Clever Betsy

The other girl, her fair hair falling in ripples about her bare neck and arms, closed the door and regarded the newcomer with wide eyes.

“Is it your room, too?” she asked.

“Yes, it is,” snapped the other, “and I hope it won’t be any more disagreeable for you than it is for me.”

“Oh – oh – of course not,” returned the fair one. “I only thought it was so small – and the bed is so narrow – and I didn’t know – ”

“Well,” returned the other, somewhat mollified, and with a yawn, “I saw down in the dining-room to-night that you were a green-horn. We’re mighty lucky not to be in a bigger room with half-a-dozen girls. My name’s Miss Hickey. What’s yours?”

“Rosalie Vincent,” responded the fair one, still standing rooted to her place while Miss Hickey removed a mammoth rat from her hair, and eclipsed with it one side of the wash-stand, which was dresser as well.

“Better get to bed, Miss Vincent. You’ll have plenty of chances to stare at me, and you look as tired as I feel. I stayed down to help the pearl-divers awhile to-night.”

“Pearl-divers?” echoed Rosalie.

“Yes. Dish-washers, Greenie. I’m a heaver like yourself; but we all have to turn in and help each other, once in a while. This is my third season. My first I waited on the sagebrushers.”

“Who are they?” asked Rosalie, overawed by so much sophistication.

“Campers; but I like the hotels best. The dudes are more my style.”

“What did you call me a few minutes ago? A lay-over?” asked Rosalie.

“Yes, those are the swells that stay more than one night. They’re the princes of the Yellowstone and they have to pay like princes, too. All their dishes washed separately, separate food, separate everything. I thought you must think you were one to have a room all to yourself.”

Miss Hickey here completed her hasty night-toilet and jumped into bed. “Come along, child. I’ll make myself small against the wall.”

“Indeed, I’m not a lay-over,” said Rosalie, now hastening to follow the other’s example. “I’m to be sent on with the crowd to-morrow.”

“So am I,” returned the other, with nasal sleepiness; “and I’m darned sorry, too. I like the swatties here better than at any post.”

“Swatties?” echoed Rosalie helplessly.

“Soldiers, Greenie,” drawled Miss Hickey. “You’ll see a lot more of ’em before you see less. Now I ain’t goin’ to say another word to-night.”

And Miss Hickey kept her word. Her sleep was as energetic as her waking; and Rosalie listened to her heavy breathing and stared wide-eyed into the darkness.

She had recognized the Bruce party at the evening meal. She had not been obliged to wait on them, and knew herself unobserved. But the discovery had excited her very much. Mrs. Bruce had been right when she said that Rosalie’s was the artistic temperament. The independence, caution, and reserve of the New Englander were not her characteristics. She longed for companionship and some one with whom to sympathize in the present predicament; for predicament she felt it to be. How extraordinary that this should be the summer chosen by the Bruces for their visit to the National Park.

She thought of the irreverent punctuation which made a well-known quotation read: “There is a divinity which shapes our ends rough, hew them as we may.”

She had believed Mrs. Bruce to be in Europe, and though that lady’s natural preoccupation there explained the ignoring of her protégée’s painstaking letters, it did not excuse it, or leave Rosalie the slightest hope that her benefactress continued to feel an interest in her. The fact was a hurt to the grateful girl, and the ever-present consciousness of it gave her a reason for desiring to leave Fairport, where the Bruces would return. This sensitiveness would not have induced her to leave Mrs. Pogram, had the latter’s brother not made her stay unendurable, but it was a secret reason for being glad to escape.

Perhaps Mrs. Bruce and her son would not remember her at all; but she could not expect to escape Betsy Foster’s recognition. So she lay there awake; at one moment longing for Mrs. Pogram’s kindly, invertebrate protection, and wishing that Mrs. Bruce had never opened to her another world; and again feeling the fire of ambition to repay that lady every cent she had ever spent upon her. Rosalie’s color pressed high as she imagined Mrs. Bruce’s amazed scorn that the talents in which she had at least for a time believed, had carried their possessor no higher as yet than to be a waitress – a heaver, according to Miss Hickey – in the Yellowstone.

The girl must at last have dozed; for she shortly experienced a vigorous shaking from her companion.

“Here, here, hustle!” exclaimed Miss Hickey, not unkindly. Rosalie opened her eyes with such bewilderment that her companion laughed.

“Come on, blue eyes. You look like a baby. Get into your duds. We’re off for Norris Basin, worse luck.”

The sight of Miss Hickey’s readjusted pompadour gave Rosalie a realizing sense of the situation.

“Oh, Miss Hickey,” she exclaimed, as she hurried to the washstand, “are many people lay-overs?”

“Oh, you’ve got them on the brain, have you?” asked the other, proceeding with her own toilet. “Not many, ’cause it costs too much.”

“I saw some people here last night who have lots of money – oh, lots and lots! Shouldn’t you think they’d stay?”

“H’m. I only hope they will,” rejoined Miss Hickey, “as long as we’re going. The crowds are fierce.”

“I do hope they will!” Rosalie’s echo was fervent. She almost summoned courage to tell her aggressive companion the situation; but one glance at the young woman’s coiffure, which was now receiving the addition of a bunch of curls, arrested her.

Miss Hickey regarded her companion sharply.

“You ain’t a heaver all the year,” she remarked tentatively, “or else you wouldn’t be afraid o’ those rich folks. There’s the tips, you know.”

Rosalie was silent.

“Perhaps you was their waitress and ran off to see the world without giving notice.”

“No, I wasn’t that; but I – I know them, and – ”

The speech drifted into silence.

“You know rich folks, do you? Lucky you.”

“Not exactly. They – she – ” stammered Rosalie, “they helped – educate me.”

“Oh, you’re educated, are you?” retorted Miss Hickey, giving her coiffure a satisfied lift. “Well, so am I. I’m a typewriter in Chicago, winters.”

“Does – does it pay well?” asked Rosalie, with such serious wistfulness that Miss Hickey forgave her her rich acquaintances.

She grimaced. “Not so you’d notice it. I ain’t goin’ back this fall. You know the Yellowstone Company’ll land you just as many miles from the Park as they brought you, and in any direction you say. Me for Los Angeles. I ain’t afraid I can’t make my living, and I’m sick o’ bein’ snowed on, winters, without any furs.”

Rosalie looked enviously at the other’s snapping black eyes.

“Wonder what savage we’ll go over with,” pursued Miss Hickey, stuffing her nightgown into a bag, and nonchalantly running her comb and toothbrush into her stocking.

“Over? Over?”

“Yes, over to Norris in the stage.”

“Do you mean that savages drive them?” asked Rosalie, her eyes dilating.

Miss Hickey laughed. “Oh, you’re more fun than a barrel o’ monkeys,” she observed. “The drivers certainly are savages. You can ask anybody in the Park.”

Rosalie smiled faintly as she began twisting up her hair. “Oh, that’s some more Park English, is it?” she asked.

“I hope it’ll be Jasper,” said Miss Hickey, “but we won’t get to sit by him, anyway. The dudes all fight for the driver’s seat. I’m going down now. Hurry up, Baby, or you’ll catch it.”

Rosalie obeyed in a panic, and was soon ready to follow. She dreaded the ordeal of the breakfast-room, and prayed that she might be delivered from the Bruces’ table. Her heart came up in her throat when she saw them enter the door; but she was not obliged to wait upon them. As it happened, Miss Hickey had that station, and Rosalie devoted herself assiduously to a deaf gentleman who was traveling with his wife and a young woman at sight of whom Rosalie colored. “Oh, how small this big world is!” she thought; “but she won’t remember me. We seldom met!”

The ordeal of breakfast was at last over, and Rosalie with relief yielded herself to Miss Hickey’s orders, and presently the girls stood on the great piazza of the hotel, but on the edge of the crowd, watching the systematic filling of the stages which were starting on the tour around the Park.

“How shall we know when to go?” she asked of Miss Hickey, to whose side she clung in the confusion.

“Don’t you worry about that,” returned the other. “Have some gum?”

She offered several sticks of the same to Rosalie, who declined, wishing her veil were thicker as she glanced about, dreading to see the Bruce party, and longing to be safely away.

Miss Hickey slid a generous quantity of gum into her own mouth and then settled her hat more firmly on her pompadour by a rearrangement of largely gemmed hat-pins.

While she proceeded in an experienced manner to break up and chew the gum-sticks into a solacing sphere, her conversation continued, untrammeled by this effort.

“Don’t you hear the agent calling the names off?” she asked. “They can’t any of ’em say where they’ll go any more’n we can. They’re going to be took ’round the Park just like a kid out in its baby-wagon. They come when they’re called, you bet; and they don’t know where their bags are any more’n you do. When they get to the Fountain House their bags’ll meet ’em in the hotel; then to-morrow mornin’ they’ll disappear again to meet ’em at the next place. Oh, it’s a great system all right, if too many people didn’t come at once. They have awful times when there ain’t enough places for ’em to sleep, and six or seven get put in one room. These folks that are too exclusive to travel with a party are the ones that get left; for the conductors of these tours get to the hotels a little ahead o’ the other folks, and get all their people provided for; and it’s gallin’ to know you pay just as much as anybody and yet have to herd in with folks you never saw before – just the same as poor heavers like us.” And Miss Hickey gave her companion a nudge that nearly made her reel. “Weren’t you the mad kid last night?” she continued.

“I think you were the mad one,” rejoined Rosalie. “I was dazed. – O Miss Hickey!” She made the exclamation involuntarily; for the Bruce party came out of a door not far from where the girls were standing, and they were dressed for a move.

“Oh, they’re not lay-overs!” exclaimed Rosalie, retreating behind Miss Hickey’s broad shoulder.

“Who – them? Say, what’s the matter with you? Have you stole their diamonds?”

“Don’t you think they’re going in this next stage?” asked Rosalie nervously. “Do watch, Miss Hickey. You’re so tall you can see everything.” For the Bruces had moved to the other side of the piazza and were lost in the crowd.

“I waited on those folks at breakfast,” said Miss Hickey, craning her neck and chewing with such open vigor that she momentarily recalled a dog who endeavors to rid his back teeth of a caramel.

“I know you did,” replied Rosalie; “I saw.”

“Ain’t he grand!” exclaimed Miss Hickey. “I thought when I was pourin’ his coffee that he was just about the size I’d like to go through the Park with on a weddin’ trip. The way he said, ‘No sugar, please!’ Oh, it was just grand. It made me forget every swattie at the post. There ain’t an officer here that can stand up to him, I don’t think.”

“Do see if they are getting into that stage!” asked Rosalie, still in retreat behind her companion’s ample shoulder.

“Nit,” responded Mr. Bruce’s admirer sententiously. “That swell woman with him went down the steps to get in, but his nibs there that’s loadin’ ’em told her to chase herself.”

The crowd was dispersing with celerity.

“There ain’t but two stages left,” went on Miss Hickey, with excitement. “If they don’t go in that next one, we’re all booked to go together. Say, wouldn’t that be grand?”

“No! No! No!” exclaimed Rosalie, emerging from her barrier and watching with dilated eyes.

The stage swept up to the steps. The tourists swarmed into it like bees. Again Mrs. Bruce essayed to enter, and Rosalie could see Irving draw her back, while Betsy Foster stood impassive at a little distance, observing the scene with inexpressive eyes.

CHAPTER VI

THE LAST STAGE

“I should like to know why they put us in the last stage!” demanded Mrs. Bruce, in an irate tone.

“Many advantages,” returned Irving, with a twinkle of his eyes toward Betsy.

“There are not, Irving Bruce, and you ought to have done something about it! Haven’t we always heard about the dust of the Yellowstone?”

“Yes, that’s why they oil the roads now,” returned Bruce pacifically, “and we don’t have to hurry, by this means, you see. Take our own time. Don’t have to hurry past anything to make room for the next stage.”

“I never could endure leavings!” exclaimed Mrs. Bruce, her eyes still snapping as the last stage came around the curve toward the steps.

Betsy attracted her attention.

“See those folks you said looked so aristocratic,” she said quietly. “They’re goin’ with us.”

Mrs. Bruce followed the direction of her maid’s meaning glance and observed the deaf gentleman’s party of three. Insensibly Mrs. Bruce’s ireful expression relaxed. There was that in the tone of this party which could lend distinction even to the last stage.

Mrs. Bruce gazed at the trio appreciatively.

“I marvel,” she murmured to Betsy, “that they haven’t their own equipage.”

Betsy sighed with relief and felt that the day was won.

Having observed the dignified, florid-faced man with the white mustache, the tall woman in half-mourning, and the quiet young girl who accompanied them, Mrs. Bruce spoke again distinctly: —

“If I should not be taking any one’s place on the driver’s seat, I should like to sit there very much.”

“We shall take turns as to that, I fancy,” replied Irving. He noticed the small rubber device hanging about the neck of the deaf gentleman and turned to the lady beside him.

“Will you sit up in front to start off?” he asked, lifting his hat. “Your husband enjoys more through the eyes than through the ears, I observe.”

The lady, with whom smiles were evidently a rarity, met his eyes and essayed one. She thanked him, and turning to her companion pointed to the driver’s place, as they moved down the steps.

The gentleman shook his head and motioned the lady into the middle seat of the stage, which she entered.

“But where is Robert?” she exclaimed in a sort of dignified panic. “Miss Maynard,” turning to the companion who waited passively, “I thought you said you saw my son a moment ago.”

“Yes, Mrs. Nixon, in the office,” replied the girl.

“Henry! Henry!” pursued the lady, pushing against the deaf gentleman’s shoulder both to attract his attention and to prevent his entering the stage. “Robert!” She mouthed the name distinctly and motioned toward the hotel. “Robert!”

“Damn Robert!” returned the other, under the usual impression of the deaf that his heartfelt expression was inaudible.

As a matter of fact no one observed it in the confusion. Mrs. Bruce was absorbed in mounting to the coveted place with the driver. Irving offered to put Betsy up beside her; but Miss Foster declined. “Get right up there, Mr. Irving. I’m going in here behind you.”

Meanwhile the two waitresses had obeyed a summons, and Rosalie with her head down and praying to be invisible hastened with her companion to the steps. Her prayer was answered, because all the party were too preoccupied to note the two girls who came swiftly by and entered the back seat of the stage. Moreover, at the same moment out from the door of the hotel came a young fellow in outing clothes and cap, who was greeted with well-bred rebuke by Mrs. Nixon, and a grunt of relief from the deaf gentleman, who put Miss Maynard into the seat and followed her.

“Well, I told you not to bring me, didn’t I?” responded Robert. His voice was loud and cheery, and had, in his more gleeful moments, a trick of breaking into a high register with a joyous inflection which endeared him to those who enjoyed his conversation. He was clean, gay, and young; but if he possessed any beauty it was of the mind; and among his acquaintance there was a wide difference of opinion on this point.

While his mother voiced her dignified rebuke, his quick eye glanced along the stage to take in its possibilities.

Rosalie was shrunk into the further corner of her seat, directly behind the Nixon party, and Miss Hickey, meeting his glance, chewed vigorously while lifting her head with an elegant air of impersonality.

In Robert’s own mental vernacular he “passed up the gum.”

The driver’s seat was full, the alternative was the one in front of his mother’s party, where Betsy Foster reigned alone. He stepped in beside her while he spoke to his mother.

“I told you not to bring me,” he declared again, cheerfully. “I told you I’d be more trouble than I was worth.”

“You actually detained the stage, dear. I was about to send your uncle Henry to find you.”

Quick as a flash the culprit snatched the device which aided the deaf gentleman’s hearing, and shrieked across it above the clatter of the stage.

“Don’t you ever do it, Uncle Henry. Rise up and declare your rights. What if I am lost?”

“That’s what I say,” responded the older man, equably. “Small loss. One of my rights is not to have my ear-drums cracked. They’re sufficiently nicked already.”

He took back the rubber disk with decision.

Irving had turned around during this interchange and looked down from his high perch.

“Hello, Nixie,” he said.

Robert leaned forward with alacrity, and took the down-stretched hand.

“Et tu, Brute?” he cried, his voice breaking joyously.

Betsy stole the first glance at her companion. His unfeigned gladness to see her idol was in his favor.

He turned to his mother: “Bruce of our class. Didn’t you recognize him? Best fullback the college ever saw.”

“I did think there was something familiar about that young man’s face,” responded Mrs. Nixon. “Most attractive; and such charming manners.” Her carefully modulated voice fell agreeably on Miss Foster’s ears. “He tried to give us the front seat; but the lady with him,” Mrs. Nixon raised her eyebrows, “was so very anxious to secure it, that I was glad your uncle refused.”

Mrs. Bruce turned and looked down to see Irving’s friend, and exclaimed at once, beaming with interest: —

“I remember you perfectly, Mr. Nixon. You were so funny on Class Day.” As Mrs. Bruce spoke, her eyes roved again to the young man’s party.

“I remember you at the games too, Mrs. Bruce,” replied the young fellow, rising, “and for the same reason. You were so funny! We’re a couple of family parties, it seems. My mother, and my uncle, Mr. Derwent, are here, and at the first stop we’ll all become acquainted.”

So saying, Robert dropped back into his seat, and turning with scarce a pause to his mother, said explanatorily, “Brute’s stepmother. An up-and-coming dame. You will have to meet her.”

Mrs. Nixon frowned at him significantly and nodded her head toward Betsy’s immovable back.

“All right,” said Robert airily, and glanced at the woman who shared his place. The walnut profile impressed itself upon him for the first time, and in connection with the Bruces he now remembered the woman to whom Irving had been so attentive on various college occasions. “I’ll be jiggered,” thought the youth, “if it isn’t Brute’s nurse! Well, we are being chaperoned through the park, good and plenty.”

Then he amazed his mother by addressing his companion.

“Why, how d’ ye do? Why didn’t you speak to me?”

Betsy gave her odd one-sided smile as she looked back at his cheerfully grinning countenance.

“It’s all so long ago now, Mr. Nixon, I didn’t suppose you’d remember me. I didn’t know you at first.”

“I’m not at all surprised. I’ve grown old and decrepit in the last two years; but to show you my mind isn’t failing yet, I can tell you where I last saw you. It was in a gondola in Venice.”

Betsy smiled and nodded.

“I remember your calling across to Mr. Irving very well, Mr. Nixon.”

“Good. Your memory’s all right, too.”

Helen Maynard, sitting quiet and forgotten at Mrs. Nixon’s elbow, looked at Robert with some approval for the first time. He swung around in his seat so suddenly that he accidentally caught her glance. Miss Maynard had a symmetrical little nose and mouth, and he liked the way she did her hair; and wearing her present expression it occurred to him for the first time that the young woman, who was both his uncle’s stenographer and his mother’s companion, was rather fetching.

“Did you see the formation pretty thoroughly yesterday, Miss Maynard?” he asked briskly.

Her quickly averted eyes sought the splendid sweeps of Jupiter Terrace which the stage was now passing.

“Quite thoroughly,” she replied briefly.

“We went the regular round,” said Mrs. Nixon. “Your uncle was really bewitched with everything.”

Mr. Derwent, his hands crossed upon the head of the stick he carried, sat in the isolation of the deaf; his eyes fastened upon the delicate and wonderful coloring of the stationary cascades of deposit, over which the water was trickling; building – ever building greater beauty with its puny persistence.

He caught his nephew’s eye with a good-humored twinkle. “Great example of what industry will do,” he remarked.

“Fierce!” replied Robert, and made an energetic dive for the rubber disk, which his uncle foiled by a quick move. The youth fixed Mr. Derwent with his gaze, and moved his lips with care to be distinct.

“I’ve always refused,” he declared loudly, “to have the busy bee or the coral insect thrown at me; and I now add the Yellowstone water to the black list.”

“If words,” replied Mr. Derwent, “could build anything, you would rear temples of amazing height, Robert.”

“And rare beauty,” added the youth. “Don’t forget that, please.”

Miss Hickey changed her gum to the other side of her mouth. “Ain’t he fresh?” she murmured to her companion. “Did you see the look I gave him when he come up to the stage? I tell you I wasn’t goin’ to have him crowdin’ in here with us.”

“I waited on them at breakfast,” murmured Rosalie. “He’s just jolly all the time.”

Miss Hickey bridled. “Well, he wouldn’t jolly me more’n once. I know his kind: awful fresh;” and the gum gave a vault and turn which only the most experienced can accomplish.

“And they’re all friends!” murmured Rosalie apprehensively.

“Oh, brace up!” returned Miss Hickey impatiently. “If you haven’t stolen their spoons I don’t see what you’re so scared of; and you’re too much of a baby to have done that.”

“No, I never – never lived out anywhere,” breathed Rosalie.

“Well, if you think it’s such a disgrace to be a waitress in the Park, what did you come for?”

As Miss Hickey scented offense, her tone began to rise, and Rosalie grasped her arm pacifically. “No, no, it isn’t that! It isn’t in the least that!”

The girl’s conscience squirmed a little as she made this reply, and she swallowed and went on. “It’s a long story, too long to tell, and not interesting; but oh, Miss Hickey, do try to wait on the Bruces this noon, won’t you, like a dear good girl!”

“’Twon’t be up to me; but I’d be mighty glad to do it, you bet! Did you hear that fresh chap call him Bruty? Bruty! That prince! Well, I’ve got a name for him all right. Did you ever study about them heathen gods? I did. I’ve got an awful good education if I do say it; and there was one of ’em so ugly if he walked by a clock it would stop. His name was – let’s see; it was Calabash. Well, it just fits that feller to a T. If I looked like that, I’d go way back and sit down instead of fillin’ the stage so’t nobody can look at anybody but him.”

“The girl with them seems to be a companion,” whispered Rosalie. “I tried to get that sort of a place.”

“Oh, shoot!” returned Miss Hickey, trying the endurance of the gum severely. “I could get that job easy, I know, on account of my education and knowin’ my way round the way I do; but there ain’t enough freedom to it. If we’d rather go to a Swattie ball now than to sleep, we have our choice; but a companion has got to be right on the job night and day.”