would do her good.  She said most the first thing she had on her mind was to come an’ find me, and see how I was, an’ if I was comfortable; an’ now she’s goin’ right back.  She’s got two splendid houses; an’ said how she wished I was there to look after things,—­she remembered I was always her gran’ma’s right hand.  Oh, it does so carry me back, to see her!  Seems if all the rest on ’em must be there together to the old house.  There, I must go right up an’ tell Mis’ Dow an’ Peggy.”

“Dinner’s all ready; I was just goin’ to blow the horn for the men-folks,” said the keeper’s wife.  “They’ll be right down.  I expect you’ve got along smart with them beans,—­all three of you together;” but Betsey’s mind roved so high and so far at that moment that no achievements of bean-picking could lure it back.

III.

The long table in the great kitchen soon gathered its company of waifs and strays,—­creatures of improvidence and misfortune, and the irreparable victims of old age.  The dinner was satisfactory, and there was not much delay for conversation.  Peggy Bond and Mrs. Dow and Betsey Lane always sat together at one end, with an air of putting the rest of the company below the salt.  Betsey was still flushed with excitement; in fact, she could not eat as much as usual, and she looked up from time to time expectantly, as if she were likely to be asked to speak of her guest; but everybody was hungry, and even Mrs. Dow broke in upon some attempted confidences by asking inopportunely for a second potato.  There were nearly twenty at the table, counting the keeper and his wife and two children, noisy little persons who had come from school with the small flock belonging to the poor widow, who sat just opposite our friends.  She finished her dinner before any one else, and pushed her chair back; she always helped with the housework,—­a thin, sorry, bad-tempered-looking poor soul, whom grief had sharpened instead of softening.  “I expect you feel too fine to set with common folks,” she said enviously to Betsey.

“Here I be a-settin’,” responded Betsey calmly.  “I don’ know’s I behave more unbecomin’ than usual.”  Betsey prided herself upon her good and proper manners; but the rest of the company, who would have liked to hear the bit of morning news, were now defrauded of that pleasure.  The wrong note had been struck; there was a silence after the clatter of knives and plates, and one by one the cheerful town charges disappeared.  The bean-picking had been finished, and there was a call for any of the women who felt like planting corn; so Peggy Bond, who could follow the line of hills pretty fairly, and Betsey herself, who was still equal to anybody at that work, and Mrs. Dow, all went out to the field together.  Aunt Lavina labored slowly up the yard, carrying a light splint-bottomed kitchen chair and her knitting-work, and sat near the stone wall on a gentle rise, where she could see