man. Just burying him alive! What a rattling shame!

“David is coming up at Christmas to see us,” said David’s father, beaming with pleasure at the idea. “His mother and I can hardly wait for the time to come! He can’t get here till Christmas Day, probably, and he may be delayed a day or so later on account of having to take some services for a fellow student who is ill, but you understand, Christmas doesn’t occur for his mother and me till he gets here! I’d like him to meet you. There aren’t so many young people around in the winter months, all off to college or a job in the city somewhere, you know. David is a great man for sports. He just revels in them while he’s home, and the snow is fine this winter.”

“Our young people have been trying to fix up an old sled for sledding,” said Chester heartily. “Perhaps your son will come up and join them. The old hill out behind the house used to be something worthwhile.”

“I’m sure he will if you’ll let him,” beamed the father. “He has a sled that he thinks is rather fine, a ‘humdinger’ I think he calls it. Perhaps you’ll let him bring it up.”

What a bore!
thought Betty.
Of course he’s just a country clod. But then, I’ll be gone, and it won’t matter!

Chester was quite eager about it. He was saying that his children had been somewhat lonely since they came. Now how did Chester know that? They certainly didn’t want any native talent around. Still, the old man was kind of a good sport. The son might not be so bad. Only any young man in this age that would submit to having himself made into a minister was simply off the map so far as she was concerned. She let the conversation drift past her while she began to think about Dudley Weston and wonder why she hadn’t heard from him again. Surely Dud couldn’t back out now, after having asked her to marry him! No, Dud was game! H wouldn’t stand her up.

When her thoughts came back to the room again the minister was talking about skiing, describing a great meet over at Brattleboro.

“David has always been interested in it,” said David’s father. “When he was quite a little lad he got hold of a pair of skis, and he used to drive his mother almost insane jumping off mountains and disappearing and turning up on the top of another somewhere.”

“Oh, can he do that?” said Betty suddenly, before she realized she was saying it. “I should think that would be a real thrill! I’d do anything in the world if I could learn.”

“Well, it’s a thrill to watch it,” said the father, “and David is rather a wonder at it. I have no doubt he’ll teach you if you ask him,” smiled the minister. “He’s taught a great many.”

“I shall certainly ask him,” said Betty eagerly and then remembered she wouldn’t be there when David came! What a shame. Perhaps she could get Dud to come back after a few days and visit, and they would try it together. That would be a great stunt! Dudley was always ready for anything new. That was one reason why she liked Dudley better than most of the other boys, because he never stopped at anything she proposed and then always went her one better in proposing something still more daring.

When Betty came back to the conversation again from her thoughts, her father was proposing a most astounding thing. He had actually asked this apple-cheeked minister, this native of the backwoods, to open a school there at their house for them! Of course the man talked very well, and probably knew something about stuffy old theological books, but not anything modern. Ministers had to be pretty well educated or people wouldn’t call them to churches, but imagine an old fossil like that who didn’t know any of the up-to-date ideas, of course, trying to teach them anything! Why, even Doris would know more of what was going on in the world today than he would be likely to know.

But Chester seemed to be in earnest. He was even getting it down to the number of hours a week. They were talking about how in Scotland the minister always used to be the teacher of any higher education. Chester was saying that he wanted his children to get back to the good old ways. He was actually talking about Latin and Greek! Greek! Imagine it! That would be a scream! What would Dud and the girls think if they heard of it, Betty Thornton studying Greek!

Chester and the minister talked on, speaking of literature, how rotten the books of today were. What did an old fossil like that know about the books of today? He couldn’t possibly have heard of some of the Russian novels they had to read in lit class. He would probably be horribly shocked even to know what they were! Imagine!

“I think perhaps I could spare the time,” the minister was saying. Great cats! Was Dad actually going to try to pull off a thing like that? Well, she was thankful she was out of it.

“There is no book like the old Book,” the minister was saying. There was almost what one might describe as a glow of tenderness in his voice.

“If people would really study the Bible more they would find in it a liberal education. They would find wonders in it that have never yet been revealed. But they are being discovered now. It is marvelous how the scriptures have been opened up in even the last ten years. Discoveries, history, the shaping of nations, archaeology, are all giving keys to that which has long been locked away from the knowledge of man, and it will not be long before the world is startled into knowing that the old despised Book has all the time contained the germs of all knowledge.”

What a scream he was. The idea of talking about archaeology! When everyone knew that they were digging up bones of extinct animals that were living millions of years ago, just perfectly proving that the Bible was all off, and evolution was the only thing. But of course, a minister had to pretend to believe all those things or he wouldn’t be paid his salary.

Thus irreverent youth kept up a running comment. But what was this that her father was saying? “I would like my children to study the Bible, too. Yes, that is the very thing! I would like them to know all there is to know about the

Bible!”

For Pete’s sake! Was Chester really going to try to put a thing like that over on the kids? Study the Bible! And with that old fossil! Wasn’t this the limit? Well, she would be off in a few days and give them something else to think about!

But the minister was speaking to Betty, and Betty could not help liking his pleasant pink smile.

“I shall have to tell David what wonderful chocolate cakes you make up here. I am sure he will be knocking at your door the very first day he gets home! He’s great for chocolate. His mother can hardly keep up with the demand while he’s home.”

But Betty hardened her heart against the thought of a David who would let himself be wished into a minister, and she secretly hugged the thought that she would be gone when David arrived.

Chapter 18

T
he house took on a very different atmosphere now. Chris went around whistling everywhere and keeping up at least a show of work. The wood boxes overflowed with wood, and the fires were always replenished when he was about. Also he wore a more manly, respectful air toward his father and mother, as if somehow they had plucked him from some danger and he was grateful. If Betty had not been so occupied with her own affairs she would have wondered about it. As it was, he was a very pleasant brother to have around, developing a gallantry altogether new and an anxiety to please everyone that was most delightful. He had taken Betty into his confidence, and she spent one whole afternoon making lace curtains for the dollhouse out of a piece of old net she found in the attic, papering the different rooms, and gluing together the minute stairs that Chris had sawed out. It really was becoming tremendously interesting, this getting ready for a homemade Christmas.