Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown Page 2

  “Hello,” said Tacy.

  “Hello,” said Tib.

  They sat down in a row on the steps.

  Conversation on the porch lagged. Julia unpinned her hat and fluffed her dark pompadour. She wore a big bow on the top of her head and another at the top of her braid.

  “Remember, Jerry,” she said at last, “you promised to help me with my algebra.”

  “Glad to,” Jerry said.

  “Betsy,” said Julia. “I think Mamma is looking for you.”

  “She can’t be,” said Betsy. “She’s taken Margaret downtown to get an English bob.”

  “Maybe Rena is looking for you then,” said Julia pointedly.

  “Nobody’s looking for me,” said Betsy.

  “Or me either,” said Tacy.

  “Or me either,” said Tib. They sat like lumps.

  “Algebra,” said Julia, “is hard. Jerry can’t explain it with so many around. He can’t concentrate.”

  “That’s right,” said Jerry. He turned around to smile at them again. Betsy liked him when he smiled. But she hardened her heart and didn’t budge.

  “Oh, well,” said Julia. “Let’s let the arithmetic go. Come on in the house, Jerry, and sing a while. I have some of the music from Robin Hood. Did you hear it?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Wasn’t it good? I went with Papa and Mamma. They decided I was old enough to start going to the theatre and they thought Robin Hood was a good thing to begin on. I loved it. I’m sure I’ll like grand opera better, though.”

  Betsy writhed. It was her sorest grievance that she had not seen Robin Hood. She had never even been inside the Opera House.

  Chatting in a grown-up way, Julia went into the house and Jerry followed. Betsy and Tacy and Tib followed too. They sat down in the largest, most comfortable chairs. They said nothing.

  Julia went to the piano stool and ran her white fingers trippingly over the keys. She fluttered the music on the rack.

  “Here’s that good baritone solo. Sing it for me, Jerry.”

  “Well, gosh!” said Jerry, bending to look at it. “I’d like to. But I’m no De Wolf Hopper.”

  “Please, Jerry! You’ve sung for me before.”

  “But we were alone.”

  Julia turned the piano stool about.

  “Why don’t you three run over to the Kellys’ to play?” she asked pleadingly.

  “Paul’s got the stomach ache,” said Tacy. “Too many green apples.”

  “Mamma’s got company,” said Tib, after being nudged.

  “I’m afraid we’ve got to stay right here,” said Betsy. “Of course,” she added cautiously after a moment, “we could go to Mrs. Chubbock’s store for candy … if we had any money.”

  “We haven’t any though,” said Tacy. “At least I haven’t.”

  “Neither have I,” said Tib.

  “Neither have I,” said Betsy. “Not a cent.”

  Jerry dived into his pocket.

  “Here, take this,” he said, pulling out a dime.

  Betsy looked from the dime to Tacy. And Tacy looked from the dime to Betsy. And Tib looked from the dime to Betsy and Tacy. What they were thinking, of course, was, “Of all the luck!” But Jerry misunderstood.

  “Maybe a dime isn’t enough,” he said, “for three of you. Of course it isn’t! You need a nickel apiece.”

  And he drew out a nickel.

  This time Betsy and Tacy and Tib did not hesitate. With shouted thanks they grabbed and ran. They ran to Tacy’s hitching block.

  “There’s enough for the book and still some for candy!”

  “A nickel’s worth of jaw-breakers!”

  “Let’s go downtown right now,” suggested Betsy. “We can go to Cook’s Book Store and buy the book. Get some jaw-breakers on the way. Of course, we’ll have to ask.”

  “Mamma will let us go, I think,” said Tacy. “She feels sorry for me, on account of how hard I cried. Wait here while I ask.”

  She ran into the house.

  She was slow in returning, but when she came it was with a sparkling face.

  “We may go if we put on shoes and stockings. I’ve put mine on.”

  “Mine are underneath the maple,” said Tib, darting off.

  “I’ll get mine,” Betsy said.

  She raced into the house and upstairs to the little front bedroom. She and Julia shared it with Margaret now. Rena slept in the little back bedroom that had once been Margaret’s. The house was getting crowded, Mr. Ray said.

  Rena was baking gingerbread. Betsy could tell by the smell rising from the kitchen. In the parlor Jerry was singing a song about Brown October Ale.

  Betsy and Tacy and Tib started down Hill Street. They were pleased and excited because they were going downtown. But they did not suspect what marvel they would see before they returned.

  2

  The Horseless Carriage

  HE WALK downtown was uneventful … as uneventful as a walk downtown could be. It always seemed important to go beyond Lincoln Park, that pie-shaped wedge of lawn with an elm tree and a fountain on it which marked the end of the neighborhood.

  Ahead stretched Broad Street where fine houses sat on wide, tree-shaded streets. Wooden sidewalks changed to cement ones here. Church steeples loomed ahead, and the shiny framework of the new Carnegie Library.

  “When that library is finished,” Betsy remarked, “we won’t need to borrow our novels from Rena.”

  Parallel with Broad Street to the right were other streets rising one above another on the bluff. The High School that Julia and Katie attended lifted its tower there.

  Parallel with Broad Street to the left was Second Street with more houses, churches, livery stables, and the Opera House. Beyond that, Front Street lay along the river. But the river could not be seen except in glimpses between stores and shops, the Depot, the Big Mill, and Mr. Melborn Poppy’s splendid Melborn Hotel.

  September lay upon Front Street in pale golden light. Horses were drowsing at hitching rings and poles. In front of the Lion Department Store a bronze lion stood guard over a drinking trough. The thoroughfare was quiet, except for the occasional clop clop of horses on the paving and the whir of passing bicycles.

  “Let’s get our jaw-breakers first,” said Tib, so they went into Schulte’s Grocery Store and bought a nickel’s worth of jaw-breakers. They divided them equally and went on to Cook’s Book Store.

  “A copy of Lady Audley’s Secret, please,” said Betsy, putting down their dime.

  Mr. Cook looked at them sharply out of very bright blue eyes. He was tall and thin and wore a toupee, thick and silky, parted in the middle.

  “That is a strange book for three little girls to be buying,” he remarked.

  “We’re buying it for my mother’s hired girl,” said Betsy. “She likes those ten-cent books.”

  “It’s a fine story, Mr. Cook,” volunteered Tib, and Betsy and Tacy both nudged her. They didn’t think it was such a good idea to let Mr. Cook know that they read Rena’s novels. But he accepted their dime.

  It was when they came out of the store, with Lady Audley’s Secret under Tacy’s arm, that they had their first hint of the marvel which was to make the day forever memorable.

  Front Street was suddenly full of people. People seemed to have sprung up from nowhere, and all were rushing in one direction as though blown by a great wind. Shoppers; clerks from stores, wearing alpaca jackets; hatless women, untying aprons as they went; dozens and dozens of children.

  “Whatever can it be? What’s happened?”

  Betsy, Tacy, and Tib started to run.

  They sighted Winona Root, pedaling by on her bicycle. She was a classmate who lived on School Street in a white-painted brick house with a terrace and a beautiful garden. Her father was the editor of the Deep Valley Sun.

  Winona had black hair that hung in long straight locks on either side of a somewhat sallow face. She had gleaming black eyes and very white teeth which she showed almost constantly in a teasing
smile. She always wore bright dresses of red, purple or yellow. She was wearing a purple one now.

  “Winona! Stop! Tell us what’s the matter!”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “If we did, we wouldn’t ask you.”

  Winona grinned.

  “Don’t you wish you did know?”

  “Of course. Please tell us, Winona.”

  Winona stopped pedaling. She rested on long legs.

  “Well,” she said, drawing out the suspense. “It came this noon but he’s just got it to going.”

  “Who is ‘he’ and what is ‘it’?”

  “He is Mr. Poppy who owns the Melborn Hotel and runs the Opera House. It is down by the Opera House now.”

  “But what is ‘it’? Winona Root, you tell us. You might as well! We’ll follow the crowd and find out.”

  “All right,” said Winona, not wanting to be cheated of the pleasure of delivering the news. “It’s a horseless carriage.”

  A horseless carriage! Betsy, Tacy, and Tib were stunned into silence.

  There had been rumors for some time of a marvelous invention called the horseless carriage, a vehicle that ran without being pushed or pulled … even uphill. They had seen pictures of it. The Ladies’ Home Journal had shown Miss Julia Marlowe, the actress, sitting in one. And some Deep Valley people had gone to the Twin Cities, as Minneapolis and St. Paul are called in Minnesota, to view the wonder. But this was the first automobile to reach Deep Valley.

  Winona took their silence for skepticism.

  “Come on, if you don’t believe me. My father’s going to have a ride in it, so’s he can write a piece for the paper. I’ll be the first kid in town to get a ride, I imagine.”

  She probably would be, Betsy thought gloomily. Winona Root did everything first. Just because her father was an editor, she had complimentary tickets—“comps,” they were called—to the circus, to the Dog and Pony Show, to the glass blowers, to the lantern slide performances, to all the matinees that played at the Opera House.

  “Maybe you won’t be,” said Tib.

  “Betcha I will,” Winona answered.

  She jumped on her bicycle and started pedaling with long agile legs. Betsy, Tacy, and Tib raced along behind her.

  “I don’t even want to be,” panted Tacy as she ran.

  “Want to be what?”

  “The first to get a ride. I’d be scared.”

  “What of?” asked Tib.

  “The horseless carriage. It sounds crazy to me. If there isn’t a horse to say ‘whoa!’ to, how do you stop the thing?”

  “That’s what I wonder,” said Betsy. “How does it know when Mr. Poppy is ready to stop?”

  “It might keep right on going.”

  “Up one street and down another.”

  “Into the slough, maybe.”

  “Or into the river.”

  “Are you scared too?” Tib asked Betsy. “Well … Winona Root can have the first ride for all of me.”

  “I’m not scared,” said Tib. “I’d like to be the first to ride.”

  They ran past the office in which Tacy’s father sold sewing machines; it was closed. Past Ray’s Shoe Store; that was closed too. Store after store was closed and empty. They reached the Melborn Hotel and turned the corner and ran to the Opera House.

  There, where the crowd was thickest, they could see what looked like an open carriage … only without any shafts and without a horse hitched to it. Near by stood Mr. Root and Winona, the Mayor and other notables, and, of course, the Poppys.

  Mr. and Mrs. Poppy were worth looking at themselves when there wasn’t a horseless carriage about. He weighed over three hundred pounds and his wife, two-thirds as much. Today they looked even larger than usual, for they wore the loose linen dusters fashionable for automobiling. Mr. Poppy wore a leather cap that had flaps tied over his ears and enormous froglike goggles. Mrs. Poppy’s hat was tied down with yards and yards of veiling.

  The Poppys were always models of elegance. They were city people; they had come from Minneapolis, and no one in town knew them very well. They lived in the hotel; Mrs. Poppy did not keep house as other Deep Valley wives did. Blonde and radiant, she was said to look like the famous beauty and actress, Lillian Russell … except that she was stouter, of course. Before her marriage, she had been an actress herself.

  She and her husband went to the Twin Cities often, to see plays. But they saw plays in Deep Valley too. When Mr. Poppy built the Opera House, he had two special seats made for Mrs. Poppy and himself. Extra wide, extra deep, and extra comfortable, designed for extra-stout people. Betsy had heard about them often.

  She and Tacy and Tib squirmed through the crowd until they were near the Poppys. A sweet scent floated from Mrs. Poppy, and whenever she moved there was silken rustle beneath the linen duster. She looked down to smile at Tib. Tib always drew a flattering smile even from strangers; and today in the long-waisted pink lawn dress, she looked even prettier than usual.

  A man in overalls lay underneath the horseless carriage. Wrenches and other tools were scattered in the dust.

  “Two hours’ work for one hour’s riding is the average, I hear,” the Mayor remarked jocularly to Mr. Poppy.

  “Oh, come now! It isn’t that bad,” answered Mr. Poppy, smiling too, although his round red face with its garlands of chins looked hot and flustered. “How you coming, Jim?” he called to the man underneath the carriage.

  The man crawled out. He was Sunny Jim who worked in the livery stable next door to the Opera House. Everyone called him Sunny Jim because of his resemblance to the smiling figure in the Force advertisements.

  “It’ll go this time, sir. No doubt about it.”

  Mr. Poppy turned with a courtly bow to his wife.

  “First ride for Mrs. Poppy. And then you gentlemen must try it out.”

  Winona took her father’s hand.

  “May I go along, father?” she asked.

  “We’ll see,” her father answered indulgently.

  Winona grinned wickedly at Tib.

  There was a spreading circle of perfume and a swishing sound of silken petticoats as Mr. Poppy handed Mrs. Poppy into the back seat. Settling herself comfortably, she almost filled it. Under her veil-tied hat, her face glowed with pleasure.

  “You show commendable courage, Mrs. Poppy,” said Winona’s father, leaning forward.

  “Oh, I adore automobiling,” Mrs. Poppy answered.

  She smiled at the crowd, and her smile lingered on the group of children. She and Mr. Poppy were very fond of children although they had none of their own. Tib waved at her, and Mrs. Poppy waved gloved fingers in response.

  “Steady now,” Mr. Poppy said.

  He walked to the back of the vehicle and turned a crank. With Sunny Jim at his elbow and the crowd waiting intently, he turned it again … and again. He turned it once again, and there was an explosive chugging noise. The carriage began to shake.

  “Good!” cried Mr. Poppy, and he ran around and climbed into the front seat where the children now observed a wheel at the right side. He took this into his hands with firm determination. The carriage continued to shake convulsively. An evil smell crept into the air.

  Sunny Jim rushed to Mr. Poppy’s side. He shouted excited directions. Mr. Poppy turned keys, pressed pedals, pulled levers. The carriage was shaking so hard now that Mrs. Poppy vibrated like jelly, but she continued to smile.

  “Got it, Mr. Poppy?” Sunny Jim shouted.

  “Got it.”

  “Off, sir?”

  “Well, practically.”

  And at that sovereign moment, Tib danced forward. “Please, Mr. Poppy,” she called. “May I have a ride?”

  Betsy gasped, and Tacy gulped. They had not dreamed that Tib had this in mind. It would be an inconceivable glory to get the first ride. What a triumph over Winona Root!

  But Mr. Poppy was too busy turning keys, pressing pedals, and pulling levers even to glance at Tib.

  “Some other time, little girl! Some o
ther time!” he answered absently.

  Winona Root flashed Betsy and Tacy a smile of good-natured scorn.

  Mrs. Poppy leaned forward to touch her husband’s shoulder.

  “Give her a ride, Mel. She can sit here with me and won’t be a bit of trouble.”

  “All right … if you want her.”

  “Come along, dear. Jump up!”

  Mrs. Poppy moved heavily over, drawing aside her billowing fragrant skirts. Tib jumped.

  “Father!” Winona Root called urgently. “Can’t I …”

  But it was too late. With a burst of vapor and a clanking that drowned out her voice, the horseless carriage moved. It actually moved. It went ahead without pushing or pulling. It ran right along behind nothing.

  The crowd sent up a tremendous cheer. Betsy and Tacy yelled at the tops of their voices. Nestled beneath Mrs. Poppy’s bosom, Tib waved frantically to Betsy and Tacy who waved frantically back.

  Horses reared, and drivers all around pulled at their reins. The crowd ran along beside the uncannily moving vehicle. Betsy caught a glimpse of her father … he was throwing his hat into the air. For just a moment he did not look like her father; he looked like a boy. She saw Tacy’s father, too; and Tib’s. And Herbert Humphreys, wearing his knickerbockers. And Tom Slade. And ever so many of their schoolmates. All were running madly beside the horseless carriage.

  But it gained speed. It left them behind. Clanking, rattling, spitting, it turned the corner and vanished from sight.

  Betsy and Tacy jumped up and down and screamed a while. Then they raced back to the Opera House. In the milling crowd they found Winona Root, standing under one of the two billboards that flanked the entrance doors. Her teeth gleamed in her indomitable smile.

  “Yah! Yah!” yelled Betsy and Tacy. “Tib got the first ride!”

  “What of it?”

  “What of it?” shouted Betsy indignantly. “You said you were going to be the first. That’s what!”

  Winona flipped a careless arm toward the advertisement above her.

  “See that? Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly. They’re giving a matinee next Saturday. I’m going.”

  “What of it?” Tacy remembered to retort. But Betsy’s gaze wandered to the billboard and clung there fascinated.