CHAPTER XXV.
AUNT BETSY GOES ON A JOURNEY.
Just through the woods, where Uncle Ephraim was wont to exercise old Whitey, was a narrow strip of land, extending from the highway to the pond, and fertile in nothing except the huckleberry bushes, and the rocky ledges over which a few sheep roamed, seeking for the short grass and stunted herbs, which gave them a meagre sustenance. As a whole, it was comparatively valueless, but to Aunt Betsy Barlow it was of great importance, as it was—her property—the land on which she paid taxes willingly—the real estate, the deed of which was lying undisturbed in her hair trunk, where it had lain for years. Several dispositions the good old lady had mentally made of this property, sometimes dividing it equally between Helen and Katy, sometimes willing it all to the former, and again, when she thought of Mark Ray, leaving the interest of it to some missionary society in which she was interested.
How, then, was the poor woman amazed and confounded when suddenly there appeared a claimant to her property; not the whole, but a part, and that part taking in the big sweet apple-tree and the very best of the berry bushes, leaving her nothing but rocks and bogs, a pucker cherry-tree, a patch of tansy, and one small tree, whose gnarly apples were not fit, she said, to feed the pigs.
Of course she was indignant, and all the more so because the claimant was prepared to prove that the line fence was not where it should be, but ran into his own dominions for the width of two or three rods, a fact he had just discovered by looking over a bundle of deeds, in which the boundaries of his own farm were clearly defined.
In her distress, Aunt Betsy’s first thoughts were turned to Wilford as the man who could redress her wrongs, if any one, and a long letter was written to him, in which her grievances were told in detail and his advice solicited. Commencing with “My dear Wilford,” closing with “Your respected ant,” sealed with a wafer, stamped with her thimble, and directed bottom side up, it nevertheless found its way to No. —— Broadway, and into Wilford’s hands. But with a frown and pish of contempt he tossed it into the grate, and vain were all Aunt Betsy’s inquiries as to whether there was any letter for her when Uncle Ephraim came home from the office. Letters there were from Helen, and sometimes one from Katy, but none from Wilford, and her days were passed in great perplexity and distress, until another idea took possession of her mind. She would go to New York herself! She had never traveled over half a dozen miles in the cars, it was true, but it was time she had, and now that she had a new bonnet and shawl, she could go to York as well as not!
Wholly useless were the expostulations of the family, for she would not listen to them, nor believe that she would not be welcome at that house on Madison Square, to which Mrs. Lennox had never been invited since Katy was fairly settled in it. Much at first had been said of her coming, and of the room she was to occupy; but all that had ceased, and in the mother’s heart there had been a painful doubt as to the reason of the silence, until Helen’s letters enlightened her, telling her it was Wilford who had built so high a wall between Katy and her friends.
Far better than she used, did Mrs. Lennox understand her son-in-law, and she shrank in horror from suffering her aunt to go where she would be so serious an annoyance, frankly telling her the reason for her objections, and asking if she wished to mortify the girls
At this Aunt Betsy took umbrage at once.
“She’d like to know what there was about her to mortify anybody? Wasn’t her black silk dress made long and full, and the old pongee fixed into a Balmoral, and hadn’t she a bran new cap with purple ribbon, and couldn’t she travel in her delaine, and didn’t she wear hoops always now, except at cleanin’ house times? Didn’t she nuss both the girls, especially Catherine, carrying her in her arms one whole night when she had the canker-rash, and everybody thought she’d die? And when she swallered that tin whistle, didn’t she spat her on the back and swing her in the air till she came to and blew the whistle clear across the room? Tell her that Catherine would be ashamed! She knew better!”
Then, as a doubt began to cross her own mind as to Wilford’s readiness to entertain her at his house, she continued,