Soon Betty’s conscience weighed so heavily on her that she stopped walking. She knew she should go back and return the watch, but she was terrified that she would run into Essie or her mother. Still, Betty could not stand the awful feeling inside, so she ran back to Essie’s house and placed the watch on the back doorstep. Then she fled home.
That night Betty thought about what she had done. She had felt a quick thrill taking the watch, but the agony afterward had not been worth it. The verse her father often quoted from the Bible came to mind: “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14:12). Yes, she’d had fun and adventure for a minute or two, but it wasn’t fun in the long run. She went to sleep grateful that she’d at least had the courage to return the watch to Essie’s house. She hoped and prayed that someone found it before it got stepped on.
At school Betty started third grade and was obliged to take sewing class. She hated having to go home and ask her parents for money to buy the necessary fabric for the sewing projects—even if it cost only twenty cents. (At the time, the United States was in the grip of the Great Depression, and money everywhere, including in the Howard household, was in short supply. Nonetheless, Betty’s parents tithed on all the money they received. And from the money they tithed, a collection of dimes was kept in the drawer of the small table by the front door. The children were instructed to give a dime to each person who came to the door begging.)
As December approached, Betty looked forward to her birthday on the twenty-first, and then to Christmas. Christmas was a fun time for the Howard children. Early in the morning the children would pile onto their parents’ bed and open the stocking they had found hanging on the end of their beds. While the stockings were mostly filled with practical things like bars of soap and pencils, they also included chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil. Betty loved the taste of the chocolate as it melted in her mouth. After breakfast and devotions, the family would gather around the Christmas tree to open presents. However, something happened early in December that year that took away much of Betty’s joyful anticipation.
The Howard home was always open to missionaries and visiting speakers. In fact, even though the country was in the midst of the Great Depression and Betty’s father had taken two pay cuts, the Howards were always the family who fed and boarded any Christian speakers who came through town.
Betty loved to read the guestbook her mother kept on the polished wooden table just inside the front door. The first entry in the book had been made shortly after her parents had married and set up home as missionaries with the Belgian Gospel Mission in Brussels, Belgium. The Howards had lived in Belgium for five years. Betty had been born there and was five months old when her parents returned to the United States for furlough. Her parents had fully intended to return to Belgium for a second term as missionaries, but Philip Howard’s uncle, Charley Trumbull, asked Philip to consider joining the staff of the Sunday School Times. In the end Mr. Howard took the position, and the family bought a small house in Germantown. Since that time, many missionaries bound for Brussels and other cities and villages scattered around the world had passed through their house and signed the guestbook.
One of Betty’s favorite visitors to the house was the Reverend Charles Scott. Mr. Scott and his wife, Clara, were missionaries in China, and he had taken a special interest in Betty. When he returned to China, he sent Betty Chinese candies, tiger skin slippers, and a paper fan. Not only that, he wrote her letters about his own daughter, who was also called Betty. Betty Scott, who Betty recalled had once stayed in their house with her father, had graduated from Moody Bible College and joined her parents as a missionary in Tsingteh, a small town in the east of China.
Betty Scott eventually married a missionary, John Stam, and in his last letter Charles Scott reported that the couple had just had a baby, whom they named Helen. It was easy for Betty Howard to put herself in the shoes of Betty Stam, since Charles Scott’s letters were so vivid and lively. Betty secretly hoped that one day God would call her to be a missionary in some far-off place. How wonderful it would be to write the letters and live the adventures instead of just reading about them! So it came as a total shock to Betty when her mother called her into the parlor one afternoon in early December when she came home from school.
“Betty,” she began, “I have something very difficult to tell you.”
Betty stared at her mother. She had never seen her so sad.
“You remember Betty Stam and her father, the Reverend Scott?” Katherine Howard asked her daughter.
Betty nodded, of course she did.
“The Lord has called Betty and her husband John home to be with Him.”
Betty struggled with the meaning of what she had just heard. Calling home was about dying, wasn’t it? “What happened?” she asked.
Her mother folded her hands, and Betty could see big tears falling into her lap. “They were killed by Communists in China. Their little girl Helen is all right.”
Betty did not know what to say. She thought of the baby growing up without parents and of poor Mr. Scott and his wife.
Later, as Betty listened to the adults around her discuss the murders, she was able to piece together more of the story. On December 6, John and Betty Stam had been arrested in their home by Communist fighters and forced to march with their three-month-old baby to Miaosheo, a town about twelve miles away. Two days later the Stams were marched through the streets of Miaosheo on their way to be executed. When a Chinese Christian man stepped forward and protested against what the Communists were doing, he, too, was arrested and marched off to be executed with the Stams. A short time afterward, John and Betty Stam were beheaded. Before her death, Betty had managed to hide baby Helen in a sleeping bag. The baby was found two days later by a Chinese pastor and returned to her grandparents, the Scotts, in Shanghai.
The details were shocking and sad to Betty. It was hard for her nearly eight-year-old mind to grasp how such a thing could happen. And so she passed a somber Christmas thinking about the Stams’ baby, Helen, and what life would now be like for her without parents.
The year 1935 rolled around with some good news. Betty’s mother was pregnant again and expecting a baby in July. As summer approached, Betty began to look forward both to the arrival of a new brother or sister and to going with the family to stay at Gale Cottage in New Hampshire. She planned to have a lot more fun this summer than the previous one, most of which she had spent sick in bed.
Chapter 3
Gale Cottage
Betty stowed her small leather suitcase in the string shelf above her bed and lay down. A big smile spread across her face as she felt the train vibrate and slowly pull forward. A whistle blasted through the air as the Bar Harbor Express gathered steam. Betty peered out the window of the Pullman coach and into the night. The Philadelphia station was alive with activity—men carrying parcels, women wheeling babies and studying timetables. Betty loved the swirl of activity around her, almost as much as she loved the anticipation of arriving at her favorite place on earth—Gale Cottage, in the foothills of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, about six hundred miles up the train tracks.
Soon the train settled into a steady clickity-clack rhythm, and Betty watched the dark outlines of the backs of houses and factory buildings fly by in puffs of steam and smoke. Occasionally a live ember would streak by the window like a comet, escaping from the huge funnel on the locomotive. Before long, a tired Betty pulled down the blind and settled into her compact bed.
Betty was awakened in the early hours of the morning by the jerking of the Pullman car. She opened the blind and looked out. A brakeman with his lantern was standing by the side of the track, signaling the engineer with his hands. Betty knew it could mean only one thing: they had reached New Haven, Connecticut, and the train was being split into two trains. The Bar Harbor Express would continue on to Boston and then on into Maine, while the other half of the train, with its own steam locomotive and the Howard family aboard, would head north into New Hampshire. After jolting backward and forward, the train finally pulled away from the New Haven station. Betty soon settled back to sleep, excited to know that when she awoke she would be in a whole new place.
Betty woke to the sound of the hissing of steam as the train slowed down, followed by the sound of screeching brakes. She pulled up the blind and waited for the sign bearing the station’s name to come into view. Concord. It wouldn’t be long before they got to Littleton.
Betty climbed out of bed and dressed quickly so that she could spend the last half hour of the journey staring out the window. Just as she settled into her seat to take in the unfolding scenery, Betty’s father ducked his head into her compartment. “How did you sleep?” he asked.
Betty grinned. “Just great! How about Mother and the baby?” The baby she was referring to was Thomas, the newest addition to the Howard family, born three weeks earlier.
“They did pretty well. Tommy fussed a little. Your mother will need a good rest when she gets to the cottage. Ginny slept right though. I guess she likes the rocking of the train,” Philip Howard said.
The Howard family was standing ready to disembark when the train pulled to a stop at the Littleton station. As she climbed down from the Pullman car, Betty caught a glimpse of her grandfather. She waved vigorously at him, and he waved back.
Once they were all seated in her grandfather’s Buick, Betty looked around. Everything was perfect. The weather was much cooler here in northern New Hampshire, and the constant traffic of Germantown and Philadelphia was far behind. Even the trees here were different—tall pines, wide-branching spruce, and white cedar. Best of all, an assortment of Howard family members would be waiting to greet them at the cottage.
The eight-mile drive to the cottage went quickly. As they drove, her grandfather quizzed the children on the names of the mountains that loomed in the distance: Lafayette, Bald Peak, Cannon, Kinsman, and Bluff. Betty remembered them all, and their names sounded like those of old friends to her.
Soon the Buick was click-clacking its way across the Gale River Bridge. Betty craned her neck to see, and joy swept over her when she spotted the two brick chimneys. Then the car turned into the driveway. The cottage looked just the same as she remembered. It was a two-story structure with a huge attic. The bottom story was built with large slabs of spruce, while the upper story and attic were clad in cedar shingles. A wide veranda ran all the way around the house, and standing on the veranda was Betty’s grandmother waving a welcome. The table in front of her was already set, as Betty knew it would be, so they could all enjoy a delicious breakfast together outside.
Betty took a deep breath as she ran around the house. The place still smelled the same. She recognized the scent of the sturdy spruce timbers mixed with the wood smoke that permeated them. She found the little cart she remembered playing with two years before and popped her head into the kitchen, which was a separate building behind the house. She recalled her mother explaining to her that the kitchen had to be separate in case of fire.
Breakfast on the veranda turned out to be even better than Betty remembered. Her grandmother urged her to have a second helping of pancakes. “You’re growing up fast!” she exclaimed. “You’ll be as tall as your father soon.”
Betty felt herself blush. It was true: she was growing fast. Her dresses were down to the last turn of their hems, and her socks no longer reached all the way to her knees. She was a good head taller and ganglier than the other girls her age.
