“I do not suppose,” returned Aunt Susan slowly, with a shade of curiosity in her voice, “that she told you how she happens to be living in a gardener’s cottage and cooking and scrubbing and tending cabbages and ducks when she might be doing—oh, very different things?”
“No,” answered Betsey, “no, she did not tell me that.”
Now that she thought of it, there were a great many things that Miss Miranda had not told her. She knew very little of her new friend and, in spite of questionings among acquaintances of her own age, seemed unable to learn more. She had discovered only that Miss Miranda dwelt in the cottage alone with her father, that she had a big vegetable garden on the sunny slope of the hill, that she kept ducks and chickens and, by her untiring industry, managed to make the household prosper. Elizabeth could well believe that to whatever she turned her hand, that thing would be successful.
“Her father was quite a great man in his day,” her aunt went on thoughtfully. “He had a good deal of a name as an expert in scientific mechanics. One never hears of him now. I suppose he does not accomplish much since he has grown old. I am continually thinking that I will go over to see Miranda, yet I have so many engagements that I never do. She sent me some delightful asparagus from her garden lately; I have meant to give her some of Simmonds’ grapes in return. You can leave them there to-night when the motor takes you home. Yes, you will have a good friend in her, but you are very wrong and foolish not to go with me, just the same.”
As Elizabeth, leaning back in the big car, rolled along the smooth road on her way home, she could not help wondering how it would be to have just such luxury at her command for the next few months, to travel in splendor with Aunt Susan and to see all the wonderful things of which she had just heard such dazzling description.
“It is not too late yet, if you want to change your mind,” had been her aunt’s last words. Betsey was nearer to wavering at this moment than ever before. The thought of the still, empty house to which she was coming home, seemed suddenly very dreary indeed.
The car stopped at the Reynolds’ gate and Elizabeth went in herself with the basket of grapes. The curtains were not drawn, so that she could see Miss Miranda sitting with her work beside the table. She could even see her look up, startled and alarmed as she had been before, when there came a step at the door. She was so calm, so quiet and cheerful in all other matters it was hard to imagine why this one thing should trouble her so. After the basket was delivered, Elizabeth lingered at the door, unwilling to say good night, while Miss Miranda, too, seemed reluctant to have her go. When at last Betsey took her departure and the car moved away from the gate, she found that her wavering doubts, felt so keenly at Aunt Susan’s, had vanished again. She would not be too lonely if she had Miss Miranda, of that she now felt doubly assured; but there was something more. She had an odd, protective feeling for her new friend, as though she were staying at home, not only to carry out her own plans, but to take care of Miss Miranda.
There is sometimes a vague knowledge of things that comes without words. It was clear enough to Elizabeth, long afterwards, just what heavy trouble was brooding over the little household of the cottage, and just what part she was destined to play in dispelling it. Yet it was curious indeed, that she should have begun to feel, so early and so distinctly, that here she was really needed and that here she would give, in return for Miss Miranda’s friendship, not only small services but great ones.
The sunny garden on the hillside was being planted on the afternoon that she came to the cottage again. She had said good-by to Aunt Susan that morning and had seen her depart in a great flutter of veils and furs and feathers. The train had rolled away carrying with it Betsey’s last vision of snow-capped mountains, sparkling blue seas, tropical shores and white, flower-crowned cliffs. Her mind would still linger, in spite of herself, on the pleasures that she had renounced so that she was glad to find some absorbing diversion and to turn her abundant energy to helping Miss Miranda.
The peas were already pushing their pert green noses through the warm soil, and the scattered lettuce plants showed all along the row. Betsey became so entranced with the task of setting out beans that she would have filled the whole garden with them had not Miss Miranda warned her that there must be a little space left for beets and carrots and sweet corn.