Betty Bonnet July 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.
“But Miss Proctor would never do anything so wicked!” said Betty.
Betty and Bob were sitting under the row of lilac bushes which we call “the shrubbery,” waiting for an unseasonable July rain to let up. Bob, who was finding the burden of high scandal rather difficult to support alone, had taken Betty into his confidence.
That is to say, he had told her when, and how, he discovered the whereabouts of his missing compass.
And Betty, who never like to think the worst of anybody, had raised this objection to the evidence of her brother’s senses: Miss Proctor was too nice to be a thief.
II.
“Temptation befalls the rich and poor alike,” replied Bob gloomily.
“I don’t believe Miss Proctor is rich. She’s only got one umbrella.”
“Then she’s poor. And it all comes to the same thing. Anybody may do anything, if they’re tempted bad enough.”
Despite a vast respect for her elder brother’s opinion, Betty did not quite share his conviction regarding a middle-aged spinster’s temptation to acquire a slightly-dented brass compass out of a visitor’s pocket. However, it was impossible to gainsay the evidence against her.
The compass was in Miss Proctor’s drawer.
If that fact was not incriminating, Bob did not know what was.
Betty, very regretfully, was obliged to own that she did not know what was, either.
III.
“What are we going to do?” asked Betty in an awed whisper. “Fetch the police?”
“The police!” exclaimed Bob, with magnificent grandeur. “What good would the police do, in a case like this? I know where the compass is. I could get it back in a flash, if that was all we cared about.”
“To be sure,” said Betty, thoughtfully, “it would make Miss Proctor feel very bad, to be found out.”
“It ought to make her feel bad,” retorted Bob. “She’s been a thief—and thieves oughtn’t to feel very nice. It wouldn’t be what they call ‘poetic justice.’ But that’s just the point. If we get back the compass, without bringing Miss Proctor to a sense of her crime, why, we haven’t done anything at all!”
“Perhaps,” said Betty, brightening up, “Miss Proctor never heard it was wrong to steal.”
Bob looked doubtful. This depth of ignorance seemed unlikely in a mission secretary.
“If she didn’t,” pursued Betty eagerly. “We ought to tell her.”
IV.
Bob looked uncomfortable. Except on spontaneous occasions, he was not fond of preaching. He had a feeling that it would be a difficult topic to begin.
“The thing about telling her—” he began vaguely.
“Or we could write,” suggested helpful Betty.
Bob considered a moment. His blotter and his best nib had both gone missing, at the beginning of the summer holidays.
“Or we might—oh, Bob! We might buy Miss Proctor a tract!!!”
Bob gave a sigh of relief.
Yes. If they bought Miss Proctor a tract, it would get them nicely out of the difficulty.
The next afternoon, accordingly, Bob and Betty set off, bright and early, for the shops.
V.
“I suppose you can buy them—anywhere?” said Betty, doubtfully, as they trotted down the street.
Bob had not considered this side of the problem. “I suppose you can. At least—they’re sure to have them at the Post Office, anyhow.”
Accordingly they went to the Post Office
The only publication of a reform nature that the postal clerk could produce proved to be a temperance postcard, gently suggesting the merits of water over liquor as a beverage for human consumption.
“Haven’t you got any about thieves?” suggested Betty, standing on tiptoe to look over the counter.
“Nothing that isn’t comic,” said the clerk, with a broad grin.
Betty considered asking to look at the comic ones, in case something useful had gotten in amongst them by mistake, but Bob refused to be thus swayed from the thrust of his quest.
“If you haven’t got any, do you know who might?” he inquired, fixing the clerk with a reproachful stare.
The clerk shrugged carelessly.
“Religious bookseller’s—or any mission headquarters, I should think.”
Bob and Betty exchanged sadly superior glances. The clerk little knew.
VI.
On the way out of the Post Office, Bob and Betty collided (quite literally) with a minister. They knew he was a minister, because of his collar—and the fact that he was carrying a volume of Matthew Henry under his arm.
After they had picked themselves up, and said “I beg your pardon!” and discovered a twinkle, instead of a glare, in the minister’s eyes, Betty was seized with a stroke of inspiration.
“If you please, Sir,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “haven’t you got a tract? About stealing? We need one, dreadfully, and they haven’t got any in there. The clerk thought you got them at missions!”
“Well, so you do, sometimes,” said the minister, his mouth twitching a little. “But you can get them in other places as well, if you know where to look. Shall I go along with you, and help you find one?”
Betty considered for a moment, and then shook her head. “Our mamma doesn’t like us to go places with strangers.”
“A very sensible rule,” said the minister. He thought a moment. “Suppose you give me your address, and I send it to you, by the post.”
Betty’s eyes lit up, but the next moment her face fell again. “I’m afraid that won’t do, either. Our mamma doesn’t like us to tell strangers where we live.”
“I see,” said the minister. “Of course, that, too, is a sensible rule. Let me think. Do you want the tract for yourself? Or for somebody else?”
“Oh, not for ourselves, of course!” exclaimed Betty, very much shocked. “We aren’t thieves, you know! It’s for the Foster Street Mission. Miss Proctor is the secretary there.”
“Ah!” said the minister, his smile becoming irrepressible. “Miss Proctor wants the tract, does she? There’s no trouble at all, then. Miss Proctor and I have worked on several committees. I know her address. We can send the tract directly to her.”
VII.
Betty breathed a sigh of relief. “You are a very nice minister,” she said gratefully.
“Thank you!” laughed the man.
“Thank you!” said Bob, feeling very grown up and elegant to have thought of such a reply. “And we’ll pay you for it, ourselves.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said the minister, good-naturedly. “I like to help a bit, in a worthy cause!”
He turned and opened the Post Office door. Bob and Betty trotted off down the street.
“How long will it take to go by post?” inquired Betty.
“Oh—not so much as a week,” returned Bob, confidently. “So long as the minister remembers to post it at once, anyhow.”
“I think he’ll remember,” said Betty comfortably. “He seemed like a remembering sort of person.”
“Alright,” agreed Bob. “We’ll say a week. Now, we’ve got to keep away from Foster Street until we’re sure Miss Proctor has it. And then we’ll go down, and see if she’s really sorry—and ready to give the compass back.”
(To be continued.)
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