TWO weeks after the ride to Millville, Uncle Phil
received a letter from Maude, who said that as it
was vacation with her now, she was coming for a
few days to the farm-house. “So, dear Mr. Overton,” she
wrote, “give Bobtail an extra supply of oats, for if it chances
to be sleighing, I mean to make you into a gay cavalier, a
second Sir Launcelot, of whom all the Guinevres and
Elaines of Astolat shall be jealous, as we go driving through
the country. Tell dear Aunt Becky to get out her warming
pan, and hold her fattest chicken in readiness. She knows
my taste. Aunt Burton has sent for me to the parlor, so,
dear, darling Mr. Overton, au revoir till next Thursday
night. I can scarcely wait for thinking of that north room
with the wood fire on the hearth, and Becky waiting upon

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

me as if I were a queen instead of a poor Yankee school-mistress.
Yours, forever, Maude.”

Uncle Phil read this letter three times to himself, and
then three times to Becky, who was almost as much excited
as her master. Edna, on the contrary, thought of Maude's
visit with dread. She had no wish at present to be recognized
by any friend of the Leightons. The Miss Overton
rôle suited her now that she had become accustomed to it,
and began to see that it was for the best. Sometime she meant
to see Roy Leighton and his mother, and if she could do so
without their knowing who she was, it would add greatly to
the interest and excitement of the meeting; but if Maude
should discover her secret, her pretty project would be
spoiled. Still, the more she reflected upon it, the more she
saw how improbable it was that Maude should suspect her of
being other than Miss Overton, and her unwillingness to
meet Miss Somerton gradually gave way until, at last, she
was almost as anxious as Becky herself for the arrival of
their guest, who came a train earlier than she was expected,
and took them by surprise.

Edna walked home from school that day, and seeing no
one as she entered the house, went directly to her chamber,
where Maude was sitting in her blue flannel dressing-gown,
with her bright, beautiful hair rippling over her shoulders,
and the brush lying forgotten on the floor, as she sat gazing
into the fire upon the hearth. As Edna entered unannounced,
she started to her feet, and shedding back her luxuriant
tresses, exclaimed with a merry laugh:

“Oh, you must be Miss Overton, I know; my rival in
Becky's heart, and Mr. Overton's too; but you see I am not
to be vanquished, and have come right back into my old
quarters, trusting to your generosity to divide with me the
towels and the hooks for my dresses. Let me help you,
please. You look tired.”

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

And she walked up to Edna, who was vainly trying to
undo her waterproof. At sight of Maude, who had known
Charlie so well, there had swept over Edna a faint, dizzy
feeling, which made her for a moment very pale and weak;
then the hot blood came surging back to her cheeks, which
were bright as carnations by the time the troublesome
knot had been untied by Maude Somerton's skilful fingers.

“What a little dot of a girl you are,” Maude said, when
at last Edna was disrobed and stood before the fire.

“And you are so much taller than I had supposed,” Edna
replied, looking up into the sunny blue eyes, which were regarding
her so intently.

“Yes; I must seem a perfect amazon to one as petite as
yourself. I used to want to stop growing, and once actually
thought of tying a stone to my head, as Charlie Churchill
teasingly suggested.”

Edna felt a great heart throb at the mention of that name,
but made no reply, and Maude continued:

“I suppose it is time now to dress for dinner. Becky
tells me that on `Miss Louise's account, they dine after
your school hours, by which I see that your position with
Uncle Phil is in all respects `comme il fait,' but you must
have commenced on the lower round. Did you try the little
back chamber?” and Maude's eyes brimmed with mischief
as she asked the question.

“Yes, and nearly froze for half an hour or so. Were
you put in there, too?”

“Yes, and nearly melted. Of course you were promoted
to the north-west room next.”

Edna, who knew nothing of the gradation by which she
had reached her present comfortable apartment, pleaded
not guilty to the north-west room, whereat Maude professed
to feeling terribly aggrieved at the partiality shown.

“It must be because you are a little dot,” she said;

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

“and because—,” she hesitated a moment, and then added,
softly, “because of your deep mourning and trouble. That
always opens one's heart. Mr. Overton told me all about
you.”

Maude's face was turned away from Edna, and so she did
not see the violent start, as Edna asked:

“What did he tell you about me?”

“Oh, nothing improper,” and Maude put a part of her
front hair in her mouth, while she twisted her back locks
into a massive coil. “He said you had lost your father and
mother, and that made me feel for you at once, for I am an
orphan, too; he said, also, that since their death, you had
had a hard time generally, and was obliged to teach school,
every item of which will apply to me. I am a poor school-ma'am,—
which, in New York society, don't pass for much;
and if Uncle Burton should close his doors upon me, I
should have nowhere to lay my head, and so you see we
ought to be friends. I wish you would hold that lock of
hair, please; it bothers me to get the last new kink. Can
you do it?”

She looked up suddenly at Edna, who was curiously
studying this girl, who mixed things so indiscriminately,
poverty, orphanage, friendlessness, and the last style of
dressing the hair.

“I don't try. I curl my hair, and that is all. I don't
know a thing about fashion,” she said, while Maude, who
had succeeded in winding her satin braids, coil after coil,
about her head, until the last one came almost to her forehead,
replied, “Your curls are lovely. I would not meddle
with them. Fashion is an exacting dame, but Aunt Burton
and Georgie make such a fuss if I do not try to be decent.”

“Who is Georgie?” Edna asked, feeling guilty for the
deception she was practising.

“Georgie is Aunt Burton's adopted daughter and niece,

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

while I am Uncle Burton's relation, which makes a vast
difference,” Maude replied. “She is a belle and a beauty,
and an heiress, while I, as I told you, am poor, and a
schoolma'am, and nobody but `that young girl who lives
with Mrs. Burton.”

Edna had made no attempt at arranging her own toilet,
but completely fascinated with her visitor, stood leaning on
the bureau, watching the young girl who rattled on so fast,
and who, while pleading poverty, arrayed herself in a soft,
flowing dress of shining blue silk, which harmonized so
admirably with her fair, creamy complexion.

“One of Georgie's cast-offs,” she explained to Edna.
“Most of my wardrobe comes to me that way. I am fortunate
in one respect; fortunate in everything, perhaps, for
everybody is kind to me. Look, please, at my beautiful
Christmas present, the very thing of all others which I
coveted, but never expected to have.”

She took from the little box on the bureau a gold watch
and chain, and passed it to Edna, who held it in her hand,
and with a face as pale as ashes, turned to the window as if
to see it better, while only the most superhuman effort at
control on her part kept her from crying outright, for there
lying in her hand, with the old familiar ticking sounding in
her ear, was her watch, the one Charlie had given to her,
and which she had left in Albany. There could be no mistake.
She knew it was the very same, and through it she
seemed again to grasp the dead hand of her husband, just as
she had grasped it that awful night when he lay beneath the
wreck, with the rain falling on his lifeless face. Edna felt
as if she should faint, and was glad of Maude's absorption in
a box of collars and bows, as that gave her a little time in
which to recover herself. When she felt that she could
speak, she laid the watch back upon the bureau, carefully,
tenderly, as if it had been the dead body of a friend, and
said:

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

“It is a charming Christmas gift. Your aunt's, I
suppose?”

She knew she ran the risk of seeming inquisitive by the
last remark, but she wanted so much to know how that
watch of all others came into Maude Somerton's possession.

“No, you don't catch her making me as costly a present
as that. She selected it, but Roy Leighton paid for it.”

“Roy Leighton!” Edna exclaimed, her voice so strongly
indicative of surprise, that Maude stopped short and glanced
quickly at her, saying, “what makes you say `Roy Leighton'
in that tragic kind of way? Do you know him?”

The wintry light had nearly faded from the room by this
time, and under cover of the gathering darkness, Edna
forced down the emotion which had made every nerve
quiver, and managed to answer indifferently:

“I have heard Uncle Phil speak of him. He owns the
hotel here in town, I believe. He must be a very dear
friend to make you so costly a present.”

Edna could not define the nature of the pang which had
shot through her heart when she heard that to Roy Leighton
Maude owed the watch she had once called hers, and surrendered
with so many tears. It certainly was not jealousy,
for why should she be jealous of one who had never evinced
any interest in her save such as was expressed in the ornaments
of jet, and the words “My dear little sister.” Edna
did not know how closely those four words had brought
Roy Leighton to her until she saw his costly gift to another.

“That's just what I told Aunt Burton that people would
say,” Maude replied; “and I expect Georgie will be highly
scandalized, for she it is who expects to be Mrs. Roy
Leighton, some day, and not poor, humble I. Mr. Leighton's
half-brother, Charlie, was killed the very day he was
married. Perhaps you saw it in the paper. It was a dreadful
thing. I'll tell you all about it sometime. I was with

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

poor Mrs. Churchill a few days, and Roy, who had a broken
leg, and could not sit up, greatly overrated my services, and
resolved to make me a present. He had heard me say
once or twice that I wanted a watch which was a watch,
instead of the great big masculine thing of Uncle Burton's,
and so he concluded to give me one, and asked Aunt
Burton, who was going up to Albany, to pick it out. I
suppose I should be deceiving you if I did not tell you that
the watch was second-hand, and the jeweller sold it a little
less because he bought it of a lady who had seen better
days. Auntie had admired it very much before he told her
that, and she took it just the same. I was perfectly delighted,
of course, though I have built all sorts of castles
with regard to its first owner, who she was and how she
looked, and I've even found myself pitying her for the misfortune
which compelled her to part with that watch.”

Maude's toilet was finished by this time, and as Uncle
Phil's voice was heard in the south room below, she asked
if they should not go down.

“Yes, you go, please. Don't wait for me, I have my
hair to brush yet,” Edna said, feeling that she must be alone
for a few moments, and give vent to the emotion she had so
long been trying to repress.

She opened the door for Maude to pass out, and stood
listening till she heard her talking to Uncle Phil; then with
a sob she crouched upon the hearth and wept bitterly.
Maude's presence had brought back all the dreadful past,
and even seemed for a time to have resuscitated her girlish
love for Charlie, while in her heart there was a fierce hungering
for Charlie's friends, for recognition by them, or at
least recognition by Roy, who had called her his “dear
little sister.” It was the memory of these words which
quieted Edna at last. He had had her in his mind when he
sent the jet, and perhaps he would think of her again, and

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

sometime she might see him and know just how good he
was; and as Becky called to say supper was waiting, she
hastily bathed her face, and giving a few brushes to her hair,
went down to the room where Maude, full of life and spirits,
was chatting gayly with Uncle Phil, and showing him the
watch which Roy Leighton had given her.

As Edna came in, Uncle Phil glanced anxiously at her,
detecting at once the traces of agitation upon her face, and
as Maude suddenly remembered leaving her pocket-handkerchief
upstairs, and darted away after it before sitting
down to the table, he improved her absence by saying,
softly:

“What is it, little Lu? Has Maude brought the past all
back again? Yes, yes, I was afraid she would.”

“Not that exactly,” Edna said, with a quivering lip and
smothered sob; “but, Uncle Phil, that was my watch once,—
Charlie gave it to me, and—and—I sold it, you remember,
in Albany. I knew it in a moment.”

“Yes, yes. Lord bless my soul! things does work curis.
Your watch, and Roy Leighton bought it for Maude! there
couldn't a likelier person have it, but that don't help its
hurting. Poor little Lu! don't fret; I'll buy you one,
handsomer than that, when I sell my wool. You bet I will.
Yes, yes.”

He took a large pinch of snuff, and adroitly threw some
of it in Edna's eyes, so that their redness, and the tears
streaming from them, were accounted for to Maude, who
came tripping in, all anxiety to know what was the matter
with “Little Dot,—that's what I call her, she is so very
small,” she said to Uncle Phil, as she took her seat at the
table, talking all the time,—now of her school, now of Aunt
Burton, and Georgie who was in Chicago, and at last of
Charlie Churchill's tragical death, and the effect it had on
his mother.

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

When she reached this point Uncle Phil tried to stop her,
but Maude was not to be repressed. Uncle Phil knew
Charlie, and of course he must be interested to hear the
particulars of his death. And she told them, as she had
heard them from Georgie, and said she pitied the poor girl
for whom nobody seemed to care,—unless it was Roy, who
was lame at the time and could do nothing for any one.
And Edna heard it all, with an agony in her heart which
threatened to betray itself every moment, until Maude spoke
of “the poor young wife, for whom nobody seemed to
care but Roy.” Then there came a revulsion; the terrible
throbbing ceased; her pulse became more even, and though
she was paler than usual, she seemed perfectly natural, and
her voice was firm and steady as she said, “Then the wife
did not come to Leighton?”

“Lord bless me! That is curis,” Uncle Phil muttered to
himself, as, having finished his dinner, he walked hastily to
the window, while Maude, without heeding him, replied:

“No, and I was so sorry. I had her room ready for
her, too,—Charlie's old room, because I thought she would
like it best. You see, Mrs. Churchill was sick, and I had
it all my own way, except as I consulted Roy, who evinced
a good deal of interest, and I think was really disappointed
that Edna did not come. That was her name,—Edna,—
and I think it pretty, too, because it is not common.”

Supper was over by this time; and the conversation concerning
Charlie Churchill was not resumed until the two
girls had said good-night to Uncle Phil, and were alone in
their room. Their acquaintance had progressed rapidly,
and, girl-like, they sat down before the fire for a good long
talk before going to bed. Passing her fingers through
Edna's flowing curls, Maude made some remark about
Georgie's hair, and then added, “Georgie said Edna had
handsome curls. Poor thing! I wonder where she is.”

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

“Don't they know?” Edna asked, feeling that she must
say something.

“No; they only know that she is somewhere working to
pay the debt she fancies she owes to Roy.”

“I almost wonder Roy told anybody about that; seems
to me he should have kept it to himself,” Edna said, feeling
a little hurt that her affairs should be so generally known to
strangers.

“Roy didn't tell of it,” Maude replied. “Mrs. Churchill
told it first to auntie, and then to Georgie. She tells them
everything, and against Roy's wishes, too, I am sure; for
he is not a gossip. Roy Leighton is splendid everyway,—
the best man I ever knew.”

Edna looked up at her with a peculiar smile, which Maude
readily understood; and, shaking her head, she said:

“No; I am not in love with him. I would as soon think
of aspiring to the moon; but I admire him greatly, and so
does every one. He is very different from Charlie, with
whom I used to flirt a little.”

Edna would rather hear about Roy than Charlie; and so
she asked:

“Do you think he cares anything about his sister-in-law?”

“Of course he does. He wrote her a letter to Chicago;
but she had left before it reached there; and once, in speaking
of her to Georgie, he called her `a brave little woman;'
and, if you believe me, I think Georgie didn't quite like it.”

There were little throbs of joy quivering all along through
Edna's veins, and softly to herself she repeated: “Brave
little woman,” trying to imagine how Roy looked when he
said that of her, and how his voice sounded. She did not
care for Georgie Burton's liking or disliking what Roy said.
She did not care even if Georgie became his wife, as Maude
said she probably would. If he only gave her a place in his

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

heart as his sister, and esteemed her “a brave little woman,”
she was more than content; and in Edna's eyes there was a
brightness not borrowed from the fire-light, as, long after
Maude was in bed, she sat upon the hearth, combing her
curls, and thinking of Roy Leighton, who had called her “a
brave little woman,” and acknowledged her as his sister.

Maude's visit did Edna a world of good, for it brought
her glimpses of a life widely different from any she had
known, and stirred her up to higher aims, by inspiring her
with a desire to make herself something of which Roy
should not be ashamed, if ever she chanced to meet him.
And she should meet him sometime, she was sure of that;
and Maude would be the medium, perhaps; for, if necessary,
she would tell her everything, knowing she could trust her
as her own sister. They grew to liking each other very
much during the few days Maude stayed at the farm-house;
and Edna roused herself from a certain morbid listlessness
into which she had fallen, with regard to herself and her personal
appearance, thinking it did not matter how she looked
or what she wore, as black was black anyway. But Maude
did not think so.

“Needn't look like a Guy, if you do wear black,” she said.

And so she coaxed Edna into white collars and cuffs, and,
spying the jet, made her put it on, and screamed with delight
when she saw how it brightened her up, and relieved
the sombreness of her attire.

“If you were a widow, you could not go into deeper
mourning than you have,” she said, as she was trying the
effect of arranging Edna's curls a little more fashionably, and
twisting in a bit of lavender ribbon taken from her own box.

“Oh, no, not that,” Edna cried, as she looked at herself
in the glass, and thought of the driving rain, the terrible
wreck, and the white, drenched face beneath.

But Maude, who knew nothing of this as connected with

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

Edna, insisted upon the ribbon just for that evening, and
managed to have Uncle Phil praise the effect, and say he
liked bright, pretty things, and wished Edna would wear
ribbons and jet all the time.

The next day was Sunday; and Maude suggested that
Uncle Phil should drive herself and Edna over to St. Jude's,
at Millville.

“Dot tells me she has never been there, and I think it's
a shame,” she said.

“Yes, yes; maybe 'tis; but she never came right out as
you do, rough shod, on a feller. She reads her prayer-book
at home, and adorns her profession that way. Yes, yes;
you want to go to the true church,” Uncle Phil said, adding
that he “didn't think no great things of that persuasion,
or leastwise never had till he knew Louise and Maude.
They were the right stripe, if they were 'Piscopals; and maybe
for once he'd go to the doin's; but they mustn't expect
him to jine in the performance, nor bob his head down when
he went in, nor keep jumping up like a dancing-jack. He
should jest snuggle down in the pew, and sleep it out,” he
said.

Maude gave him full permission to do as he liked, and, just
as the bell of St. Jude's was pealing forth its last summons,
old Bobtail drew up in front of the church, and deposited
his load upon the steps. Whether it was from a wish to
surprise his young ladies, or because of the softening influence
around him, Uncle Phil did not lounge or sleep in one
corner of the pew, but, greatly to Edna's astonishment, took
a prayer-book from the rack in front, and followed the service
tolerably well for a stranger. Only in the Creed he
was silent, and in the fourth response to the Litany; “The
Trinity part,” he “couldn't go;” and he took a pinch of
snuff on the sly, and glanced furtively at the two young
maidens kneeling so devoutly at his side.

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

“They act kinder as if they did mean it, and were not
puttin' on, and thinkin' of their neighbors' bunnets,” he
thought, as he listened to the services, which he decided were
“confoundedly long, and a very trifle tedious.”

It was many a year since Uncle Phil had heard our
church service; and something in its singular beauty and
fitness impressed him as he never was impressed before.
All those kneeling people around him were not “putting on.”
Some of them surely were earnest and sincere, and were
actually talking to somebody who heard, and whose presence
even he could almost feel, as he sat listening to the sermon,
which was from the text, “For he loveth our nation, and hath
builded us a synagogue.” The sermon was a plain, straightforward
one; and, as the clergyman took the ground, as an
inducement for good works, that the building of a synagogue
was the direct means of commending the centurion
to the Saviour's notice, Uncle Phil, who believed more in
works than in faith, began to prick up his ears, and to wonder
if he hadn't better do something which would be put to
his credit in Heaven's great book of record.

“I can't snivel, and say I'm sorry when I ain't, but I
should like to have a balance sheet in my favor, when I get
on t'other side,” he thought; and then he began to wonder
if “it wouldn't please the gals, and the Lord, too,” if he was
to build a chapel at Rocky Point.

If that synagogue had really been a help to the centurion,
and led the Saviour to deal mercifully with him, what might
not the building of a chapel do for Uncle Phil? He did not
believe in the divinity of Christ; but he had a warm feeling
in his heart for the man who had lived on earth thirty-three
years, and known all the sorrows which could be crowded
into a human life. He believed, too, in heaven, and, in a
kind of mystical half-way, he believed in hell, or in purgatory,
at least, and deemed it well enough, if there was a route

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

which led away from that place, to take it. That chapel
might be the very gate to the road of safety; and when
during the last prayer, he put his head down with the rest,
his thoughts were on a little knoll, half way between his
house and the village proper, and he was wondering how
much lumber it would take, and if Carson would cheat his
eye-teeth out if he gave him the job.

As from little streams mighty torrents sometimes flow, so
from that Sunday at St. Jude's sprang the beautiful little
Gothic structure, whose spire you may see just behind a
clump of trees, as you whirl along in the cars through the
mountain passes between Albany and Pittsfield. “St. Philip's,”
they call it, though the old man who planned it, and
paid for it, and run it, as the people said, would have liked
it better if “they had called it St. Maude or St. Louise, he
didn't care which.” Both girls were perfect in his estimation,
though for a time he gave the preference to Maude, as
having been the first who had torn the thick coating away
from his heart, and made it vibrate with a human interest.
He liked Maude wonderfully well, and when, on the Monday
following the ride to St. Jude's, she said good-by to them
all, and went back to her school on the Hudson, he stole
out behind the smoke-house, and, after several powerful
sneezes, wiped his eyes suspiciously upon his butternut
coat-sleeve, and wondered to himself “why the plague he
wanted to be a snivelin' when he didn't care shucks for the
neatest woman in the land.”

Uncle Phil was terribly out of sorts that day, and called
poor Beck a nigger, and yelled furiously at some boys who
were riding down hill on his premises, and swore at Bobtail
because he didn't trot faster on his way from the depot,
and forgot all about the chapel, and was generally uncomfortable
and disagreeable, till Edna came from school, and
he found her waiting for him in the south room, with the

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

ribbon in her hair, just as he had said he liked to see it, and
the jet brightening her up, and making her a very pretty
picture to contemplate, as she came forward to meet him.
Hearing from Becky how forlorn he was, she put aside her
own longing for the girl, who had brought so much sunshine
with her, and made herself so agreable to her uncle, that
the frown between his eyes gave way at last, or rather she
kissed it away, telling him she knew why it was there, and
did not like to see it, and was going to be just as much like
Maude as it was possible to be.

“Bless my soul, a gal's lips feel mighty curis on such a
tough old rhinoceros hide as mine,” he said; but he caught
the little hands which were smoothing his hair, and held
them in his own, and talked of his dead sister, whom Edna
was like, and of the old days at home when he was young;
and then the conversation drifted to Aunt Jerusha and Roy
Leighton, and the payments Edna hoped to make them both
in the spring when her first quarter was ended.

She would have one hundred and fifty dollars, she said,
and fifty should go to Roy, and one hundred to her aunt;
and she drew a comical picture of that dame when the
money was received, proving that her niece's promise had
been no idle thing.

“And you don't mean to keep a cent for yourself, Dot?”
Uncle Phil asked, adopting the name Maude had given to
his niece, and which suited her so well.

“No, not a cent till my debts are paid. I've clothes
enough to last until that time, I guess, if I am careful. At
all events I shall buy nothing unnecessary, I assure you,”
Edna said; and then Uncle Phil fell into a fit of musing,
and thought how for every dollar Edna paid to Jerusha
Pepper and Roy, he would put a corresponding dollar in the
Millville Savings Bank to the credit of Louise Overton, who
might one day find herself quite a rich little woman.

p595-186

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