And as she read, everything faded away from before her ... the barn,
Molly, the kittens ... she saw nothing but the words on the page.
When she had read the letter through she got up quickly, oh ever so
quickly! and went away down the stairs. Molly hardly noticed she had
gone, so absorbing and delightful were the kittens.
Betsy went out of the dusky barn into the rich, October splendor and saw
none of it. She went straight away from the house and the barn, straight
up into the hill-pasture toward her favorite place beside the brook, the
shady pool under the big maple-tree. At first she walked, but after a
while she ran, faster and faster, as though she could not get there soon
enough. Her head was down, and one arm was crooked over her face ... .
And do you know, I'm not going to follow her up there, nor let you go.
I'm afraid we would all cry if we saw what Betsy did under the big
maple-tree. And the very reason she ran away so fast was so that she
could be all by herself for a very hard hour, and fight it out, alone.
So let us go back soberly to the orchard where the Putneys are, and wait
till Betsy comes walking listlessly in, her eyes red and her cheeks
pale. Cousin Ann was up in the top of a tree, a basket hung over her
shoulder half full of striped red Northern Spies; Uncle Henry was on a
ladder against another tree, filling a bag with the beautiful, shining,
yellow-green Pound Sweets, and Aunt Abigail was moving around, picking
up the parti-colored windfalls and putting them into barrels ready to go
to the cider-mill.
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