FullReads

II.

“Betsey! Betsey! Miss Lane!” a voice called eagerly at the foot of the stairs that led up from the shed. “Betsey! There’s a lady here wants to see you right away.”

Betsey was dazed with excitement, like a country child who knows the rare pleasure of being called out of school. “Lor’, I ain’t fit to go down, be I?” she faltered, looking anxiously at her friends; but Peggy was gazing even nearer to the zenith than usual, in her excited effort to see down into the yard, and Mrs. Dow only nodded somewhat jealously, and said that she guessed ’twas nobody would do her any harm. She rose ponderously, while Betsey hesitated, being, as they would have said, all of a twitter. “It is a lady, certain,” Mrs. Dow assured her; “’tain’t often there’s a lady comes here.”

“While there was any of Mis’ Gen’ral Thornton’s folks left, I wa’n’t without visits from the gentry,” said Betsey Lane, turning back proudly at the head of the stairs, with a touch of old-world pride and sense of high station. Then she disappeared, and closed the door behind her at the stair-foot with a decision quite unwelcome to the friends above.

“She needn’t ‘a’ been so dreadful ‘fraid anybody was goin’ to listen. I guess we’ve got folks to ride an’ see us, or had once, if we hain’t now,” said Miss Peggy Bond, plaintively.

“I expect ‘t was only the wind shoved it to,” said Aunt Lavina. “Betsey is one that gits flustered easier than some. I wish ’twas somebody to take her off an’ give her a kind of a good time; she’s young to settle down ‘long of old folks like us. Betsey’s got a notion o’ rovin’ such as ain’t my natur’, but I should like to see her satisfied. She’d been a very understandin’ person, if she had the advantages that some does.”

“‘Tis so,” said Peggy Bond, tilting her chin high. “I suppose you can’t hear nothin’ they’re saying? I feel my hearin’ ain’t up to whar it was. I can hear things close to me well as ever; but there, hearin’ ain’t everything; ’tain’t as if we lived where there was more goin’ on to hear. Seems to me them folks is stoppin’ a good while.”

“They surely be,” agreed Lavina Dow.

“I expect it’s somethin’ particular. There ain’t none of the Thornton folks left, except one o’ the gran’darters, an’ I’ve often heard Betsey remark that she should never see her more, for she lives to London. Strange how folks feels contented in them strayaway places off to the ends of the airth.”

The flies and bees were buzzing against the hot windowpanes; the handfuls of beans were clicking into the brown wooden measure. A bird came and perched on the windowsill, and then flitted away toward the blue sky. Below, in the yard, Betsey Lane stood talking with the lady. She had put her blue drilling apron over her head, and her face was shining with delight.

“Lor’, dear,” she said, for at least the third time, “I remember ye when I first see ye; an awful pritty baby you was, an’ they all said you looked just like the old gen’ral. Be you goin’ back to foreign parts right away?”

“Yes, I’m going back; you know that all my children are there. I wish I could take you with me for a visit,” said the charming young guest. “I’m going to carry over some of the pictures and furniture from the old house; I didn’t care half so much for them when I was younger as I do now. Perhaps next summer we shall all come over for a while. I should like to see my girls and boys playing under the pines.”

“I wish you re’lly was livin’ to the old place,” said Betsey Lane. Her imagination was not swift; she needed time to think over all that was being told her, and she could not fancy the two strange houses across the sea. The old Thornton house was to her mind the most delightful and elegant in the world.