Betty's Battles Part 3

Betty takes no notice of this just now, for Lucy appearing at this moment, she orders her off upstairs to wash and dress the younger children.

By dint of a great deal of most energetic bustling on Betty's part, and sulky help from Clara, the breakfast is actually ready by eight o'clock, and the boys and younger girls sent off to school in good time. Betty feels greatly elated. "What a difference already!" she thinks.

And father, coming in for breakfast, she hurries down to the kitchen for his fish and tea.

Returning with the tray, she meets her mother coming downstairs.

"What, Betty, up already? I made sure you would like to lie in bed a bit and hurried down early on purpose."

"_Hurried_ down, mother! Why, I've been up since half-past six, and just sent the children off to school."

"Dear me. Is it really so late? I made sure the clock struck eight only a few minutes ago."

"Half an hour, at least, mother," answers Betty, sharply.

"You're going by the kitchen clock--that's always wrong, you know."

"Everything _is_ in this house, it seems to me," snaps Betty, and she carries father's breakfast into the sitting-room. Mother follows her.

"Where's your father? Why, you don't mean to say you've finished breakfast? Good gracious me, Betty, the idea of having the window open!

What a shocking draught, enough to blow one away, and I've had the face-ache all this week. Shut it down directly!"

"It's a lovely fresh morning for this place, and air's better than anything. Grannie always has _her_ windows open," answers Betty in quite a hard voice.

"Oh, I daresay; the country's different, and your Grannie is one of the strongest people I ever saw." And Mrs. Langdale glances nervously at the window.

"But, mother, the room was horribly stuffy, and Grannie says----"

"How dare you set your Grannie up against me in this way? If that's all you learned by being with her you'd far better have stayed at home."

"But _any_ doctor would tell you----"

"Look here, Betty, unless you close that window at once I won't stay in the room!" cries Mrs. Langdale, red with anger.

Betty's face flushes also, and she bangs the window down in a fury.

"There! And anybody who knows anything will tell you that's thoroughly wrong!" she cries.

Perhaps so, Betty. But is there nothing wrong about your method of trying to put the mistake right?

Betty sits down hopelessly.

She has been home just a week now, and things have gone from bad to worse.

She has tried hard--in her own fas.h.i.+on, of course--she has been up early every morning, and bustled about all day. Yet all her grand ideas have resulted in nothing. It seems to her, as she sits there on the shabby little sofa, surrounded with piles of unmended stockings, that the members of her family are determined to fight against any kind of improvement.

"They won't have the windows wide open; they won't get up early, or try to be tidy," she thinks, and her heart grows sore and bitter as she remembers the fruitless struggles of the past two or three days.

"What _is_ the use of trying when no one seems to care whether things are properly done or not?"

She glances round the room. The carpet is worn and frayed; the book-shelves dusty, the curtains faded and torn. Her eyes rest on the piles of unmended stockings. They have been there more than a week already.

"How horrid it all is--how perfectly horrid! Why can't mother see that the whole house is a regular disgrace, and the children too--with their dirty hands and rough hair, and rude, noisy ways? But they won't obey me, though I scold them ever so--and no wonder, with mother always ready to take their part, and tell me not to be hard on them! Of course, they go away and forget everything directly. If mother would only leave them to me, I'd _make_ them mind!

"Eleven o'clock striking, and mother hasn't been down to the kitchen to arrange about the dinner yet! There'll be nothing ready for the children again when they come in from school; and Clara will just muddle through her work as usual. Oh, dear, how sick I am of the whole thing!

"If I could only live with Grannie--or even go out all day, and earn my living like other girls. I'm quick at figures. If I could be a clerk in the City, or something; at least, I should be away from this muddle most of the day. I should be independent, too, and able to buy things for the house when I see they're wanted--and that would help father. n.o.body really understands me here, except father.

"Bob was cruel to speak to me as he did this morning; and what I said was perfectly true--his hands _did_ look as though he hadn't washed them for a week. It was my duty to tell him that, and he had no right to fly in a rage, and say I was nagging. Nagging, indeed! Just because I told him that it was disgraceful and disgusting for a big boy to go about with dirty hands!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "They make a good heap, don't they?"]

"A quarter past, and mother still over the newspaper--and she told me she wouldn't be ten minutes! It's too bad. I know just what will happen. There'll be nothing ready, and Clara will be sent out for some tinned salmon or something at the last minute. No, I won't have it!"

And Betty jumps up, all aglow with anger, and running down the pa.s.sage, flings open the little front parlour door.

"Mother!"--very sharply--"don't you know how late it is?"

Mrs. Langdale looks up rather vacantly. "Late? how can you say so? I'm sure I haven't been here over a quarter of an hour."

"You've been here a whole hour, and if you don't make the pudding at once the children will have to do without altogether!"

"How you do hurry and flurry one, Betty. Well, I'll see to it."

Betty goes back to the sitting-room.

"I suppose I must begin at something," she sighs wearily--"not that it makes much difference."

Again her eyes fall on the stockings. Hours of hard work would not get rid of that hopeless pile.

On the first evening after her return home, whilst as yet all her good resolutions were hot in her, she had mended and put away all father's socks; but since then there has seemed no time for anything.

"I must mend all those stockings to-morrow," mother has said each night; but there the matter has ended.

Shall she mend some now? or dust? or wash the curtains? or----

The door is flung open, and Clara comes in with a fresh armful of socks and stockings, barely dry from the kitchen.

"Missis says I'm to put these with the rest," she giggles, in her irritating way. "They make a good heap, don't they?"

That is the last straw. Betty waits until she is out of the room, and then gives way altogether.

"I can't bear it--I just can't!" she whispers, tapping her foot on the floor. "Grannie didn't know what it would be like when she said all that about loving one's home. I must get away from it--I must!"

The door opens again. "Oh, Betty, I just want you to--why, child, what is the matter? Are you going to be ill again?"