FullReads

“Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Mrs. Strafford kindly,–“anything that I can do for you myself, before I go away? I shall be writing to you, and sending some pictures of the children, and you must let me know how you are getting on.”

“Yes, there is one thing, darlin’. If you could stop in the village an’ pick me out a pritty, little, small lookin’-glass, that I can keep for my own an’ have to remember you by. ‘Tain’t that I want to set me above the rest o’ the folks, but I was always used to havin’ my own when I was to your grandma’s. There’s very nice folks here, some on ’em, and I’m better off than if I was able to keep house; but sence you ask me, that’s the only thing I feel cropin’ about. What be you goin’ right back for? ain’t you goin’ to see the great fair to Pheladelphy, that everybody talks about?”

“No,” said Mrs. Strafford, laughing at this eager and almost convicting question. “No; I’m going back next week. If I were, I believe that I should take you with me. Good-by, dear old Betsey; you make me feel as if I were a little girl again; you look just the same.”

For full five minutes the old woman stood out in the sunshine, dazed with delight, and majestic with a sense of her own consequence. She held something tight in her hand, without thinking what it might be; but just as the friendly mistress of the poor-farm came out to hear the news, she tucked the roll of money into the bosom of her brown gingham dress. “‘Twas my dear Mis’ Katy Strafford,” she turned to say proudly. “She come way over from London; she’s been sick; they thought the voyage would do her good. She said most the first thing she had on her mind was to come an’ find me, and see how I was, an’ if I was comfortable; an’ now she’s goin’ right back. She’s got two splendid houses; an’ said how she wished I was there to look after things,–she remembered I was always her gran’ma’s right hand. Oh, it does so carry me back, to see her! Seems if all the rest on ’em must be there together to the old house. There, I must go right up an’ tell Mis’ Dow an’ Peggy.”

“Dinner’s all ready; I was just goin’ to blow the horn for the men-folks,” said the keeper’s wife. “They’ll be right down. I expect you’ve got along smart with them beans,–all three of you together;” but Betsey’s mind roved so high and so far at that moment that no achievements of bean-picking could lure it back.

III.

The long table in the great kitchen soon gathered its company of waifs and strays,–creatures of improvidence and misfortune, and the irreparable victims of old age. The dinner was satisfactory, and there was not much delay for conversation. Peggy Bond and Mrs. Dow and Betsey Lane always sat together at one end, with an air of putting the rest of the company below the salt. Betsey was still flushed with excitement; in fact, she could not eat as much as usual, and she looked up from time to time expectantly, as if she were likely to be asked to speak of her guest; but everybody was hungry, and even Mrs. Dow broke in upon some attempted confidences by asking inopportunely for a second potato. There were nearly twenty at the table, counting the keeper and his wife and two children, noisy little persons who had come from school with the small flock belonging to the poor widow, who sat just opposite our friends. She finished her dinner before any one else, and pushed her chair back; she always helped with the housework,–a thin, sorry, bad-tempered-looking poor soul, whom grief had sharpened instead of softening. “I expect you feel too fine to set with common folks,” she said enviously to Betsey.