Betty Leicester: A Story For Girls

by Sarah Orne Jewett

There was a group of wooden pails on the boat, and a queer apparatus for dredging which Mr. Leicester had made the afternoon before with Seth's and Jonathan's help. They had implored a flat-iron from Serena for one of the weights, and she had also contributed a tin pail, which was curiously weighted also with small pieces of iron, so that it would sink in a particular way. It was believed that a certain uncommon little creature would be found in the flats farther down the river, and Mr. Leicester told the ship's company certain interesting facts about its life and behavior which made everybody eager to join the search. "I have been meaning to hunt for it for years," he said. "Professor Agassiz told me about it when I was in college; but then he always roused one's enthusiasm as no one else could, and made whatever he was interested in seem the one thing in the world that was of very first importance." Betty's heart glowed as she listened; she thought the same thing of papa. "He was such an inspirer of others to do good work," said Mr. Leicester, still thinking lovingly of his great teacher.

Sometimes the river was narrow and deep and the Starlight's course lay near the shore, so that the children came running down to the water's edge to see the pretty boat go by, and envy Betty and Mary Beck in the shadow of her great white sail. Some of them shouted Hollo! and the two girls answered again and again, until the little voices sounded small and piping and were lost in the distance. Halfway to Riverport, where the houses were a good way from any village, it seemed as if these old homes had remained the same for many years; none of them had bay-windows, and the paint was worn away by wind and weather. It was like stepping back twenty or thirty years in the rural history. Aunt Barbara said that everything looked almost exactly the same along one reach of the river as it did when she could first remember it. The shores were green with pines and ferns and gray with ledges. It was salt water here, so that they could smell the seaweed and the woods, and could hear the song-sparrows and the children's voices as they passed the lonely farm-houses standing high and fog-free above the water. From one of these they heard the sound of women's voices singing.

"They're havin' a meetin' in there, I expect," explained Seth. "Yes, I hear 'Liza Loomis's voice too. You know, Miss Leicester, she used to live up to Tideshead and sing in the Methodist choir. She's got a lovely voice to sing. She's married down this way. They like to git together in these scattered places, but 't is more customary up where I come from to have them neighborhood meetin's of an afternoon." Betty watched the small gray house with deep interest, and thought she should like to go in. There were little children playing about the door, as if they had been brought and left outside to amuse themselves. It was very touching to hear the old hymn as they sailed by, and Aunt Barbara and Betty's father looked at each other significantly as they listened. "Becky, you ought to be there to help sing," Betty whispered, as they sat side by side, but Becky thought it was very stupid to be having a prayer-meeting that lovely morning.

Seth Pond had celebrated the Fourth of July by going down to Riverport on the packet, and he had gathered much information about the river which he was glad to give now for everybody's pleasure and enlightenment.

"There's a bo't layin' up in that cove that's drowned two men," he said solemnly. "There was a lady with 'em, but she was saved. I understand they'd been drinking heavy."

Betty looked at the boat with awe where it lay with the stern under water and the bows ashore and all warped apart. "Isn't she good for anything?" she asked.

"Nobody'll ever touch her," said Seth contemptuously,—"she's drowned two men."

But Miss Leicester smiled, and said that it appeared to have been their own fault.

They could see into the low ruined cabin from the deck of the Starlight, and, after they passed, the cabin port-hole seemed to watch them like an eye until it was far astern.

"I suppose she will lie there until she breaks up in a high tide, and then the women will gather her wreck wood to burn," said Mr. Leicester, watching the warped mast, and Harry Foster said that no fishermen on the river would ever touch a boat that they believed to be unlucky. Just then they came round a point and passed a little house close by the water, where there were flakes for drying fish and a collection of little weather-beaten boxes shaped like roofs which were used to cover the fish in wet weather. Betty thought they looked like a village of baby-houses. At this moment a woman darted out of the house door, screaming to some one inside, "I've lost Georgie and Idy both!" and off the anxious mother hurried along the steep path to the fish flakes, as if that were where she usually found the runaways. Presently they heard a child's shrill voice, and a pink pinafore emerged from among the little roofs. Ida was deposited angrily in the lane, while the mother went back to hunt for the other one. It was very droll to see and hear it all from the river, but it was some minutes before loud shrieks announced the adventurous Georgie's capture.