Hill, nor to any nearer acquaintances; in fact, she had
disappeared altogether from her wonted haunts. Nobody remembered to
have seen her pass, hers had been such an early flitting; and when
somebody thought of her having gone away by train, he was laughed at
for forgetting that the earliest morning train from South Byfleet, the
nearest station, did not start until long after eight o'clock; and if
Betsey had designed to be one of the passengers, she would have
started along the road at seven, and been seen and known of all women.
There was not a kitchen in that part of Byfleet that did not have
windows toward the road. Conversation rarely left the level of the
neighborhood gossip: to see Betsey Lane, in her best clothes, at that
hour in the morning, would have been the signal for much exercise of
imagination; but as day after day went by without news, the curiosity
of those who knew her best turned slowly into fear, and at last Peggy
Bond again gave utterance to the belief that Betsey had either gone
out in the early morning and put an end to her life, or that she had
gone to the Centennial. Some of the people at table were moved to loud
laughter,--it was at supper-time on a Sunday night,--but others
listened with great interest.

"She never'd put on her good clothes to drownd herself," said the
widow. "She might have thought 'twas good as takin' 'em with her,
though. Old folks has wandered off an' got lost in the woods afore
now."

Mrs. Dow and Peggy resented this impertinent remark, but deigned to
take no notice of the speaker. "She wouldn't have wore her best
clothes to the Centennial, would she?" mildly inquired Peggy, bobbing
her head toward the ceiling. "'Twould be a shame to spoil your best
things in such a place. An' I don't know of her havin' any money;
there's the end o' that."

"You're bad as old Mis' Bland, that used to live neighbor to our
folks," said one of the old men. "She was dreadful precise; an' she so
begretched to wear a good alapaca dress that was left to her, that it
hung in a press forty year, an' baited the moths at last."

"I often seen Mis' Bland a-goin' in to meetin' when I was a young
girl," said Peggy Bond approvingly. "She was a good-appearin' woman,
an' she left property."

"Wish she'd left it to me, then," said the poor soul opposite,
glancing at her pathetic row of children: but it was not good manners
at the farm to deplore one's situation, and Mrs. Dow and Peggy only
frowned.