Betty Bonnet November 1915

Betty Bonnet is an ongoing serial story, released on the Sheep Among Wolves blog once a month. It follows the adventures of the Bonnet family, first created by Sheila Young as a paper doll series released in the Ladies’ Home Journal beginning 1915. To go to the first episode, click here.

I.

It was always possible that Betty Bonnet might come down with the measles.

Betty reminded me of this fact, several times, towards the beginning of November.

I conceded the possibility, but always countered with the reflection that it was, of course, equally possible that she might not.

Measles seemed to have run their course for the year, and gone into discrete retirement. Even the headmistress at Betty’s school had got over them.

“But I might, Miss Burton. I really might you know. And then it would be too late.”

The thing which it would be too late for—the thing of which Betty had been reminding anybody and everybody she could get hold of for the last fortnight—this all-important preoccupation which might be so devastatingly prevented by the dreaded attack of illness to which Betty alluded—was Betty’s own, personal (and astonishingly extended) Christmas shopping.

II.

“I might come down with measles, tomorrow, Miss Burton,” Betty reminded me, as I was putting on my rubbers in the hall. “And if I did, I shouldn’t be able to buy a Christmas present for Mamma. Or Papa,” she added, after a moment’s reflection.

I got one recalcitrant overshoe wrestled into position, and pretended not to hear.

“Or Barbara. Or Birdie. Or Belle.” Betty hopped across the sun-dappled rug, to peer up into my face. “Or Bill. Or Bobby. Or Bonnie.”

I mastered the second shoe, with a grunt.

Betty brought her lips very close to my ear, and added, in a shrill whisper, “Or YOU!”

Here I thought I saw an opening.

“You can’t expect me to take you shopping for my own Christmas present, Betty-girl.”

It was a fatal mistake. The instant the words were out of my mouth, I perceived the logical rejoinder. So, in a moment, did Betty.

“But you can take me to get all the others!” she exclaimed triumphantly.

A quarter of an hour later, we set off.

III.

Taking Betty Christmas shopping has a tendency to swell into an all-day affair. Betty takes her Christmas purchases very seriously.

She always knows precisely what she wants to buy.

And, with boundless faith that exactly the article she is in search of is waiting, just around the corner, to reward the patient perseverance of her method, she can never be beguiled into settling for a compromise.

“You see, Miss Burton, I don’t want just exactly this blue for Mamma’s tea cozy. It wouldn’t look like it went with the forget-me-nots on the china, now would it? Forget-me-nots are a blue sort of blue. But this—” picking disapprovingly at the jade floss that decorated the tea cozy under inspection, “—this is really more of a sea-ish colour, isn’t it?”

“Sea green. It’s very much the rage, just at present, Miss,” said the shop attendant, helpfully.

He had tried the wrong line.

Betty cared nothing for rages.

She cared everything for accuracy.

“I ‘spect the shop around the corner has got different colors,” said Betty, with gracious but immovable dignity. “Thank you very much, just the same.”

IV.

“I dare say Mamma would be ever so happy with the sea-green cozy, if it was a present from you,” I suggested, after a fruitless search at the fifth shop. “Mammas always like whatever comes from their little girls.”

Betty’s solemnly reproachful eyes were lifted to my own. “When little girls are very fond of their mammas,” she informed me sternly, “they don’t want to buy any sort of tea cozy except the very best one in all of New York.”

“Just so,” I conceded, apologetically.

“The very best one,” Betty informed me, as I had known she would, “is blue.”

We went into a sixth shop—and into a seventh—and found a tea cozy, cross-stitched in forget-me-not blue.

Betty was too polite to look triumphant.

I was too limp to care.

V.

At least, thus far, Betty seemed to have forgotten about the dolls. There was a time, as my readers will remember, when Betty had a very strong notion that she was going to buy everyone on her list a doll this Christmas.

Even a forget-me-not tea cozy in a seventh shop was preferable to staggering down the street laden with some dozen dolls, done up in brown paper.

Or not done up in brown paper.

Betty was very sensitive to the feelings of dolls.

“And now you’ve got the pocketbook for Papa. And the handkerchiefs for Birdie,” I tried to get a look at the crumpled list in Betty’s small glove. “What’s that, at the very bottom? The only thing left, isn’t it? We shall be home before tea.”

Betty held the smudgy scrawl close to her face, to decipher her own handwriting in the waning light.

“Oh, yes,” she recollected, comfortably. “It’s only the dolls, of course.”

VI.

“Only” the dolls!

Twelve of them. One for each of us—father, mother, brothers, sisters, even Barbara’s husband was not to be forgotten.

“He mightn’t like a doll,” I protested weakly.

“Frank Everett is a very nice man,” said Betty reprovingly.

I hadn’t said he wasn’t, but I was past arguing with Betty. You never won an argument with her about dolls, anyway.

“Very well,” I told her, hailing a taxi for Macy’s and trying to summon to my voice an authority which I did not feel. “But we are finished with tramping about in the wet. Any dolls you want to buy, have got to be bought in the toy department. After we find something to eat.”

Betty looked up at me solemnly. “You don’t like buying dolls, Miss Burton.”

It sounded a trifle heartless, put like that.

VII.

“Of course, I don’t mind buying dolls, in moderation, Betty. It’s only that—only that—it seems a trifle—I mean, Papa, and Mamma, and Frank, and all—” I trailed off, not quite willing to quench the light in Betty’s eyes by telling her bluntly what I really meant.

How do you explain to a doll-crazy little girl that buying toys for twelve people who don’t actually want them, while generous, is not necessarily the most expedient way of testifying to one’s sincere and heartfelt affection?

We got into the taxi, and the arm of Betty’s woollen coat stole caressingly around my neck.

“Don’t worry, Miss Burton,” she whispered coaxingly in my ear. “I’m e’sposed to buy the dolls.”

“Supposed to buy them?” I repeated rather flatly.

Betty nodded with absolute conviction.

“How do you know?” I ventured, doubtfully.

Betty sat down on the leather seat, with a comfortable wiggle.

“I asked God,” she explained confidently. “And He said, ‘Yes.’”

(To be continued.)

Don’t miss last month’s episode of Betty Bonnet:

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