"If she hadn't felt bad, she wouldn't have cared one way or t'other,"
insisted Henry Merrill. "'Tain't for us to judge. Sometimes folks has
to get along in years before they see things fair. Come; I must be
goin' home. I'm tired as an old dog."
"It seemed kind o' natural to be steppin' out together again. Strange
we three got through with so little damage, an' so many dropped round
us," said Asa Brown. "I've never been one mite sorry I went out in old
A Company. I was thinkin' when I was marchin' to-day, though, that we
should all have to take to the wagons before long an' do our marchin'
on wheels, so many of us felt kind o' stiff. There's one thing,--folks
won't never say again that we can't show no public sperit here in old
Barlow."
* * * * *
The Flight of Betsey Lane
I.
One windy morning in May, three old women sat together near an open
window in the shed chamber of Byfleet Poor-house. The wind was from
the northwest, but their window faced the southeast, and they were
only visited by an occasional pleasant waft of fresh air. They were
close together, knee to knee, picking over a bushel of beans, and
commanding a view of the dandelion-starred, green yard below, and of
the winding, sandy road that led to the village, two miles away. Some
captive bees were scolding among the cobwebs of the rafters overhead,
or thumping against the upper panes of glass; two calves were bawling
from the barnyard, where some of the men were at work loading a
dump-cart and shouting as if every one were deaf.
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