Betsy-Tacy Treasury by Maud Hart Lovelace

Author:Maud Hart Lovelace
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Like the postman he wanted to sign both lists. But they wouldn’t allow it.

He looked from Julia with her loose brown hair on her shoulders to Tib with her crown of yellow curls.

“By golly!” he said. “This is fierce!”

After a moment he signed Julia’s list.

“But I’ll give you a doughnut,” he said to Tib.

She divided it with Betsy, Tacy, and Alice.

The two parties made rushes also at the grocer’s boy, the butcher’s boy, the iceman, and the milkman. Up and down Pleasant Street they went. They were amazed when the whistles blew loudly for noon. They ran home in great good humor and Julia and Betsy told their adventures at the dinner table.

Mr. Ray winked at Mrs. Ray.

“See!” his wink seemed to say, “I straightened everything out!”

“You must be almost ready to stop and count votes,” he said.

“Oh no, Papa!” cried Betsy.

“But you must have called on everyone you know?”

“Why, Papa!” said Julia. “We haven’t been to School Street yet. Some of my best friends live on School Street.”

“Well, I don’t want you to go too far away,” said Mrs. Ray. “How far do you think they should be allowed to go, Bob?”

“Not beyond Lincoln Park,” said Mr. Ray.

Lincoln Park was a pie-shaped wedge of lawn with a giant elm tree and a fountain on it. Hill Street turned into Broad Street there. It was the end of the neighborhood.

“Lincoln Park, then,” said Mrs. Ray. “But before you start out, I want you to wash and wipe the dishes. I have to frost the cake I’m sending to the Ice Cream Social.”

Julia’s eyes widened.

“Where is the Social, Mamma?”

“It’s on the Humphreys’ lawn,” said Mrs. Ray. “They’re raising money for the Ladies Aid.”

She had made a layer cake with lemon filling, and she frosted it with thick white frosting while Julia and Betsy washed the dishes. By the time they were finished, Katie and Tacy and Tib were yoo-hooing from the hitching block.

The two parties started out again.

Unlike Julia and Katie, Betsy, Tacy, and Tib had no friends on School Street, but they went there just the same. They wanted to keep Julia and Katie in sight. They could see them, on the opposite side of the street, running busily from house to house.

Betsy, Tacy, and Tib went from house to house too. And this was a different business from calling at the houses on Hill Street. It was fascinating, delicious, to knock at the doors of houses whose out-sides they had known for years but whose insides were unknown and mysterious.

There was the red brick house with limestone trimmings where they had always imagined very wealthy people lived; there was the house with pebbles-set in plaster above the door; the house with an iron deer on the lawn; the house where bleeding hearts grew in the spring.

Some of these houses they had always loved; some they had almost feared. They had never expected such luck as to see inside them all. Opening doors gave glimpses of strange faces, of banisters leading mysteriously upstairs, of an organ, of a hired girl in a cap.

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