After dinner was cleared away, I concluded I'd walk down to Preston—we live about a mile out of the village—and get a new ribbon for my round hat. I'm so glad the old pokey bonnets are gone but o' fashion—the round ones are much more becoming to young people. I thought perhaps I would meet some of the girls at the store, and hear more about the picnic—and my hat was getting shabby for want of new strings, whether or no. Just by the hay scales I met Jim Burt, the lame basketmaker, shuffling along as usual with his baskets slung on his back. Poor Jim was real simple, and couldn't do anything but weave baskets; he and his mother lived alone in Rocky Hollow, away t'other side of Preston; they were as poor as poverty, but Mrs. Burt managed to scramble along somehow, and keep a home for herself and Jim; he hadn't wit enough to take care of himself, but was very fond of his mother, and would do as she told him.
I said good day to Jim, and was passing on, for I felt in a hurry to get to the store, when he called after me, 'I say, Miss Dimpey! don't your folks want any baskets? Mother's deown sick, and can't drink milk, and I want to get her some tea, and I hain't got a cent o' money; she paid eout the last for sugar abeout a week ago.' Poor Jim always speaks as if his nose had been pinched together when he was a baby, and had never come apart since; but when I turned around he looked so sorrowful, my heart ached for him.
'What ails your mother, Jim?' said I.
'She's got some kind o' fever, and her head aches awful; she wants to drink all the time, but she won't eat nothin'. I fried a slice of pork real good for her, but she didn't eat a mite!'
'Well, Jim,' said I, 'go up to our house, and tell Miss Calanthy about your mother, and I guess she'll buy a basket; we want a new clothes-basket, come to think.'
I walked on, but somehow I did not feel so much like buying ribbons as before I met Jim. I couldn't help thinking of poor Mrs. Burt, without any comforts for sickness, and no one to take care of her but this half-witted son; however, I comforted myself by supposing the neighbors would not let her suffer, and that Calanthy would likely give Jim something good to take to her.
When I got to the store, who should be there but Abby Matilda Stevens and Rhody Mills! Abby is generally thought a beauty, because she has great black eyes that are always so bright and shiny I wonder the hens don't try and peck at them; then she is tall and slim waisted, and her hair is as black as a coal, and longer than common; but I never liked such dreadful sparkly eyes, do you? I think the kind that have a sort o' hazy look come into them—like the pond when a little summer cloud passes over the sun—are a great deal handsomer. However, I never dared to say so, for fear people might think I was jealous of Abby Matilda.
Rhody Mills is a very good-natured girl, and always ready for a frolic, and the moment she saw me she said, 'Here comes Dimpey Swift now;'—they had been talking about me, I guess;—'oh, Dimpey, are you going to the picnic on Spring Mountain?'
'Our boys were talking about it at noon,' said I; 'I suppose some of us will go—Polly Jane or I; I don't much think Calanthy will.'
'I wish we could go on horseback,' said Rhody; 'that would be real fun; but our Will says we must have a wagon to carry the baskets, so we had better all drive.'