Lady Betty Across the Water

								

I liked.
Soon I forgot all about the letter, for the puppies were the dearest
ducks on earth (can puppies be ducks, I wonder?), and besides, it was
such a delicious June morning that I could have danced with joy because
I was alive.
I often feel like that; but there's nobody to tell, except the trees
and the dogs, and my poor pony, who is almost too old and second-childish
now to understand. She was my brother Stanforth's pony first of all,
and Stanforth is twenty-eight; then she was Vic's, and Vic is--but
Mother doesn't like Vic's age to be mentioned any more, though she is
years younger than Stan.
I took a walk in the park and afterwards went through the rose-garden,
to see how the roses were getting on. There were a lot of petals for my
pot-pourri, and gathering them up kept me for some time. Then, as the
jar stands in Vic's and my den (she calls it her den, but it has to be
part mine, as I have no other), I was going in by one of the long
windows, when I heard Mother's voice. "The question is," she was
saying, "what's to be done with Betty?"
I turned round and ran away on my tiptoes across the lawn, for I didn't
want to be an eavesdropper, and it would be nearly as bad to have
Mother know I had heard even those few words; she would be so annoyed,
and Mother chills me all the way through to my bones when she's
annoyed. It is wonderful how she does it, for she never scolds; but the
thermometer simply drops to freezing-point, and you feel like a poor
little shivering crocus that has come up too soon, by mistake, to find
the world covered with snow, and no hope of squeezing back into its own
cosy warm bulb again.
I stopped out of doors till luncheon, and played croquet against
myself, wishing that Stan would run down; for although Stan rather
fancies himself as a Gorgeous Person since poor father's death gave him
the title, he is quite nice to me, when it occurs to him. I'm always
glad when he comes to the Towers, but he hardly ever does in the
Season; and then in August and September he's always in Scotland. So is
Vic, for the matter of that, and she hates being in the country in May
and June, though Surrey is so close to town that luckily she doesn't
miss much; but this year we seem to have been horribly poor, for some
reason. Vic says it's Stan's fault. He is extravagant, I suppose.
However, as everything is really his, I don't see that we ought to
complain; only, it can't be pleasant for him to feel that Mother is
worrying lest he should marry and make her a frumpy dowager, before we
two girls are off her hands.
At luncheon, Mother mentioned to me that she had wired to ask Mrs.
Stuyvesant-Knox and her cousin, Miss Sally Woodburn, down for dinner
and to stay the night. "You will be pleased, Betty, as you like Miss
Woodburn so much," she said.
"I like her, but I don't like Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox and I don't know how
to pronounce her," said I.
"For goodness sake, don't call her Mrs. Ess Kay to her face again," cut