Lady Betty Across the WaterWilliamson, C. N. (Charles Norris)
General
Lady Betty Across the Water
Williamson, C. N. (Charles Norris)
British -- United States -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"Howdy, Cousin Jim!" cried the nice woman with the expression, as Mr.
Brett stopped the car in front of the door. "We're mighty glad to see
you again. This is the young Lady Bulkeley, isn't it? We're mighty glad
to see her, too, and we're going to try to make her as happy as we
can."
"I knew you would, Cousin Fanny, or I wouldn't have brought her to
you," said Mr. Brett, jumping out and helping me down. "But she's Lady
Betty."
"I thought that would be a little too familiar to begin with," said the
dear woman, with a perfectly angelic smile, and a pleasant American
accent with rather more roll of the "r" than I'd heard in the East.
"But you shall be called just what you like best, my dear."
"Shall I? Then I should like you to call me Betty," said I, shaking
hands hard with Mr. Brett's Cousin Fanny, and my heart warming to her
for her own sake as well as his. There was a good smell about her of
linen dried on the grass and of freshly-baked cake. I can never smell
those smells, I know, without remembering her.
She smiled, and pressed my hand. "Why, you are just like an American
girl, my dear," she exclaimed. "Not a bit stiff and English like we
supposed you would be. We all thought we were going to be afraid of
you, but I guess we won't, will we, Patty and Ide?"
I saw that I was expected to take this as an introduction. I smiled and
bowed to the two girls, and when they put out their hands I put mine
out too. They didn't lift my hand up high to shake, as people do at
home a little, and as they do in New York and Newport a great deal
more, but just thumped it up and down cordially in about the longitude
of their waists.
"I'm very happy to know you," said Patty, the pretty, red-haired one.
"How _do_ you do?" enquired Ide, the one with the fringe.
I fancied that they must both be Mrs. Trowbridge's daughters, but she
continued the ceremony of presentation by saying:
"Patty is Miss Pinkerton; and Ide is Miss Jay. They generally stay with
Mr. Trowbridge and me pretty nearly all the year round. Patty takes
music lessons in Arcona twice a week, and keeps up her other studies,
and Ide helps me look after the house and the milk. I should have hard
work to get along without either one of them, it seems to me; and I
expect I shall be feeling just the same way about you before you leave
us. Here comes Mr. Trowbridge, now. See, Cousin Jim, here comes your
Cousin Hezekiah. He's been hiving a swarm of bees; that's why he's got
that mosquito net veil around his hat. Something like your automobile
one, Lady Betty."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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