The flies and bees were buzzing against the hot windowpanes; the handfuls of beans were clicking into the brown wooden measure.  A bird came and perched on the windowsill, and then flitted away toward the blue sky.  Below, in the yard, Betsey Lane stood talking with the lady.  She had put her blue drilling apron over her head, and her face was shining with delight.

“Lor’, dear,” she said, for at least the third time, “I remember ye when I first see ye; an awful pritty baby you was, an’ they all said you looked just like the old gen’ral.  Be you goin’ back to foreign parts right away?”

“Yes, I’m going back; you know that all my children are there.  I wish I could take you with me for a visit,” said the charming young guest.  “I’m going to carry over some of the pictures and furniture from the old house; I didn’t care half so much for them when I was younger as I do now.  Perhaps next summer we shall all come over for a while.  I should like to see my girls and boys playing under the pines.”

“I wish you re’lly was livin’ to the old place,” said Betsey Lane.  Her imagination was not swift; she needed time to think over all that was being told her, and she could not fancy the two strange houses across the sea.  The old Thornton house was to her mind the most delightful and elegant in the world.

“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