“Because,” as Betty said to herself, “everybody knows I am Betty Beverley of Rosehill, and the Rosehill Beverleys can do as they please about carriages and clothes, and a blessed good thing it is, as the family is down on its luck at present.”
Betty had a variety of euphemisms to disguise the unpleasant facts of life. Poverty was being down on one’s luck; simple clothes were a joke; and shabbiness, a mere romantic incident, for such was the glorious philosophy of pretty Betty.
There were, however, no sighs or regrets for Betty that Christmas Eve, as she looked with shining eyes into her mirror. Her white gown, made by her own clever fingers, fitted to perfection, and revealed all the delicate loveliness of her white neck and her slender arms. Around her throat was her great-grandmother’s amethyst necklace, and her simple bodice was draped with her great-grandmother’s lace bertha. Her rich hair, with its soft tendrils curling upon her neck, was adorned with a wreath of ivy leaves, and tiny moss rosebuds from the rosebush in the window of the sitting-room. This little wreath gave Betty the look of a woodland nymph. Aunt Tulip, who acted as lady’s maid, during the intervals of her duty as cook, housemaid, and what not, was lost in admiration, and suggested that Betty would “cert’n’y ketch a beau.” This simple flattery delighted Betty, especially as all the time she was dressing her mind was fixed upon the charms of Lieutenant John Hope Fortescue of the United States Army.
When Betty was quite dressed, and had given herself a final survey in the glass, Aunt Tulip went down to see if the rockaway was hitched up with old Whitey. Betty, left alone, blew out the candles, and, drawing the curtains, looked out of her window once more at Rosehill, a mile across the open fields. Yes, the house was lighted up cheerfully—it was Betty’s pet grievance that the place was unoccupied for such long intervals. In some way, after that visit from Jack Fortescue, Betty was more reconciled to Mr. Fortescue’s owning Rosehill. She could imagine how jolly it must be there with half a dozen young officers, and if they were all as charming as Lieutenant John Hope Fortescue—— Betty blushed at the remembrance of her descent from the top of the table into Fortescue’s arms.
While Betty was chasing these fancies, like white butterflies in the sun, she noticed a small black figure far down the lane. It was coming toward Holly Lodge, tramping with short steps through the crust of snow. As the object drew nearer, Betty’s keen eyes discovered that it was a small boy—a very small boy. Betty wondered why so small a child should be sent out in the winter night. When he came within the circle of red light from the front door, Betty saw that the boy was black and very ragged.
By this, it was time for Betty to go downstairs and show herself to the adoring eyes of her grandfather. Colonel Beverley, sitting in his great chair by the fire, surveyed Betty with profound satisfaction as she marched solemnly up and down, and pirouetted before him to show her new white satin slippers, with glittering buckles. From the wreath of roses down to these little slippers, the Colonel found Betty altogether adorable, and told her so.
While Betty was giving stern orders to the Colonel to go to bed promptly at ten o’clock, and not to smoke more than two pipes, Aunt Tulip came into the sitting-room from the nearby kitchen.
“Miss Betty,” proclaimed Aunt Tulip, with the air of announcing a catastrophe, “what you think done happen now? Them good-for-nothin’ niggers that come here from I dunno where, and brought a little boy wid ’em, done gone away—they tooken the boat to-day at the landin’. And this heah boy as ain’t got no father nor no mother, and say he doan’s believe he never had none, got skeered at the steamboat, and turn ’roun’ and run away heah! What we gwine ter do ’bout him?”
“Bring him in,” cried Betty, suddenly remembering the little boy she had seen creeping through the snow.