Free Betsy-Tacy and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace Page B

“That’s
swearing.
That earns you three stones.”
    Tacy was proud to be the first to get three stones. The three stones filled her bag.
    Betsy looked around for something she could do to earn three stones. She saw her mother’s golf cape airing on the line, and she took it down and put it on and walked to the corner and back.
    “That earns me three stones too,” she said, taking it off quickly.
    “I know how I can earn three stones,” cried Tib. “Just watch me!”
    She ran out into Betsy’s father’s garden and began to pick tomatoes.
    “That’s three stones all right,” said Betsy, when Tib returned with the red tomatoes in her skirt.
    Now all this time Margaret and Hobbie had been just as bad as they knew how. They had screamed and yelled and kicked and jumped, but no one had given them a single stone. Perhaps Margaret and Hobbie thought that they hadn’t been bad enough. Or perhaps they just liked the looks of the ripe red tomatoes. At any rate Hobbie took a tomato and threw it at Margaret.
    Margaret was delighted when the soft tomato broke in a big red splotch on her dress. She threw one at Hobbie. Hobbie threw one at Tacy and Margaretthrew one at Betsy and they both threw one at Tib.

    “’tone! ’tone!” cried Hobbie, smearing tomato into his pale yellow hair.
    “’tone! ’tone!” shrieked Margaret, rubbing the red juice into her chubby cheeks.
    “Oh! Oh! Oh!” cried Betsy and Tacy and Tib. Betsy’s mother came out just then. And after that the Club wasn’t much fun for a while. Betsy and Margaret were motioned into the house in a terrible silence, and the door closed behind them. Tacy was called home, and the door closed behind her too. And Tib took Hobbie home, but she cleaned himup first, the best she could, at Tacy’s pump.
    Down on the back fence behind Tacy’s barn that night, Betsy, Tacy and Tib counted their stones. Tib had the most. But when they were counted she threw them away.
    “I think,” she said, “that we’d better use these bags for marbles again. We seem to get into trouble when we tie things around our necks.”
    “That’s right. We do,” said Tacy. And she threw away her stones too.
    “Maybe we’d better change our Club a little,” Tacy said, “have our meetings up on the Big Hill.”
    “Have refreshments,” said Tib.
    “Take lunch baskets up,” said Tacy.
    “And a stick and a package, maybe,” said Tib.
    “What do you think, Betsy?” Tacy asked. For Betsy had not yet thrown away her stones. She was looking up at the western sky where a pale green lake was surrounded by peach-colored mountains, distant and mysterious.
    “All right,” said Betsy, and she threw away her stones. “But of course we must keep on being good.”
    “Oh, of course!” said Tacy.
    “That’s what our Club is for,” added Betsy.
    “It’s a Being Good Club,” Tacy said.
    “Well, it didn’t make us good today,” said Tib. “It made us bad.”
    Neither Betsy nor Tacy would have mentioned that. But they didn’t mind Tib’s mentioning it. They understood Tib.
    In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God.

9
The Secret Lane
    R OM THAT time on T.C.K.C. meetings were held on the Big Hill. Every Tuesday Julia and Katie went up on the Big Hill for a meeting of their B.H.M. Club. And every Tuesday Betsy and Tacy and Tib climbed the hill for T.C.K.C. meetings. Yet not once had Betsy and Tacy and Tib caught a glimpse of Julia and Katie. Thatshows how big the Big Hill was.
    Betsy and Tacy and Tib did different things at their meetings…. They always took a picnic lunch, of course; but they didn’t take a stick and a package, for they didn’t know what Julia and Katie did at their Club with a stick and a package. They couldn’t imagine. Sometimes Betsy and Tacy and Tib called on Mrs. Ekstrom and laughed about that day when they had pretended they were beggars. And sometimes they turned left at the top of the hill and walked to that lofty rim from