She touched the flowing ruffles and the soft silk of the sash, thinking how happy she would be with the other little daughters of Salisbury in the morning. She had not noticed that her mother had crossed the threshold of the spare room and stood beside her looking down earnestly into the little girl’s happy face. Mistress Brandon put her hand on Betsy’s brown braids that were coiled neatly and tied about her head.
“My precious little daughter,” Mistress Brandon said, “there is something that I must tell you.”
“Yes, mother,” Betsy looked smilingly into her mother’s sober face.
Her mother spoke quickly now and as if the words hurt her. “Your dear Aunt Tabitha’s serving man has just come in great haste on horseback from her plantation to say that his mistress is far from well and wishes me to come to her at once with a supply of simples. I must go. The maids are packing my basket and laying out my traveling cloak, and the horses are harnessed and at the door.” She paused, in sorrow at the grief that she saw suddenly in Betsy’s radiant face.
“Your father will not return for some days yet,” she added, and then stopped.
There was a pause and then Betsy looked up bravely, saying just what her mother had hoped and expected that she would, for she was a good little girl.
“And Grandmother should not be left alone here because she is not well and the maids are new,” Betsy said. Then, all at once, it seemed as if she could not bear her disappointment. She threw herself into her mother’s arms, burying her head in her shoulder. “I can’t be a flower girl,” she sobbed. “I must stay at home to-morrow, and not see President Washington. Oh, I can’t bear it; it seems as if I just can’t!”
Her mother stooped down and kissed her. “Any other little daughter except my own brave little Betsy perhaps could not bear the disappointment,” she said, “but she can. The Brandons come of a brave old family, strong to fight and well able to bear whatever comes to them. And think, too, dear, what sorrows came to our brave President before he won the war for us. You can try to be as brave as he, dear child, can you not?”
“Yes, mother.” Betsy was smiling again. She folded the dainty frock and the sash and laid them away in one of the lavender-scented drawers of the big mahogany bureau. And then she went downstairs, and did not shed one tear as she kissed her mother good-bye and watched her drive away between the magnolia trees that lined the long driveway of the plantation.