There was nobody to take care of lame Betsey, so she was carried to the poor-house. It didn't matter much to her, when she found her mother was dead, where they took her. She was used to seeing misery; so the groans of the poor creatures on the hospital cots about her was nothing new. But she grew very weak, day by day, and couldn't eat the food they brought her; and one morning the old nurse found her lying with her little cheek in her hand, and a smile upon her face. Betsey's dream had come true: she was an angel!
What a blessed thing it is to have a good grandmother! Sophy had one. Sophy loved to go and see her.
It was in the country where Grandmother Scott lived, just a pleasant ride from Sophy's home; in a good, old-fashioned farm-house, with green moss growing out of the sloping roof, shaded by trees that looked a century old. It is autumn there now; so you see on the cellar door and under the front windows, crooked necked squashes and round yellow pumpkins, mellowing in the warm sunbeams. Strings of dried apples are festooned from chamber windows; and paper bags of catnip and spearmint and thoroughwort and penny-royal and mullen hang drying on the garret walls.
On "the buttery" shelves are broad pans of fresh, new milk, crusted with cream that would make a New-Yorker stare; and great round cheeses, and little pats of golden butter, stamped with a rose, and jars of pickled cucumbers, and pots of preserved plums, and peaches, and barberries, tied down with tissue brandy papers; and loaves of "riz cake," and plates of doughnuts, and pans of apple dowdy, beside an earthen jar of rich English plum cake.
Then, there's the sitting room, where the bright sun shone in, on a picture of General Washington, and a sampler of Grandma Scott's, representing a woman crying over a tombstone shaded by a pea-green willow; and black profile likenesses of all the Scott family cut by a traveling artist, hanging in spots over the fire place; and an old-fashioned clock, standing guard in the corner, with the picture of the rising sun on it, and Grandpa's spectacles, and loose copies of the "Scott-town Daily Bulletin" tucked in round the wood work at the sides; and great, comfortable-looking arm-chairs, with patch cushions; and a sideboard with a silver pitcher on it, presented to Grandpa Scott by the Agricultural Society and a china mug with a gold rim round it, and "Betsey" on the side, given by the minister to Grandma Scott when she was a little girl, for learning her catechism right; and a great big china closet, with a glass door, to show off the rows of china cups and saucers and flowered plates, all ready if the minister or the President should come to tea.
Then, out of doors, wasn't there a great barn for the children to play in?—with piles of hay, and ladders reaching up to the roof; and old Dobbin nibbling and munching oats in his stall; and Brindle, and her little two-day old, red and white calf cuddled down in a straw bed in the corner; and the little field mice darting over the barn floor; and the swallows twittering overhead among the beams and rafters; and the old grindstone that the children liked to turn; and the scythe and pitchfork that Grandpa charged them "not even to look at;" and the yellow ears of corn peeping out of their dry husks, in a pile in the corner, and the old rooster strutting round it, (followed by his hen wives,) now and then stopping short, with one foot lifted up, and cocking his eye at them from under his red cap, as much as to say, "Stir if you dare, till I give the signal!" Oh, I can tell you, that barn was a grand old place to play in, to frolic in, or to read and think in.
Then, there was the pig-stye under it, with such lazy great pigs, and such frisky little ones, with their tails curled up so tight that they lifted their hind legs right up, jumping round and tumbling heels over head over their mother, who lay half-buried in a mud-puddle, winking her pink eyes at the bright sun, and looking just as happy as if there wasn't a butcher in the world, or as if "the Governor and council" wouldn't sign her little piggies' death warrant with the Thanksgiving proclamation.
Thanksgiving! Oh, wasn't that an affair? Grandma Scott would mount her silver-bowed spectacles, strip her arms to this elbows, tie on a check apron, pin up her cap strings, and stew pumpkins and squashes and apples and quinces, and pound spices, and chop meat and suet, and roll out pie-crust, and heat the oven, and turn out so many pies and tarts and "pan-dowdies," and loaves of cake, that it would make your apron strings grow tight just to look at them!