Betsy-Tacy (4 page)

E
VERY MORNING Betsy called for Tacy, so that they could walk to school together.

Betsy came to Tacy's house a little early, usually, to be there when Tacy had her hair combed. There was a painful fascination in this business, for Tacy always cried.

Her ringlets were tangled after her night's sleep. When she washed for breakfast, they were merely
tied back with a ribbon. Tacy's mother was busy getting breakfast for thirteen, and Tacy's curls took time. After breakfast the time for curls arrived. Tacy began to cry at sight of the comb.

Betsy's eyes grew round and she swayed back and forth as she watched. “But she cried harder than that, the first day of school, Mrs. Kelly.”

“Then she must have cried pretty hard that day,” Mrs. Kelly would answer. “Keep still, Tacy. I'm trying not to hurt.”

Mrs. Kelly was stout and gentle. She was like a large, anxious dove. She was different from Betsy's mother who was slim and red-headed and gay. Betsy's mother knew how to scold as well as to laugh and sing. But Tacy's mother never scolded.

“If I tried to scold eleven I'd be scolding all the time,” she explained to Betsy one day.

After the curls were brushed over Tacy's mother's finger, Betsy and Tacy started off to school. They walked to school together, and they walked home together. Back and forth together, every day.

At first it was autumn; there were red and yellow leaves for Betsy and Tacy to scuffle under foot. Then the leaves were brown, then they were blown away; that was in the gray time named November. Then came the exciting first snow, and this was followed by more snow and more. At last the drifts
rising beside the sidewalk were higher than their heads.

Betsy and Tacy lay down in the drifts and spread out their arms to make angels. They rolled the snow into balls and had battles with Julia and Katie. They started a snowman in the vacant lot, and added to him day after day until…before a thaw came…he was as fat as Mrs. Chubbock.

The snow was fun while there was sun to glitter on it from a sky as bright and blue as Tacy's eyes. But after a time the weather grew cold; it was too cold for Betsy and Tacy to play in the snow any more. Their hands inside mittens ached, and their feet inside overshoes grew numb. The wind nipped their faces in their snugly tied hoods; their breath froze on the bright scarves knotted around their necks.

On days like that, as they walked home from school, Betsy told Tacy the milkman story.

It started one day when a milkman passed them on the corner by the chocolate-colored house. His wagon was running on runners; and it wasn't an ordinary wagon; it looked like a little house. The milkman sat covered with buffalo robes, and from deep in shadows came the glimmer of a fire. It might have come from the milkman's pipe, but Betsy and Tacy thought that it came from a little stove inside the milkman's wagon.

That gave Betsy the idea for a story.

The story went differently on different days, but one day it went like this:

Two little girls named Betsy and Tacy were walking home from school. It was very cold.

“I wish we could catch a ride,” said Tacy.

And just at that moment a milkman came riding by. He was riding in a wagon which looked like a little house. He had a little stove inside. He said to Betsy and Tacy:

“Hello, little girls. Wouldn't you like a ride in this wagon? I'm through delivering milk, so you can have it for yourselves.”

Betsy and Tacy said, “Thank you very much!” And the milkman jumped out, and they jumped in. And the milkman went away.

But before he went away he said, “You don't need to drive that horse. It's a pretty cold day for keeping hold of reins. Just wind the reins around the whip.”

So Betsy and Tacy wound the reins around the whip, and they said to the horse, “Take us home, horse.” The milkman's horse was a magic horse, but nobody knew it except the milkman and Betsy and Tacy.

The horse started off over the snow. The sleigh-bells jingled on his back, and the wagon ran so
smoothly that it hardly joggled Betsy and Tacy. They were sitting beside the little stove in the very inside of the wagon. They were sitting on two little stools beside the stove.

In just a minute they were as warm as toast. It was cozy sitting there with the wagon sliding along. Only by and by Tacy said, “I'm hungry.”

And Betsy said, “That's funny. Look what I see!” And she pointed over to a corner of the wagon, and there were two baskets. One was marked, “Betsy,” and one was marked, “Tacy.” They were covered with little red cloths.

Betsy and Tacy took off these cloths and spread them on their knees, and they looked into their baskets. Each one found a cup of cocoa there. It was hot. It was steaming. And it hadn't spilled a drop. That was because the milkman's wagon was magic like his horse.

And beside each cup of cocoa were doughnuts. They were hot too. They smelled like Mrs. Ray's doughnuts smell when she lifts them out of the lard on a fork. They smelled good. There were plenty of doughnuts for Betsy and plenty for Tacy.

“Isn't this fun?” Tacy said. “Riding along in the milkman's wagon and eating doughnuts?”

Just then the horse turned his head. “Those doughnuts smell good,” he said.

“Oh, excuse me,” said Betsy and Tacy. “We didn't know that horses ate doughnuts.”

“Well, I do,” said the horse. “Of course I'm a magic horse.”

And Betsy and Tacy put three doughnuts on the whip and they held out the whip and the horse opened his mouth and the doughnuts dropped right in.

“Thank you,” said the horse. “I'll take you home every day it's cold. I'll meet you where I met you today, on the corner by the chocolate-colored house.”

In a minute he turned his head and said, “Of course it's a secret.”

“Oh, yes,” said Betsy and Tacy. “We understand that.”

They had come so far now that they had come to Hill Street Hill. They were halfway up. They put their cups back in the baskets and covered the baskets with the red cloths, and they climbed out of the wagon.

“Thank you, horse,” they said.

“You're welcome,” said the horse.

They were almost up Hill Street Hill, and they weren't cold at all, hardly, on account of the ride they'd had.

Julia and Katie were just ahead.

“Hurry up!” they called. “Hurry up so you don't get frost bite.”

“Frost bite!” said Betsy and Tacy, and they looked at each other and laughed.

“We're warm as toast,” said Betsy, stamping her feet.

“We're hardly cold at all,” said Tacy, swinging her arms.

Betsy said to Tacy, “Let's go ask your mamma if you can't bring your paper dolls and come over to my house to play.”

“Yes, let's,” said Tacy. “I hope we meet that milkman again tomorrow. Don't you, Betsy?”

“Those were good doughnuts,” said Betsy. “Maybe my mamma will give us some more.”

Q
UITE OFTEN, after school, Betsy and Tacy went to Betsy's house and played paper dolls.

Betsy and Tacy liked paper dolls better than real dolls. They wanted real dolls too, of course. The most important thing to see on Christmas morning, poking out of a stocking or sitting under a tree, was a big china doll…with yellow curls and
a blue silk dress and bonnet, or with black curls and a pink silk dress and bonnet…it didn't matter which. But after Christmas they put those dolls away and played with their paper dolls.

They cut the paper dolls from fashion magazines. They could hardly wait for their mothers' magazines to grow old. Mrs. Benson didn't have any children, so she saved her fashion magazines for Betsy and Tacy. And when Miss Meade, the sewing woman, came to Betsy's house, she could be depended upon to leave a magazine or two behind.

The chief trouble Betsy and Tacy had was in finding pictures of men and boys. There had to be father dolls and brother dolls, of course. The tailor shops had men's fashion sheets. But those fashion sheets were hard to get. Tacy's brother George worked next door to a tailor shop. He told Mr. Baumgarten, the tailor, that his little sister Tacy liked those fashion sheets. After that Mr. Baumgarten saved all his fashion sheets for Tacy, and Tacy divided them with Betsy.

The dolls were not only cut from magazines; they lived in magazines. Betsy and Tacy each had a doll family living in a magazine. The servant dolls were kept in a pile between the first two pages; a few pages on was the pile of father dolls; then came the
mother dolls, and then the sixteen-year-olds, the ten-year-olds, the eight-year-olds, the five-year-olds, and the babies.

Those were the dolls that Betsy and Tacy played with after school.

Betsy and Tacy stopped in at Tacy's house to get her magazine and eat a cookie. Then they went on to Betsy's house, and when Betsy had kissed her mother and both of them had hung their wraps in the little closet off the back parlor, Betsy brought out the magazine in which her doll family lived.

“Shall we play here beside the stove, Mamma?” she asked.

“Yes, that would be a good place to play,” said Mrs. Ray; and it was.

The fire glowed red through the isinglass windows of the big hard coal heater. It shone on the wild horses' heads which ran in a procession around the shining nickel trim. Up on the warming ledge the tea kettle was singing. Underneath the stove, on the square metal plate which protected the green flowered carpet, Lady Jane Grey, the cat, was singing too.

She opened one sleepy eye but she kept on purring as Betsy and Tacy opened their magazines.

“What shall we name the five-year-old today?” Tacy asked Betsy.

The five-year-olds were the most important members of the large doll families. Everything pleasant happened to them. They had all the adventures.

The eight-year-olds lived very dull lives; and they were always given very plain names. They were Jane and Martha, usually, or Hannah and Jemima. Sometimes Betsy and Tacy forgot and called them Julia and Katie. But the five-year-olds had beautiful names. They were Lucille and Evelyn, or Madeline and Millicent.

“We'll be Madeline and Millicent today,” Betsy decided.

They played that it was morning. The servant dolls got up first. The servant dolls wore caps with long streamers and dainty ruffled aprons. They didn't look at all like the hired girls of Hill Street. But like hired girls they got up bright and early.

The fathers and mothers got up next. Then came the children beginning with the oldest. The five-year-olds came dancing down to breakfast in the fingers of Betsy and Tacy.

“What are you planning to do today, Madeline?” Betsy's father doll asked his five-year-old.

“I'm going to play with Millicent, Papá.” (Madeline and Millicent pronounced papa, papá.)

“And I'm going to play with Jemima,” said Betsy's eight-year-old who was named Hannah today.

“No, Hannah!” said her father. “You must stay at home and wash the dishes. But Madeline may go. Wouldn't you like to take the carriage, Madeline? You and Millicent could go for a nice ride. Here is a dollar in case you want some candy.”

“Oh, thank you, Papá,” said Madeline. She gave him an airy kiss.

Meanwhile Tacy's dolls were talking in much the same way. Both father dolls were sent quickly down to work; the mothers went shopping; the babies were taken out in their carriages by the pretty servant dolls; and the older children were shut in the magazines. Then Betsy and Tacy each took her five-year-old in hand, and the fun of the game began.

First they went to the candy store under the patent rocker. Madeline's dollar bought an enormous quantity of gum drops and candy corn. Next they sat down in their carriage which was made of a shoebox. There were two strings attached, and Betsy and Tacy were the horses. Madeline and Millicent took a beautiful ride.

They climbed the back parlor sofa; that was a mountain.

“Let's have a picnic,” said Madeline. So they did. They picnicked on top of a pillow which had the head of a girl embroidered on it.

They swished through the dangling bamboo
curtains which separated the back parlor from the front parlor. And in the front parlor they left their carriage again. They climbed the piano stool; that was a merry-go-round, and of course they had a ride.

After calling on Mrs. Vanderbilt, who lived behind the starched lace curtains at the front parlor window, and Mrs. Astor, who lived under an easel which was draped in purple silk, they slipped by way of the dining room into the back parlor again.

And here they met with their greatest adventure!

The Betsy horse began to rear and snort.

“What's the matter?” asked the Tacy horse.

“A tiger! A tiger!” cried the Betsy horse. She jumped and kicked.

The Tacy horse began to jump and kick too, looking about her for the tiger. Lady Jane Grey was awake and washing her face.

“She's getting ready to
eat us!” cried the Betsy horse, leaping.

“Help!” cried the Tacy horse, leaping too.

They leaped so high that they overturned the carriage. Out went Madeline and Millicent on the highway of the green flowered carpet.

“We're running away!” shouted the Betsy horse.

“Whoa! Whoa!” shouted the Tacy horse.

They ran through the rattling bamboo curtains into the front parlor. There they stopped being horses and raced back, out of breath, to be Madeline and Millicent again.

Lady Jane Grey loved to play with paper. She entered obligingly into the game.

“He's biting me!” shrieked Madeline.

“He's scratching me!” shrieked Millicent.

The tiger growled and pounced.

Madeline and Millicent were rescued just in time. The father dolls rushed up and seized them and jumped into the coal scuttle. Lady Jane Grey jumped in too and jumped out looking black instead of gray, and Betsy and Tacy scrambled in the coal scuttle trying to fish out the father dolls before they got too black. There were never enough father dolls, in spite of Mr. Baumgarten.

Julia and Katie came in just then from skating. The opening door brought in a rush of winter cold and dark.

“Well, for goodness' sake!” they cried. “
For goodness' sake!
” They cried it so loud that Betsy's mother came in from the kitchen, where she was getting supper.

“Betsy!” she cried. “Come straight out here and wash! And use soap and a wash cloth and warm water from the kettle! You too, Tacy.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Betsy and Tacy.

When they had washed they put their paper dolls back into the magazines. And Katie helped Tacy into her outside wraps and took her by the hand, and they started home.

Right at the door, Tacy turned around to smile at Betsy. “Whoa!” she said, instead of “Good-by!”

“Giddap!” said Betsy, instead of “Come again!”

“Whoa!” “Giddap!” “Whoa!” “Giddap!” they said over and over.

“Whatever are you two talking about?” said Julia and Katie crossly, which was just what Betsy and Tacy had hoped they would say.