Betsy-Tacy and Tib Read online

  And Mrs. Muller went away downtown.

  It was fun to have Tib’s house all to themselves. Betsy and Tacy knew it well by now, but it still charmed them … the colored glass in the front door, the tower room with its blue velvet draperies, the back parlor with its broad window seat where they loved to sit and look at pictures of beautiful ladies in Munsey’s Magazine.

  The day they were left alone they found the most beautiful lady of all but she wasn’t in a magazine.

  Tib had taken them up to her mother’s room to show them the new curtains. They were made of white lace over pale pink silk, threaded with pink satin ribbon and tied back with pink satin bows. The large room stretched across the front of the house, with an alcove beside it where Hobbie’s bed was placed. Betsy and Tacy were roving about, admiring the curtains and the bureau with its bottles of perfume and the silver-backed mirrors and brushes, when Betsy picked up a framed photograph.

  “Tib!” she cried. “Come here! Tell me who this is.”

  Her tone was so excited that Tacy came running to look at the picture. Tib glanced at it and said:

  “Why, that’s Aunt Dolly.”

  “Your aunt?” asked Betsy. “Really? Did you ever actually see her?”

  “Of course,” said Tib. “I saw her every day when we lived in Milwaukee.”

  “Is she as beautiful as this?” asked Betsy.

  Tib examined the photograph earnestly.

  “Well, that looks just like her,” she answered.

  Betsy gazed, and Tacy gazed too. This was certainly a most beautiful lady. She was leaning against a marble pillar on which her elbow rested while her hand supported daintily her small exquisite head. A long train curled about her feet, making her slender rounded figure look as though it had been carved. She had masses of soft blonde hair and a doll-like face.

  “She looks like Tib,” said Tacy.

  “Yes, she does,” said Betsy.

  “I’m supposed to look like her,” said Tib. “But I don’t expect I’ll ever be that pretty.”

  Betsy and Tacy turned to look at her.

  “You’re quite pretty now, Tib,” Betsy said.

  “Especially when you’re dressed up,” said Tacy.

  “I’m too tanned,” said Tib.

  She picked up her mother’s mirror and inspected her small tanned face while Betsy and Tacy gazed at the photograph, heaving great sighs of admiration.

  But they couldn’t look at the photograph forever, so at last they put it down. Tib was still gazing into the mirror.

  “I’m not looking at myself any more,” she explained. “I’m looking at the ceiling. It looks different in the mirror. See?”

  She handed the mirror to Betsy and Tacy and they peered in. Sure enough, the ceiling did look different. It didn’t look like a ceiling. It looked like the floor of a new mysterious room.

  “It’s a Mirror Room,” Betsy said.

  The Mirror Room was carpeted with tiny pink flowers, for the ceiling wall paper was covered with tiny pink flowers. They matched the big pink flowers which twined around silver poles on the walls of the room. At the top of the wall, next to the ceiling, was a border with silver leaves and large and small pink flowers all together. If you tilted the mirror just a little, you could see that border.

  Holding the mirror between them, and looking down into its depths, Betsy and Tacy started to walk. They walked around the room and into the alcove, bumping a bit, but that didn’t matter; Hobbie wasn’t in his bed; he was down in the kitchen watching Matilda iron.

  “It’s fun walking through this Mirror Room. You try it,” said Betsy, offering the mirror to Tib.

  “I’ll go get mirrors for us all,” said Tib. And she did. She brought her father’s shaving mirror for Tacy and Matilda’s mirror for herself. Matilda’s mirror was a big square mirror in a dark brown frame. It was heavy. But Tib didn’t mind.

  They walked out into the hall, looking in their mirrors as they went.

  “We’ll explore this whole Mirror Palace,” Betsy said. “That’s what it is … a Mirror Palace.”

  “Who lives in it?” asked Tacy.

  “Aunt Dolly,” said Betsy. “She’s the Queen.”

  Tib was so surprised that she almost dropped Matilda’s mirror. She stared at Betsy with her round blue eyes.

  “Why, Betsy!” she cried. “My Aunt Dolly lives in a flat in Milwaukee.”

  “She used to, maybe,” Betsy said.

  “But I’d know if she lived in this house,” said Tib.

  “The Mirror Palace has no connection with this house,” said Betsy.

  “Oh,” said Tib. She still looked surprised, but she was beginning to get used to Betsy. She had played with her for two whole years. So when Tacy said, “Come on! Let’s explore the Mirror Palace,” Tib said, “All right.” They formed a line and descended the stairs, each holding fast to her mirror with one hand and grasping the rail with the other.

  In the downstairs hall the floor of the Palace was leathery brown. That was because the ceiling wall paper was leathery brown. In the front and back parlors, the floor became delicately blue, with darker blue scrolls visible when you tilted the mirror just a little. The dining room was the nicest of all. There the floor was thrillingly red and gold.

  “This is the Throne Room,” Betsy said, and they walked around the Throne Room. “Now,” she continued, “we’ll inspect the Royal Kitchens.”

  They started toward the kitchen but Tib checked them.

  “We’d better not go out there,” she said. “Matilda’s ironing. Maybe she wouldn’t like this walking around with mirrors. Especially when one of them’s hers.”

  “Maybe not,” Betsy and Tacy agreed.

  “Anyway,” said Tacy, looking around the dining room with its rich red and gold walls, the sideboard laden with silver and the long table spread with a heavy woven cloth and a silver dish filled with oranges, “Anyway I think it would be fun to play right here in the Throne Room.”

  “Oh yes!” cried Betsy. “We’ll make a throne for Aunt Dolly.”

  “But where is Aunt Dolly?” asked Tib.

  “When you look in the mirror,” said Betsy, “that makes Aunt Dolly.”

  Betsy pulled out Tib’s father’s armchair which sat at the head of the table, and Tib ran to get her mother’s paisley shawl. It was old; she was allowed to play with it. They draped it over the chair and pushed the chair up against the window. The window’s red draperies made a majestic background.

  Tacy was inspecting the sideboard.

  “Some of this silver would come in handy around a throne,” she said. “But maybe we shouldn’t touch it.”

  “We’ll put it all back,” Betsy said.

  “You decorate while I get something,” said Tib. She ran away and came back wearing her mother’s feather boa.

  At the right of the throne Betsy and Tacy had put the silver coffee urn; at the left, the silver teapot.

  “She can use this big ladle for a sceptre,” said Betsy. “But what will we do for a crown?”

  “The sugar bowl’s a good shape,” said Tacy. “But it’s full of sugar lumps.”

  “The spoon holder,” said Betsy, “is just the thing.”

  So they dumped out the tea spoons and clamped the spoon holder upside down upon Tib’s head. Her little yellow curls sprang out beneath the silver bowl. With the fluffy feather boa she looked supremely queenlike.

  “Now look into your mirror and you’ll turn into Queen Dolly,” Betsy cried.

  Tib looked into the mirror and Betsy took the silver fruit dish and went down upon one knee.

  “Will your Majesty deign to eat an orange?” she asked.

  Tacy began to giggle as she seized the sugar bowl and bowed.

  “Some sugar, I prithee, Queen,” she said.

  Queen Dolly crooked her little finger and accepted an orange and a sugar lump.

  Just then Freddie burst in through the swinging door. He had left his sled outside, of course, and his rubber
s beside the kitchen door, and his coat and cap and muffler in the kitchen closet, but his pink cheeks brought in the out-of-doors.

  “Whatcha playing?” he asked.

  “We’re playing Mirror Palace,” Betsy answered. “Tib’s playing she’s Aunt Dolly.”

  “And Aunt Dolly’s the Queen,” Tacy explained.

  Freddie looked puzzled. He knew how to play that someone was another person, but he hadn’t ever played that someone was two other persons. He thought he had better change the subject.

  “We’re not supposed to play in the dining room,” he said.

  “Why, Freddie!” Betsy cried. “We’re not playing in the dining room. This is the Throne Room.” And she explained about the Mirror Palace. Freddie looked down into the mirror Tib was holding, and he could see for himself what a shining mysterious room the mirror held.

  “But Tib ought to be upside down,” he remarked.

  “What?” exclaimed Betsy and Tacy.

  “Her feet ought to be on the Mirror Palace floor.”

  Betsy and Tacy looked dismayed. It was perfectly true. If the ceiling of the dining room, reflected in the mirror, was the floor of the Mirror Palace, then Tib’s reflected feet ought to be where her head was.

  “You ought to be standing on your head,” said Betsy.

  “That’s easy,” said Tib.

  For Tib was a dancer. It wasn’t a bit of trouble for Tib to stand on her head. She took off her spoonholder crown and put Matilda’s mirror carefully on the seat of the throne. She jumped to the arms of the chair and went upside down, her head upon the mirror, her legs stretching straight and true into the air.

  Betsy and Tacy and Freddie, looking down into the mirror, had a fleeting dazzling vision … Queen Dolly with her dainty feet pointing toward the floor. But the vision was fleeting, indeed!

  The kitchen door swung open and Matilda, her arms full of freshly ironed linen, entered the dining room.

  “Gott im Himmel!” cried Matilda, and tablecloths and napkins fell in a snowy shower.

  Tib came rightside up in a hurry. She came in such a hurry that she tumbled to the floor. The coffee urn crashed, and so did the teapot … they were silver, so they didn’t break. Oranges rolled in all directions.

  But Matilda was looking at the mirror.

  “Whose mirror is that?” she demanded.

  “It’s yours, Matilda,” said Tib. “I borrowed it for this game we were playing.”

  “We were going to put everything back, Matilda,” Betsy said.

  Tacy was already picking up the linen and Freddie was pursuing oranges.

  Matilda examined the mirror.

  “It isn’t broken. No thanks to you,” she said.

  “We’re glad it isn’t broken, Matilda,” Betsy said. And she and Tacy folded the linen so neatly, you would not have known it had fallen, hardly. Freddie had found all the oranges, so now he was picking up silver. Tib put the feather boa and the paisley shawl away.

  Matilda stalked back to the kitchen.

  Working silently and swiftly, Betsy and Tacy and Tib and Freddie put the dining room to rights. It looked so tidy when they had finished that no one would dream it had ever been mussed up. Then they went to the window seat and sat down softly.

  “I wonder if we’ll get the apple cake,” asked Freddie in a whisper.

  “Probably not,” said Tib.

  “Never mind,” said Betsy. “I’ll tell you a story about Aunt Dolly and how she happens to live in a mirror.”

  So she told them the story while twilight spread purple gauze over the drifts outside.

  But before she had finished Matilda brought them the apple cake. They could hardly believe their eyes when she stalked in with the tray.

  “Thank you, Matilda,” said Tib. “I’m glad your mirror wasn’t broken.”

  “So’m I,” Tacy murmured.

  “The dining room looks all right now,” Betsy added. “Doesn’t it, Matilda?”

  Matilda looked at the tidy dining room. She swept it with a stony glance.

  “I hear,” she said meaningly, “that Mrs. Ray’s kitchen looked nice too after you kept house for her one day.”

  And she stalked back into the kitchen.

  7

  Red Hair, Yellow Hair, And Brown

  THAT SPRING Tacy had diphtheria.

  Betsy and Tacy and Tib had always thought that spring was the nicest part of the year; but it wasn’t much fun that year; it wasn’t much fun without Tacy.

  The snow melted up on the Big Hill and came rushing down the slopes in foaming torrents. And Betsy and Tib made boats and sent them bobbing down the stream to the Atlantic and the Pacific. They did it every year; it was one of their favorite things to do; but it wasn’t much fun without Tacy.

  May Day came, and of course they made baskets. They made them out of tissue paper in all the colors of the rainbow; beautiful baskets with fringed paper trimming and braided paper handles. And they filled the baskets with spring flowers from the chilly snow-patched hills, and hung them on people’s door knobs; and rang the bells and ran away. But it wasn’t much fun without Tacy.

  The trees on the hill turned slowly green and the wild plum was dazzlingly white and fragrant, and gardens were planted, and birds came back, and the last day of school arrived. Betsy and Tib emptied their desks…. Betsy emptied Tacy’s desk too … and she brought home Tacy’s books as well as her own. She and Tib marched home with their arms full of books singing loudly:

  “No more Latin,

  No more French,

  No more sitting on

  a hardwood bench….”

  But it wasn’t much fun without Tacy. At least not so much fun as it would have been with Tacy. Betsy and Tib would forget and have fun, and then they would remember that Tacy had diphtheria.

  Fortunately, by that time she was almost well. People had stopped looking sober when you mentioned Tacy’s name. Tacy’s father and her big brother George and her grown-up sister Mary called out jokes when they saw Betsy and Tib, and the other brothers and sisters laughed and played on the lawn. They couldn’t leave the yard for they were quarantined with Tacy. “Quarantined” meant that they had to stay at home in order not to give anybody diphtheria. While Tacy was so sick they had to play quiet games, but now they could make all the noise they liked.

  Tacy got so well that she could come to the window. She would hold up that doll George had given her at the Street Fair and make it wave its hands. Betsy and Tib sent her gifts on the end of a fish pole. They would tie the gift on the end of a pole and poke the pole over into Tacy’s yard and Katie would untie it and take it to Tacy. They sent notes and stories and pieces of cake and bouquets of flowers and a turtle.

  At last Tacy got well, as well as anybody, but she was still in quarantine. She sat on the porch and she walked around the yard, and Betsy and Tib could shout at her but they couldn’t play with her. They stood on the hitching block and shouted, and she came as near them as she was allowed to come. They could see how tall she had grown and how pale. Her freckles were almost gone, and the paleness made her eyes look big and blue.

  “Tacy’s pretty,” Betsy said to Tib. “She’s almost as pretty as you are.”

  “Yes, she is,” Tib agreed.

  One day over at Tacy’s house there was a great deal of sweeping and scrubbing. Piles of trash were burned in the back yard and a man came to fumigate. That meant that he filled the house with a cleansing smoke. The next day the quarantine ended.

  The minute it was ended Betsy and Tib ran over to see Tacy. The three of them ran around the yard and jumped over Mrs. Kelly’s peony bed and ran down to the pump and pumped water and splashed and yelled with joy. Mrs. Kelly came out on the porch and watched them, and she was smiling but she looked as though she wanted to cry. That trembling look she had on her face made Betsy feel funny. It gave her an idea.

  She didn’t mention her idea for a while, there were so many things to do. Tacy could leave her own yard now; she didn’t n
eed to stay there any more; so Betsy took hold of one of her hands and Tib took hold of the other and they went to all their favorite places. They went to the bench at the top of Hill Street, and they went to Betsy’s backyard maple, and they went to the ridge where wild roses were in bloom.

  They were sitting down on the ridge resting and smelling the roses when Betsy mentioned her idea.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I’ve been thinking a lot this morning. I’ve got an idea.”

  “What is it?” asked Tacy and Tib.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Betsy, “that Tacy was pretty sick. And if she had died we wouldn’t have had a thing to remember her by.”

  “I’d've remembered her,” said Tib.

  “And anyhow I didn’t die,” said Tacy. “But I was certainly pretty sick. I was so sick the doctor came every day. I was so sick it’s all mixed up, like a dream. What’s your idea, Betsy? I’ll bet it’s a good one.”

  “It’s this,” said Betsy. “We three ought to have something to remember each other by. You got sick, Tacy, and I might get sick too, any day. I might get sick and die.”

  “I hope you won’t,” said Tib, looking worried.

  “You might yourself,” answered Betsy. “You might get sick just the same as Tacy did, and you might die. We certainly ought to have something to remember each other by.”

  “I think I’d remember you, Betsy,” said Tib. “I’m sure I would. Wouldn’t you remember me?”

  “Well,” said Betsy, “it wouldn’t hurt to have some special thing to help me. Like my Grandma’s got something to remember my Grandpa by.”

  “What’s she got?” asked Tacy.

  “It’s a piece of his hair,” said Betsy. “It was cut off his head, and she wears it in a locket.”

  Tacy and Tib looked impressed.

  “We’ll get us some lockets,” said Betsy. “And we’ll put in our lockets a piece of all our hairs. We could sort of braid them together. They’d look nice because Tacy’s is red, and yours, Tib, is yellow, and mine is brown.”

  “They’d certainly look nice,” said Tacy.

  “But we haven’t got any lockets,” said Tib.