IT was after Rachel’s marriage that Grandmother first began to go about in the village. Till then she had always kept pretty much within the four walls of the Merion garden, and people thought she was proud, until they came to know her. But now a restlessness seemed to come over her, and she was away from home a good deal. She did not go to “circles” and meetings—one would as soon have expected to see a white birch walk into the vestry—nor did she make what we loved to call “society calls;” but she found out the people who were sick or sad or lonely—the Peaces always knew—and she went to them, sometimes with Anne to introduce her, oftener alone, making some errand, taking a flower, or a pot of jelly or the like. Old Aunt Betsy Taggart was living then, the white old woman who had taken to her bed so long ago that none of us young folks ever knew why she had done it. Indeed, I think Anne and I rather supposed she had always been there—grew there, perhaps, like some strange old white flower. She was the most independent old soul, Aunt Betsy. It seemed terrible for her to live there alone, but it was the only way she would live. Her niece, Hepsy Babbage, came in morning and evening, and “did for” the old lady, but she was not allowed to stay more than an hour at a time. “My soul is my own,” Aunt Betsy used to say, “and I like to be able to call it so, my dear!” Hepsy was a great talker, certainly; and Aunt Betsy did her own cooking over a lamp that stood on the table by her bed, and actually made her own butter in a little churn that Wilbur Babbage made for her the winter before he died. (Anne Peace never would let me say that Wilbur was talked to death, but she could not prevent her mother’s saying so.) Well, Grandmother and Aunt Betsy took to each other from the first moment, and never a week passed that Grandmother did not spend an afternoon with the old lady and take tea. Aunt Betsy seemed to know all about her at once, which Anne and I never did, though we adored her. “Come here, child!” she said when she came in with Anne, the first time. “I’ve heard of you, and I’m glad to see you. Come and let me have a look at you!” She took Grandmother’s hand in hers, and the two looked at each other, a long quiet look. “Ah!” said Aunt Betsy at last. “Yes, I see. The upper and the nether millstone, my child!” Grandmother nodded simply; then in a moment she began to talk about the flowers she had brought, and how Anne had helped her pick them, and what a comfort Anne and her mother were to her. “Such good neighbors!” she said. “Such dear, good, kind, neighbors! This place is so full of good people, Miss Taggart.” “They call me Aunt Betsy,” said the old lady, “and they call you Grandmother, I’m told.” “Yes,” said Grandmother laughing; “that is my name, isn’t it, Anne?” Anne says that she had really forgotten that she had ever had any other name.