Betsy could have cried with disappointment; but she and the other girls, putting their heads together for comfort, told each other that there was time enough yet. Mr. Pond would not leave town till tomorrow. Perhaps ... there was still some hope.
But that afternoon even this last hope was dashed. As they gathered at the schoolhouse, the girls fresh and crisp in their newly starched dresses, with red or blue hair-ribbons, the boys very self-conscious in their dark suits, clean collars, new caps (all but Ralph), and blacked shoes, there was no little ’Lias. They waited and waited, but there was no sign of him. Finally Uncle Henry, who was to drive the straw-ride down to town, looked at his watch, gathered up the reins, and said they would be late if they didn’t start right away. Maybe ’Lias had had a chance to ride in with somebody else.
They all piled in, the horses stepped off, the wheels grated on the stones. And just at that moment a dismal sound of sobbing wails reached them from the woodshed back of the schoolhouse. The children tumbled out as fast as they had tumbled in, and ran back, Betsy and Ralph at their head. There in the woodshed was little ’Lias, huddled in the corner behind some wood, crying and crying and crying, digging his fists into his eyes, his face all smeared with tears and dirt. And he was dressed again in his filthy, torn old overalls and ragged shirt. His poor little bare feet shone with a piteous cleanliness in that dark place.
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” the children asked him all at once. He flung himself on Ralph, burying his face in the other boy’s coat, and sobbed out some disjointed story which only Ralph could hear ... and then as last and final climax of the disaster, who should come looking over the shoulders of the children but Uncle Henry and Mr. Pond! And ’Lias all ragged and dirty again! Betsy sat down weakly on a pile of wood, utterly disheartened. What was the use of anything!
“What’s the matter?” asked the two men together.
Ralph turned, with an angry toss of his dark head, and told them bitterly, over the heads of the children: “He just had some decent clothes. ... First ones he’s ever had! And he was plotting on going to the exercises in the Town Hall. And that darned old skunk of a stepfather has gone and taken ’em and sold ’em to get whiskey. I’d like to kill him!”
Betsy could have flung her arms around Ralph, he looked so exactly the way she felt. “Yes, he is a darned old skunk!” she said to herself, rejoicing in the bad words she did not know before. It took bad words to qualify what had happened.
She saw an electric spark pass from Ralph’s blazing eyes to Mr. Pond’s broad face, now grim and fierce. She saw Mr. Pond step forward, brushing the children out of his way, like a giant among dwarfs. She saw him stoop and pick little ’Lias up in his great, strong arms, and, holding him close, stride furiously out of the woodshed, across the playground to the buggy which was waiting for him.
“He’ll go to the exercises all right!” he called back over his shoulder in a great roar. “He’ll go, if I have to buy out the whole town to get him an outfit! And that whelp won’t get these clothes, either; you hear me say so!”
He sprang into the buggy and, holding ’Lias on his lap, took up the reins and drove rapidly forward.