Bouncing Bet

“P’R’APS I ought to be going,” remarked Tommy suddenly, à propos of nothing.

“Going! Why, you just came!” exclaimed his host.

“But I was here yesterday, and----”

“Do you mean you want to get off--you have something on hand?” Mr. Meadowcroft inquired.

Tommy grinned. “No, sir, nothin’ o’ that sort. I’m too comfortable.” He bounced up and down in the springy easy-chair as if to illustrate his words. “And, my goodness, I’d a heap drather be here than anywhere else. Only dad, you know--I was sort of experimenting on you--‘Sorry to have you go, but here’s your hat’--and all that, you know.”

“Don’t experiment any more, then, for it’s only a waste of time,” Mr. Meadowcroft rejoined kindly, his unusual voice and the courtesy of his manner making his words the more impressive to the country lad. “It’s mighty good of you to drop in on me as you do, and I hardly know how I should get along without you now. I certainly hope nothing will induce you to put that to an experiment.”

Humphrey Meadowcroft spoke with sincerity. Three months earlier, he had come to live with his sister in South Paulding, shortly after the death of her husband, and Tommy Finnemore had been his first caller and was now practically his only acquaintance among the village people. The boy came often, being, in spite of moments of diffidence, pretended or otherwise, well assured of a warm welcome; but Meadowcroft realized that his first call had meant real initiative and a special effort as well as generous friendliness; for the big, handsome house which stood on the village street with gardens behind had no reputation for hospitality. Mrs. Phillips had lived here in her husband’s old home for more than a dozen years, but in all that time she had had nothing to do with the people or the life of the village.

The boy, who was exceedingly lank and awkward, though in rather picturesque fashion, colored so deeply that his many and conspicuous freckles merged and were lost in the flush that extended to the roots of his ragged fringe of sandy-brown hair. His eyes fell upon his long, lean fingers, which looked grimy, indeed, though not because he had just come from school. They were badly stained with acids of various sorts and dates.

“Well, you see you’re interested in my magic; you really seem to like to hear about it,” he returned ingenuously. “You never change the subject, and you let me tell all about the beginning of a trick even if it doesn’t have any end, you know. Hardly anybody else I know really and truly cares. Nobody does except Bouncing Bet.”

“Ah, then it’s a sort of utilitarian regard you have for your friends, Tommy Finnemore?”

Tommy wasn’t given to blushing, but he colored again.

“O, I should like to come anyhow,” he declared. “I like your talk just as much as you like my magic--I mean, of course, I like it a lot better. There’s more to it. And I--goodness, but I’m mighty glad to be back here after being down in Jersey. Everybody there seemed so noisy and so--so confounded healthy.”

Meadowcroft laughed as he caught the implication. His left leg and arm were paralyzed, the arm being shrunken also, and he spent the greater part of his time in a large padded wheel-chair. A pair of crutches stood in a corner. Tommy had never seen Mr. Meadowcroft resort to them, though it was said that he took daily exercise in a part of the garden which had been enclosed by high brick walls since he had come to South Paulding.

“That’s rather a left-hander, but it comes from the right spot, Tommy!” Meadowcroft said. And Tommy decided to try another chair. The room was very large, with chairs and sofas and couches galore, and Mr. Meadowcroft never minded his progress from one to another. For himself, he always sat by one of the side windows, in a position where he could also see all that passed in the street below the front windows. He had a handsome, refined, rather worn face, smooth-shaven, with brilliant gray eyes and thick dark hair lightly sprinkled with gray. His dress and manner were more elegant than anything Tommy or, in fact, South Paulding had ever known before. Mr. Phillips had been a man of wealth but plain and brusque, and might have been taken at any time for one of the operatives of his factory at Paulding.

As Tommy vainly strove to amend his statement so that it would indicate that he liked Mr. Meadowcroft even better and admired him exactly as much as if he had the full use of both hands and feet, it came to him that his other friend would have expressed the meaning without awkwardness.

“Now, Bouncing Bet”--he began, but stopped short, partly because he hardly knew what he was about to say, but rather because Mr. Meadowcroft suddenly bent his brows and fixed his eyes sharply upon him.

“What is that you call your other fidus Achates?” he demanded.

“Bouncing Bet,” rejoined Tommy glibly, and looked for the smile that usually followed the use of that appellation. But he failed to see any evidence of humorous appreciation.

The village of South Paulding consisted practically of one long street which was really a beautiful avenue. The Phillips house stood about half-way between the limits, the greater number of dwelling-houses being above, towards Paulding, and the group of shops, the post office and grammar and primary schools below. Meadowcroft, who had never lived in the country before, enjoyed watching the straggling procession that passed the window almost continuously from morning until night. And he particularly enjoyed the school children who went back and forth with a certain regularity twice daily.

“I suppose, Tommy, you mean the big girl I see going to school with the little ones?” he asked quietly.

Tommy nodded. “They’re not so little, you know, Mr. Meadowcroft, those girls she walks with. It’s only that they look little ’side o’ her,” he explained. “Why, even I would look small myself--I mean sort of--if I was to walk with her, even if I stood up straight, which I don’t always.”

He sat suddenly erect, but humped down again almost immediately.

“Poor thing! Is she a bit stupid, Tommy, or is it worse than that?” Meadowcroft asked. In his pity, he had averted his eyes when the girl passed as he would have refrained from looking at a cripple.

“Stupid!” cried Tommy. “Gee! Bouncing Bet stupid! Why, she’s the best scholar in my class--the very best.” He paused, then added loftily: “She takes a really intelligent interest in my magic. There’s no fooling her like you can the fellows--sometimes. She ain’t like some girls that say they like it to be polite and wouldn’t look on while I do one trick for fear they’d be blown up or lose their eyebrows.”

“But why is she so backward?” queried Meadowcroft in genuine surprise. “Surely, she ought to be going over to Paulding to the high school at her age.”

“O, she ain’t old. She’s just big of her age, you know, Mr. Meadowcroft,” rejoined the boy. “She ain’t so old as me and most of the others. She’s just--well, big. That’s why they call her Bouncing Bet, you see.”

“Well, I’m surprised; I confess that I am amazed!” exclaimed Meadowcroft. He hadn’t looked at the girl; but a glance told one that she would have been tall for a girl of sixteen, and large for any age whatever. Her nickname seemed to suggest a sort of jovial coarseness, but he had particular sympathy for anyone who was physically conspicuous.

“And she doesn’t mind being called--Bouncing Bet?” he asked, with reluctance to repeat the phrase.

“O no, sir,” replied Tommy promptly, “you see her name’s Betty--or really Betsey. Her father sometimes calls her Betsey. And she’s used to it, for she’s always been big, and everybody calls her Bouncing Bet--not exactly right out to her face, you know, and yet not behind her back.”

“Perhaps she’s rather proud of her size?” suggested Meadowcroft, rather hoping that such was the case.

“Proud of it! O gee! she just hates it. Why, she just--just--_abominates_ and despises being so big!” cried Tommy, reaching for the piano stool in his excitement and twirling it madly. Then remembering how that action annoyed his mother, he removed the temptation by changing his seat again.

“You see she never has any fun at all, and never has had except what she gets out of my magic,” he added.

“If she hates being big, Tommy, believe me she minds that nickname,” Meadowcroft declared with unusual emphasis. “When I was at boarding-school I learned by chance that the other boys referred to me as Hoplite Meadowcroft. You won’t get the full significance of that until you go to the high school and study Greek, but perhaps you may guess something of what I felt, for I should really hate to tell you how that nickname hurt me, or----” He paused. “I daresay hers hurts Miss Betty more,” he added.

Tommy’s eyes fell on his spotted hands. “Fat’s--different,” he said in a low voice.

“And so are girls. They take things harder than we men, Tommy,” returned the other so earnestly that Tommy winked fast and got into another chair.

He was silent for a little, then began to speak of a trick in magic he was eager to perform, which involved as a beginning getting the bottom out of a glass bottle.

“All you have to do, the book says, is to give the bottle a smart, deft rap with a hammer or any bit of steel, but I don’t seem to get the combination,” he observed. “The bottom busts up first thing with me every time. I’ve used up all the bottles I can find, and dad watches me like he was a policeman if I go near the shed, and ma just the same with the medicine cupboard and the kitchen sink, and I haven’t got one yet to begin on. And how are you going to do the trick, I’d like to know, if you can’t begin?”

Meadowcroft proposed to consult Herbie, the man who had lived with him for years and who now acted also as butler for his sister, with regard to a fresh supply of bottles. Tommy was properly gratified, but as the clock struck and he picked up his wad of a cap preparatory to leaving, he remarked in an offhand manner:

“I guess after all I won’t call her that any more. She’s mighty decent, you know,--no nonsense about her, and I’d sooner tell her things and have her watch me do magic than any fellow I know. She’s really my best friend, though you never see me walking by with her as probably you see me sometimes walking with other girls in my class. One reason why is she walks so slow I can’t keep up with her,--no, down, I mean. But that ain’t the real reason. She’s a head taller ’n me, and I’m not so small, either, ’bout the average for my age. And a fellow feels funny, you know, as if he was walking with his aunty. She’s taller ’n any boy in school and way up above Miss Sherman, the teacher.”

“You’ll overtake her in time, Tommy, if you give yourself a fair chance,” remarked Meadowcroft kindly. “You must remember, however, not to shut yourself up so closely with your magic as not to get enough fresh air and exercise to add the proper number of inches to your height each year.”