Lady Betty Across the Water

Part 1

Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.

Dialect spellings, contractions and discrepancies have been retained.

LADY BETTY ACROSS THE WATER

LADY BETTY ACROSS THE WATER

Edited by

C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON

Authors of My Friend the Chauffeur

Illustrations by Orson Lowell

New York McClure, Phillips & Co. MCMVI

Copyright, 1906, by McClure, Phillips & Co.

Published, May, 1906 Second Impression

Copyright, 1905, 1906, by The Curtis Publishing Company

To the people of that great, delightful, and hospitable land which gave Lady Betty the time of her life and inspiration, this story of her visit is admiringly Dedicated by Betty Bulkeley and C. N. and A. M. Williamson

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. ABOUT BEING BANISHED 3

II. ABOUT CROSSING THE WATER 20

III. ABOUT NEW YORK 50

IV. ABOUT SHOPPING AND MEN 83

V. ABOUT WEST POINT AND PROPOSALS 101

VI. ABOUT THE PARK AND LOVE STORIES 118

VII. ABOUT SKY-SCRAPERS AND BEAUTIFUL LADIES 133

VIII. ABOUT NEWPORT AND GORGEOUSNESS 141

IX. ABOUT BATHING, A DRESS, AND AN EARL 156

X. ABOUT A VIOLET TEA AND A MILLIONAIRE 170

XI. ABOUT A GREAT AFFAIR 180

XII. ABOUT A WEDDING AND A DISASTER 200

Part 2

XIII. ABOUT RUNNING AWAY 211

XIV. ABOUT THE TWENTIETH CENTURY LIMITED AND CHICAGO 223

XV. ABOUT SEEING CHICAGO 227

XVI. ABOUT THE VALLEY FARM 238

XVII. ABOUT COWS AND NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 253

XVIII. ABOUT SOME COUNTRY FOLK, AND WALKER'S EMPORIUM 272

XIX. ABOUT GETTING ENGAGED 289

XX. ABOUT JIM AND THE DUKE 297

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"I found myself chatting away with those cadets as if I had grown up with them" Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

"He turned around quickly, glanced up and caught my eyes, as I was looking down, quite distressed" 34

"When I turned to speak to him he was gone ... and I was immediately surrounded by other men asking me for dances" 196

"I swept past him with my nose in the air, trying to look like mother" 206

"Mr. Trowbridge took me to the beehives to get some honey and show me what a queen bee is like" 258

"Jim smiled and kept his seat without the least apparent effort" 302

LADY BETTY ACROSS THE WATER

ABOUT BEING BANISHED

I don't know yet whether I'm pleased or not, but I do know that I'm excited--more excited than I've ever been in my life, except perhaps when Miss Mackinstry, my last governess, had hysterics in the schoolroom and fainted among the tea things.

I suppose I shan't be able to decide about the state of my feelings until I've had more of them on the same subject, or until I've written down in this book of mine everything exactly as it's happened. I like doing that; it makes things seem so clear when you try to review them afterwards.

The excitement began at breakfast by Mother having a letter that she liked. I knew she liked it by the way her eyes lighted up, as if they had been lamps and the letter a match. All the other letters, mostly with horrid, tradesmanny-looking envelopes, which had been making her quite glowery, she pushed aside.

Mother won't have a crown on her envelopes; she thinks it's vulgar; besides, putting it only on the paper saves expense. This envelope had a great sprawly gold crest, but she didn't seem to disapprove of it. She read on and on, then suddenly glanced up as if she would have said something quickly, to Victoria; she didn't say it, though, for she remembered me. I am never taken into family conclaves, because I'm not out yet. I don't see what difference that makes, especially as I'm not to be allowed to come out till after Vic's married, because she was presented four years ago, and isn't even engaged yet; so for all I can tell I may have to stay in till I'm a hundred, or leak out slowly when nobody is noticing, as Vic says girls do in the middle classes. This time I didn't mind, however, for I couldn't see how the letter concerned me; and as I was dying for a sight of Berengaria's puppies, which were born last night, I was glad when Mother told me not to fidget after I'd finished breakfast, but to run down to the kennels if 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.

Part 3

"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 in Vic.

"I didn't mean to; it slipped out," I defended myself. "Besides, it was you who nicknamed her that."

"Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox is a very charming person, and a thorough woman of the world," Mother asserted, in that way she has of saying the word which you had better leave for the last if you know what is good for you.

I did leave it for the last so far as answering was concerned, but inside, where, thank goodness, even her eyes can't see, I was wondering hard when Mother had formed that flattering opinion. A fortnight ago I heard her announce that Americans "got upon her nerves," and she hoped she would not soon be called upon to meet any more. As she had made this remark directly after bidding Mrs. Ess Kay good-bye, I naturally supposed that lady to be the immediate cause for it. But now, it seemed, this was not the case.

"You would be very ungrateful if you disliked her," Mother went on, "as she took such a tremendous fancy to you."

"Dear me, I didn't know that!" I exclaimed, opening my eyes wide. "I thought it was Vic she----"

"You are her favourite, as you are with Miss Woodburn, also," said Mother, who gets the effect of being so tremendously dignified partly, I believe, from never clipping her words as the rest of us do. "I am asking them down again especially on your account, and I want you to be particularly nice to them."

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