"I expect you're a regular little Britisher by this time, ain't you, Miss Betty?"
"Indeed, I'm not," answered our friend with spirit. "Papa would be ashamed of me. I'm a great American. What made you think so?" Sister Sarah looked pleased, but did not have anything more to offer on the subject. "We're all English to start with, but with the glory of America added on," said Betty with girlish enthusiasm. "You can't take away our English inheritance. I used to be always insisting upon that with the girls, that Shakespeare and King Arthur were just as much ours as theirs."
"I expect you know a sight o' things I never dreamt of," said sister Sarah, "but to me what takes place in this neighborhood is just as interesting as foreign parts. Folks is folks, I tell 'em. There ain't but a few kinds, neither, but they're put into all sorts of places, ain't they?"
Betty found that her hostess had a great many entertaining things to say, but presently there was a fear expressed lest Serena might be beguiled into staying too long at the cousin's, and so delay the dinner.
"Let me begin; oh please let me," said Betty, springing up. She had a sudden delighted instinct that it would be charming to wait upon Serena to-day and sister Sarah, and take her turn at making them comfortable. As quick as thought she turned up her skirt and pinned it behind her and said, "What next, if you please, ma'm," in a funny little tone copied from that of a precise London damsel in Mrs. Duncan's employ, who always amused the family very much.
Sister Sarah was fond of a joke, and to tell the truth this was one of her aching days and she had been dreading to take so many steps. She saw how pleased Betty was with her kind little plan.
"To lay the table and step lively," she answered, shaking with laughter. And Betty followed her directions until the square dinner-table stood in the middle of the floor, covered with a nice homespun linen cloth of which the history had to be told; and the old blue crockery; and Betty had cut just so many slices of bread, and brought just so many spiced pears from the brown jar in the cellar-way, and found the nice little square piece of cold corned beef which the hostess was so glad to have on hand, and had looked at the potatoes two or three times where they were baking in the stove oven in the shed-room where sister Sarah did her summer cooking; all these and other things were done when Serena, out of breath, and heated with hurrying, came in at the door.
"I'm going to finish since I have begun," said Betty proudly. "Now please use this fan, Serena, and rest yourself, and I shall be ready in a few minutes. I'm having a beautiful good time. Which pitcher shall I take for the fresh water?" and out she went to the cool old well under the apple-tree.
"Now was there ever such a darlin' gal," said sister Sarah, and Serena nodded her head. "I dare say she does like to take holt. Miss Barb'ra never was one that shirked at nothing," she had time to reply before Betty came back and filled the tumblers and called the sisters to their dinner.
"Sarah," said Serena decisively, as she saw how hard it was for sister Sarah to move, "you've got to get Ann Sparks, ain't ye?"