d the surgeon. "How old is this friend of yours?"

Betsey cleared her throat decisively, and smoothed her gown over her
knees as if it were an apron; then she turned to take a good look at
her new acquaintance as they sat on the rustic bench together. "Who be
you, sir, I should like to know?" she asked, in a friendly tone.

"My name's Dunster."

"I take it you're a doctor," continued Betsey, as if they had
overtaken each other walking from Byfleet to South Byfleet on a summer
morning.

"I'm a doctor; part of one at least," said he. "I know more or less
about eyes; and I spend my summers down on the shore at the mouth of
your river; some day I'll come up and look at this person. How old is
she?"

"Peggy Bond is one that never tells her age; 'tain't come quite up to
where she'll begin to brag of it, you see," explained Betsey
reluctantly; "but I know her to be nigh to seventy-six, one way or
t'other. Her an' Mrs. Mary Ann Chick was same year's child'n, and
Peggy knows I know it, an' two or three times when we've be'n in the
buryin'-ground where Mary Ann lays an' has her dates right on her
headstone, I couldn't bring Peggy to take no sort o' notice. I will
say she makes, at times, a convenience of being upsighted. But there,
I feel for her,--everybody does; it keeps her stubbin' an' trippin'
against everything, beakin' and gazin' up the way she has to."

"Yes, yes," said the doctor, whose eyes were twinkling. "I'll come and
look after her, with your town doctor, this summer,--some time in the
last of July or first of August."

"You'll find occupation," said Betsey, not without an air of
patronage. "Most of us to the Byfleet Farm has got our ails, now I
tell ye. You ain't got no bitters that'll take a dozen years right off
an ol' lady's shoulders?"

The busy man smiled pleasantly, and shook his head as he went away.
"Dunster," said Betsey to herself, soberly committing the new name to
her sound memory. "Yes, I mustn't forget to speak of him to the
doctor, as he directed. I do' know now as Peggy would vally herself
quite so much accordin' to, if she had her eyes fixed same as other
folks. I expect there wouldn't been a smarter woman in town, though,
if she'd had a proper chance. Now I've done what I set to do for her,
I do believe, an' 'twa'n't glasses, neither. I'll git her a pritty
little shawl with that money I laid aside. Peggy Bond ain't got a
pritty shawl. I always wanted to have a real good time, an' now I'm