Boys and Girls of Colonial Days

by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

Her mother spoke quickly now and as if the words hurt her. “Your dear Aunt Tabitha’s serving man has just come in great haste on horseback from her plantation to say that his mistress is far from well and wishes me to come to her at once with a supply of simples. I must go. The maids are packing my basket and laying out my traveling cloak, and the horses are harnessed and at the door.” She paused, in sorrow at the grief that she saw suddenly in Betsy’s radiant face.

“Your father will not return for some days yet,” she added, and then stopped.

There was a pause and then Betsy looked up bravely, saying just what her mother had hoped and expected that she would, for she was a good little girl.

“And Grandmother should not be left alone here because she is not well and the maids are new,” Betsy said. Then, all at once, it seemed as if she could not bear her disappointment. She threw herself into her mother’s arms, burying her head in her shoulder. “I can’t be a flower girl,” she sobbed. “I must stay at home to-morrow, and not see President Washington. Oh, I can’t bear it; it seems as if I just can’t!”

Her mother stooped down and kissed her. “Any other little daughter except my own brave little Betsy perhaps could not bear the disappointment,” she said, “but she can. The Brandons come of a brave old family, strong to fight and well able to bear whatever comes to them. And think, too, dear, what sorrows came to our brave President before he won the war for us. You can try to be as brave as he, dear child, can you not?”

“Yes, mother.” Betsy was smiling again. She folded the dainty frock and the sash and laid them away in one of the lavender-scented drawers of the big mahogany bureau. And then she went downstairs, and did not shed one tear as she kissed her mother good-bye and watched her drive away between the magnolia trees that lined the long driveway of the plantation.

It was a hard afternoon, though, for Betsy. The little girl who lived on the next plantation came over to see Betsy’s dress and after she had shown it to her, Betsy had to tell her that she would not have an opportunity to wear it. She thought, too, that it would make her grandmother feel badly if she were to know of her disappointment, so she sat with her in her big, sunny room in the afternoon and read to her and was a smiling little girl all the time. Late in the day Betsy went down to the kitchen and made corn bread. She was almost as good a cook as was her mother. The corn bread was as yellow as gold, and as light as sponge cake.

The morning of the great day for Salisbury was as blue and gold as sky and sun could make it. Betsy was up with the birds and gave the maids their orders for the day, and looked over the supplies in the safe, as the big locked cupboard for food was called, just as Mistress Brandon would have done if she had been home. She opened all the windows of the mansion to let in the sweet spring air. She filled the bowls and vases with fresh flowers, and then she sat down with her sewing on the piazza.

Betsy was working a sampler in cross-stitch. Around the edge, embroidered in bright crewels, was a border of flowers and bees, the latter because of her initials. Inside, Betsy was working her name in neat letters, the Lord’s prayer, and the date of her birth. Usually Betsy liked nothing better than to be able to sit there in the quiet of the piazza, shaded by its great pillars, the green lawn stretching below the steps and her colored sewing in her lap. To-day, though, her eyes left the bright worsted often to follow the line of the plantation driveway that led away from the house and down toward the village.

Through the trees she had glimpses of fluttering white skirts and bright ribbons. The flower girls, her little girl neighbors, were gathering and taking their happy way down to the village green to meet Mr. Washington. She could hear their merry voices and the sounds of fifes and drums. The soldiers were starting, too.