VII Making Believe Brings Things
For the next twenty years Betsy made baskets and John went in and out with his pick and shovel. But they earned less and less. And then the owner of their house died and left them to the tender mercy of his heirs. These promptly began to inquire about the arrears of rent.
“I don’t know how much we are back, but I guess it’s a good deal,” smiled Betsy.
John was troubled. “If we’d only kep’ on saving, we might own the house by now, and—”
Betsy put her hand on his mouth—and some of the fingers into it.
“We made better use of it, John, ten thousand times better use of it! John—we bought happiness with it! And they are all dead, now, back there at Saint Michael’s. And there is not a thing to regret—not one. Oh, thank God—thank God! If we had saved that money, there would be something to regret. We would have to remember that one was denied this—the other—that. But we’ll have the roof yet.”
John sniffled and let his arm go gently around her.
“Betsy—forgive me. I didn’t mean—”
“Why, John, dear,” said Betsy, smiling again, “in a little while we will not need a house. John! ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’!”
“Yes,” answered John, with a caress, awed by the light in his wife’s pretty face. “Yes—yes.”
“Who would we leave it to when we die?”
“Just so!” cried John.
“And in the mansions our boys will be! And it will be Sunday always.”
When fall came the new owners turned them out—and Betsy’s dainty house-things were given to the new tenant. They went to live in the abandoned out-kitchen of a neighbor, and Betsy made John believe that she had never been quite so happy. And, from making believe, it after a while came to be true. She cried once or twice when John was away—the little place was so bare and ugly. There did not seem any way to make a home of it. But Betsy set to work to try—with only her small hands—and occasionally John’s big ones—and almost no money—and surprised herself. When it was done, she found that she had, somehow, sewn and woven her own happiness into the curtains and carpets and furniture.
It took years to do it. Yet she was happy every hour of the time.
Betsy determined, one day, to celebrate the completion of her work. So when John came home he was met by a glare of light from several borrowed lamps, the smell of flowers gathered by Betsy herself in the fields, and a “dinner!”—as Betsy proudly announced—instead of their usual supper.
John took off his old hat in the midst of it and gazed speechlessly. Then he went back—outside—and wiped again the soles of his boots on the door-mat Betsy had woven. Betsy laughed like a girl and pulled him inside.
“Come! You have got to dance!”
Well—John never could dance. But she managed to make him whirl with her dizzily through the two tiny rooms she had made.
“John! It’s beginning all over again! Going to housekeeping! I’m the little bride. You can be the groom—if you like?”
“Yes,” mused John, very happily, “beginning all over again—going to housekeeping—again. But something—is not—”
The cradle was there—they had always kept it—and John looked at that and laughed guiltily.
“Not that, John—not that, John,” cried Betsy, plunging into his arms with sobs. “Not that—not that—talk about the roof—if you like—anything—but—not—that!”