Betsy-Tacy and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace Page B

going to look exactly like Aunt Dolly.”
    “You’ll have to get different colored hair,” said Tib.
    “I know it,” said Betsy. “But people do.”
    “Ssh! Ssh! I hear something,” Tacy said.
    This time Betsy and Tib heard it too. And they caught the flash of red and blue dresses around thecorner of the wall.
    “We see you!” they cried, jumping up.
    Julia and Katie started to run, and Betsy and Tacy and Tib started to chase them. Tib remembered, though, to pick up the basket and the red and white fringed cloth.
    They chased Julia and Katie through the Secret Lane and past Mrs. Ekstrom’s house and down the Big Hill. Nobody caught anybody but it was very exciting. Shouting, feet pounding, skirts flying, they ran into Betsy’s yard.
    Betsy’s mother was sitting there with Margaret playing beside her.
    “Mercy! What’s the matter?” she asked, as they dropped in a heap of waving arms and legs.
    “We know where your B.H.M. Club meets!” shouted Betsy, Tacy and Tib.
    “We know where your T.C.K.C. meets,” Julia and Katie shouted back.
    “Big Hill Mystery!” yelled Betsy, Tacy and Tib.
    “The Christian Kindness Club!” yelled Julia and Katie.
    “You see,” said Tacy to Betsy and Tib, “I
told
you someone was there.”
    Betsy’s mother took Margaret on her lap to be out of the way of the waving arms and legs.
    “I have a suggestion to make,” she said, smiling.“Since you know all about one another’s clubs, and since they both meet up on the Big Hill, why don’t you have your meetings together?”
    “Together!” cried Julia and Katie and Betsy and Tacy and Tib.
    “Go up on the Big Hill together and eat your picnics together. I think it would be fun,” Betsy’s mother said.
    Julia and Katie looked at each other in horror, and Betsy and Tacy and Tib exchanged horrified glances too.
    Wasn’t that just like a grown-up, thought Betsy, to think that that would be fun?
    “You think it over,” said Betsy’s mother, smiling.
    “Yes ma’am,” said Julia and Katie and Betsy and Tacy and Tib.
    And they thought it over. But the B.H.M. and the T.C.K.C. never met together. Not once.

10
Aunt Dolly
    A UNT DOLLY’S train was to reach Deep Valley at night. Betsy and Tacy would be in bed and asleep when she arrived. They wanted to be at Tib’s house early the next morning. So they worked out a plan.
    That night when Tacy went to bed, she was to tie a string to her big toe. She was to let the string hangout the window. In the morning Betsy would come over and pull the string to wake her up.
    “But maybe you won’t wake up first, Betsy,” Tacy said as she and Betsy climbed the stairs to the little room Tacy shared with Katie.
    “That’s right,” said Betsy. “Maybe I won’t. Maybe we’d better tie a string to my toe too.”
    So after they had poked a string … with a stone on one end to make it fall to the ground … through a hole in the screen, and tied the other end of the string to the bedpost, awaiting night and Tacy’s toe, they crossed the street to Betsy’s house. They climbed the stairs to the little room Betsy shared with Julia and poked a string through a hole in
that
screen and tied the other end to a post of
that
bed, awaiting night and
Betsy’s
toe. And that night Julia and Katie helped them tie the strings to their big toes. (Julia and Katie were nice sometimes.)
    But, as it happened, neither string got pulled.
    Tacy had bad dreams and twisted and turned in the night so that the string was wound around her leg and Betsy would have had to stand on stilts to reach it. And Betsy’s string came off her toe in the night. But both of them woke up early just the same. They met in the middle of the road.
    It was very early; the sky was the color of Betsy’s mother’s opal ring. The air was cold, and up on theHill Street Hill where Betsy and Tacy went to pick flowers for Aunt Dolly, the grass was wet with dew. When their arms were full of goldenrod and bright purple asters, they went