“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 reassuring 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 molasses 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
nobody 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 nobody
ever thought of wishing 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 amusement. “She’s dreadful
troubled, and jerks her head up like a hen a-drinkin’. She’s got a blur
a-growin’ an’ spreading 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 glasses to relieve her trouble, if
there ’s any to be found.”
“Glasses 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 apron; 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 shore 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 glasses, 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.”