Part 28 (2/2)
b.u.t.tons, I'll give ye a free ride. I'm in a sight o' distress, an'
none o' the fellows is provided with as much as a bent pin.”
”You poor boy! I'll have you seen to, in half a minute. I'm troubled with a stiff arm, but I'll do the best I can.”
The obliging Betsey seated herself stiffly on the slope of the embankment, and found her thread and needle with utmost haste. Two of the train-men stood by and watched the careful st.i.tches, and even offered her a place as spare brakeman, so that they might keep her near; and Betsey took the offer with considerable seriousness, only thinking it necessary to a.s.sure them that she was getting most too old to be out in all weathers. An express went by like an earthquake, and she was presently hoisted on board an empty box-car by two of her new and flattering acquaintances, and found herself before noon at the end of the first stage of her journey, without having spent a cent, and furnished with any amount of thrifty advice. One of the young men, being compa.s.sionate of her unprotected state as a traveler, advised her to find out the widow of an uncle of his in Philadelphia, saying despairingly that he couldn't tell her just how to find the house; but Miss Betsey Lane said that she had an English tongue in her head, and should be sure to find whatever she was looking for. This unexpected incident of the freight train was the reason why everybody about the South Byfleet station insisted that no such person had taken pa.s.sage by the regular train that same morning, and why there were those who persuaded themselves that Miss Betsey Lane was probably lying at the bottom of the poor-farm pond.
VII.
”Land sakes!” said Miss Betsey Lane, as she watched a Turkish person parading by in his red fez, ”I call the Centennial somethin' like the day o' judgment! I wish I was goin' to stop a month, but I dare say 'twould be the death o' my poor old bones.”
She was leaning against the barrier of a patent pop-corn establishment, which had given her a sudden reminder of home, and of the winter nights when the sharp-kerneled little red and yellow ears were brought out, and Old Uncle Eph Flanders sat by the kitchen stove, and solemnly filled a great wooden chopping-tray for the refreshment of the company. She had wandered and loitered and looked until her eyes and head had grown numb and unreceptive; but it is only unimaginative persons who can be really astonished. The imagination can always outrun the possible and actual sights and sounds of the world; and this plain old body from Byfleet rarely found anything rich and splendid enough to surprise her. She saw the wonders of the West and the splendors of the East with equal calmness and satisfaction; she had always known that there was an amazing world outside the boundaries of Byfleet. There was a piece of paper in her pocket on which was marked, in her clumsy handwriting, ”If Betsey Lane should meet with accident, notify the selectmen of Byfleet;” but having made this slight provision for the future, she had thrown herself boldly into the sea of strangers, and then had made the joyful discovery that friends were to be found at every turn.
There was something delightfully companionable about Betsey; she had a way of suddenly looking up over her big spectacles with a rea.s.suring and expectant smile, as if you were going to speak to her, and you generally did. She must have found out where hundreds of people came from, and whom they had left at home, and what they thought of the great show, as she sat on a bench to rest, or leaned over the railings where free luncheons were afforded by the makers of hot waffles and mola.s.ses candy and fried potatoes; and there was not a night when she did not return to her lodgings with a pocket crammed with samples of spool cotton and n.o.body knows what. She had already collected small presents for almost everybody she knew at home, and she was such a pleasant, beaming old country body, so unmistakably appreciative and interested, that n.o.body ever thought of wis.h.i.+ng that she would move on. Nearly all the busy people of the Exhibition called her either Aunty or Grandma at once, and made little pleasures for her as best they could. She was a delightful contrast to the indifferent, stupid crowd that drifted along, with eyes fixed at the same level, and seeing, even on that level, nothing for fifty feet at a time. ”What be you making here, dear?” Betsey Lane would ask joyfully, and the most perfunctory guardian hastened to explain. She squandered money as she had never had the pleasure of doing before, and this hastened the day when she must return to Byfleet. She was always inquiring if there were any spectacle-sellers at hand, and received occasional directions; but it was a difficult place for her to find her way about in, and the very last day of her stay arrived before she found an exhibitor of the desired sort, an oculist and instrument-maker.
”I called to get some specs for a friend that's upsighted,” she gravely informed the salesman, to his extreme amus.e.m.e.nt. ”She's dreadful troubled, and jerks her head up like a hen a-drinkin'. She's got a blur a-growin' an' spreadin', an' sometimes she can see out to one side on't, and more times she can't.”
”Cataracts,” said a middle-aged gentleman at her side; and Betsey Lane turned to regard him with approval and curiosity.
”'Tis Miss Peggy Bond I was mentioning, of Byfleet Poor-farm,” she explained. ”I count on gettin' some gla.s.ses to relieve her trouble, if there's any to be found.”
”Gla.s.ses won't do her any good,” said the stranger. ”Suppose you come and sit down on this bench, and tell me all about it. First, where is Byfleet?” and Betsey gave the directions at length.
”I thought so,” said 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 ap.r.o.n; 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 sh.o.r.e 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 gla.s.ses, 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 havin' it.”
VIII.
Two or three days later, two pathetic figures might have been seen crossing the slopes of the poor-farm field, toward the low sh.o.r.es of Byfield pond. It was early in the morning, and the stubble of the lately mown gra.s.s was wet with rain and hindering to old feet. Peggy Bond was more blundering and liable to stray in the wrong direction than usual; it was one of the days when she could hardly see at all.
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