"'Twould be a shame to spoil your best
things in such a place. An' I don't know of her havin' any money;
there's the end o' that."
"You're bad as old Mis' Bland, that used to live neighbor to our
folks," said one of the old men. "She was dreadful precise; an' she so
begretched to wear a good alapaca dress that was left to her, that it
hung in a press forty year, an' baited the moths at last."
"I often seen Mis' Bland a-goin' in to meetin' when I was a young
girl," said Peggy Bond approvingly. "She was a good-appearin' woman,
an' she left property."
"Wish she'd left it to me, then," said the poor soul opposite,
glancing at her pathetic row of children: but it was not good manners
at the farm to deplore one's situation, and Mrs. Dow and Peggy only
frowned. "Where do you suppose Betsey can be?" said Mrs. Dow, for the
twentieth time. "She didn't have no money. I know she ain't gone far,
if it's so that she's yet alive. She's b'en real pinched all the
spring."
"Perhaps that lady that come one day give her some," the keeper's wife
suggested mildly.
"Then Betsey would have told me," said Mrs. Dow, with injured dignity.
VI.
On the morning of her disappearance, Betsey rose even before the pewee
and the English sparrow, and dressed herself quietly, though with
trembling hands, and stole out of the kitchen door like a plunderless
thief. The old dog licked her hand and looked at her anxiously; the
tortoise-shell cat rubbed against her best gown, and trotted away up
the yard, then she turned anxiously and came after the old woman,
following faithfully until she had to be driven back.
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