yard from the front of the house. The turf was
soft, and our friends did not hear the horses' steps. Their voices
cracked and quavered; it was a funny little concert, and a lady in an
open carriage just below listened with sympathy and amusement.

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 on