“See, there are two,” said Betsy.  “You can have one for your very own.  And I’ll let you choose.  Which one do you like best?”

She was hoping that Molly would not take the little all-gray one, because she had fallen in love with that the minute she saw it.

“Oh, this one with the white on his breast,” said Molly, without a moment’s hesitation.  “It’s lots the prettiest!  Oh, Betsy!  For my very own?”

Something white fell out of the folds of her skirt on the hay.  “Oh, yes,” she said indifferently.  “A letter for you.  Miss Ann told me to bring it out here.  She said she saw you streaking it for the barn.”

It was a letter from Aunt Frances.  Betsy opened it, one eye on Molly to see that she did not hug her new darling too tightly, and began to read it in the ray of dusty sunlight slanting in through a crack in the side of the barn.  She could do this easily, because Aunt Frances always made her handwriting very large and round and clear, so that a little girl could read it without half trying.

And as she read, everything faded away from before her ... the barn, Molly, the kittens ... she saw nothing but the words on the page.

When she had read the letter through she got up quickly, oh ever so quickly! and went away down the stairs.  Molly hardly noticed she had gone, so absorbing and delightful were the kittens.

Betsy went out of the dusky barn into the rich, October splendor and saw none of it.  She went straight away from the house and the barn, straight up into the hill-pasture toward her favorite place beside the brook, the shady pool under the big maple-tree.  At first she walked, but after a while she ran, faster and faster, as though she could not get there soon enough.  Her head was down, and one arm was crooked over her face ... .

And do you know, I’m not going to follow her up there, nor let you go.  I’m afraid we would all cry if we saw what Betsy did under the big maple-tree.  And the very reason she ran away so fast was so that she could be all by herself for a very hard hour, and fight it out, alone.

So let us go back soberly to the orchard where the Putneys are, and wait till Betsy comes walking listlessly in, her eyes red and her cheeks pale.  Cousin Ann was up in the top of a tree, a basket hung over her shoulder half full of striped red Northern Spies; Uncle Henry was on a ladder against another tree, filling a bag with the beautiful, shining, yellow-green Pound Sweets, and Aunt Abigail was moving around, picking up the parti-colored windfalls and putting them into barrels ready to go to the cider-mill.

Something about the way Betsy walked, and as she drew closer something about the expression of her face, and oh! as she began to speak, something about the tone of her voice, stopped all this cheerful activity as though a bomb had gone off in their midst.

“I’ve had a letter from Aunt Frances,” said Betsy, biting her lips, “and she says she’s coming to take me away, back to them, tomorrow.”