LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| A frolic would follow | [ Frontispiece] |
| FACING PAGE | |
| Most unpromising she was, at the first glance | [ 6] |
| She fled with him down the aisle | [ 84] |
| Van caught up with Piggy at the far end of the lawn | [ 152] |
THE KEY TO
BETSY’S HEART
CHAPTER I
THE COMING OF BETSY
“She needed all the heartening she could get.”
BETSY sat staring through the window of the first hack she had ever been in,—also it was the first she had ever seen. She was wondering, wondering, as she rolled along up two-mile drive that lay between the station and the Hill-Top, what would happen next. Things had moved pretty swiftly in the past few weeks, and Betsy had been simply a bewildered leaf floating on the whirling tide of destiny.
To begin with, her father had disappeared;—run away from the little farm on the New Hampshire hillside. Tired of the stones and the drudgery—tired, too, of the wife, who, through neglect, hard work and lack of good food, had grown to be a fretful invalid—he had disappeared like a coward, in the night, no one knew where.
There were days after that when Betsy had gone hungry, for there was no money in the house, and but little food, and at last had come a day when the mother had fallen weakly on the floor. Betsy had run, frightened, down to old Mrs. Webb’s house for help, and Mrs. Webb had told the neighbors, and they had all come from every direction, surprised by the alarming news. It was planting season, and for some time no one had happened to call at the little red house over in Wixon’s Hollow, off the main road.
Then there had been a great bustling about. Betsy’s mother was put to bed, a doctor had come, there was food in the house once more, and a kindly neighbor took charge of affairs. But it was too late. In a few days all was over.