Betty Leicester: A Story For Girls

by Sarah Orne Jewett

"I do think this picture of the old packet-boat coming up the river is the prettiest of all. Oh, here's Aunt Barbara; do come and see this, Aunty!" said Betty, with great enthusiasm. "It makes me think of the afternoon I came to you."

Miss Leicester took out her eyeglasses and looked as she was bidden. "It is a charming little water-color," she said, with delighted surprise. "Did you really teach yourself until this summer?"

"I only had my play paint-box until last winter," said Mary Picknell. "I am so glad you like it, Miss Leicester;" for Miss Leicester had many really beautiful pictures of her own, and her praise was worth having.

Then Mr. Picknell took his stick from behind the door, and led the company of guests out across the fields to a sloping rough piece of pasture land, with a noisy brook at the bottom, where a terrible battle had been fought in the old French and Indian war. He read them an account of it from Mr. Parkman's history, and told all the neighborhood traditions of the frightened settlers, and burnt houses, and murdered children and very old people, and the terrible march of a few captives through the winter woods to Canada. How his own great-great grandfather and grandmother were driven away from home, and each believed the other dead for three years, until the man escaped, and then went, hearing that his wife was alive, to buy her freedom. They came to the farm again, and were buried in the old burying-lot, side by side.

"There was a part of the story which you left out," Mrs. Picknell said. "When they killed the little baby, the Indians told its poor mother not to cry about it or they would kill her too; and when her tears would fall, a kind-hearted squaw was quick enough to throw some water in the poor woman's face, so that the men only laughed and thought it was a taunt, and not done to hide tears at all."

"I have not heard these old town stories for years. We ought to thank you heartily," said Miss Barbara, when the battle-ground had been shown and the club had heard all the interesting things that were known about the great fight. Then they came back by way of the old family burying-place and read the quaint epitaphs, which Mr. Picknell himself had cut deeper and kept from wearing away. It seemed that they never could forget the old farm's history.

"I maintain that every old place in town ought to have its history kept," said Mr. Picknell. "Now, you boys and girls, what do you know about the places where you live? Why don't you make town clerks of yourselves? Take the edges of almanacs, if you can't get courage to begin a blank-book, and make notes of things, so that dates will be kept for those who come after you. Most of you live where your great-grandfathers did, and you ought to know about the old folks. Most of what I've kept alive about this old farm I learned from my great-grandmother, who lived to be a very old woman, and liked to tell me stories in the long winter evenings, when I was a boy. Now we'll go and see where the beavers used to build, down here where the salt water makes up into the outlet of the brook. Plenty of their logs lay there moss-covered, when I was a grown man."

Somehow the getting acquainted with each other in a new way was the best part of the club, after all. It was quite another thing from even sitting side by side in school, to walk these two or three miles together. Betty Leicester had taught her Tideshead cronies something of her own lucky secret of taking and making the pleasures that were close at hand. It was great good fortune to get hold of a common wealth of interest and association by means of the club; and as Mr. Picknell and Miss Leicester talked about the founders and pioneers of the earliest Tideshead farms, there was not a boy nor girl who did not have a sense of pride in belonging to so valiant an old town. They could plan a dozen expeditions to places of historic interest. There had been even witches in Tideshead, and soldiers and scholars to find out about and remember. There was no better way of learning American history (as Miss Leicester said) than to study thoroughly the history of a single New England village. As for newer towns in the West, they were all children of some earlier settlements, and nobody could tell how far back a little careful study would lead.

There was time for a good game of tennis after the stories were told, and the play was watched with great excitement, but some of the club girls strayed about the old house, part of which had been a garrison-house. The doors stood open, and the sunshine fell pleasantly across the floors of the old rooms. Usually they meant to go picnicking, but to-day the Picknells had asked their friends to tea, and a delicious country supper it was. Then they all sang, and Mary Beck's clear voice, as usual, led all the rest. It was seven o'clock before the party was over. The evening was cooler than August evenings usually are, and after many leave-takings the club set off afoot toward the town.

"What a good time!" said Betty to the Grants and Aunt Barbara, for she had claimed one Grant and let Aunt Barbara walk with the other; and everybody said "What a good time!" at least twice, as they walked down the lane to the road. There they stopped for a minute to sing another verse of "Good-night, ladies," and indeed went away singing along the road, until at last the steepness of the hill made them quiet. The Picknells, in their doorway, listened as long as they could.