ROY LEIGHTON remained abroad little more than
a year, and about the middle of July came back to
his home on the river, which had never seemed so
pleasant and attractive as on the summer afternoon when he
drove through the well-kept grounds, and up to the side door
where his servants were assembled to welcome him. Travelling
had not greatly benefited his mother, who returned

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almost as much an invalid as when she went away, and to
her ailments now added that of rapidly failing eyesight.
There were films growing over both her eyes, so that she
could only see her beautiful home indistinctly, and after
greeting the domestics, she went at once to her room, while
Roy repaired to the library, where he found several letters,
which had come for him within the last few days. One was
in Miss Jerusha Pepper's handwriting, and Roy opened that
first, and found, as he expected, that it inclosed one from
Edna.

She did not write in her usual cheerful tone, and seemed
sorry that she had not been able to make him a single payment
during the year.

“My school is not so large as at first,” she wrote; “and
I was anxious to pay another debt, of which I once told you,
I believe. I have paid that now, except twenty-five dollars
of interest money, and you don't know how happy it makes
me that I can almost see my way clear, and shall soon owe
no one but yourself.

“I am glad that you are coming home again, for though I
do not know you, it has seemed lonely with you so far away,
and I gladly welcome you back again. If I thought your
mother would not be angry, I would send my love to her,
but if you think she will, don't give it to her, please.”

“I shall take the risk, any way,” Roy thought; and carrying
the letter to his mother, he read it aloud, and as she
seemed interested, and inclined to talk, proposed going to see
Miss Pepper, and ascertain, if possible, where Edna was.

Mrs. Churchill did not quite favor this plan, and still she
did not directly oppose it, but sat talking of “the girl,” as
she designated her, until the summer twilight was creeping
down the hills and across the river, and Georgie Burton came
in with Maude Somerton. It was more than a year since
Georgie had met Roy, and she assumed towards him a shy,

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coy manner, which rather pleased him than otherwise, and
made him think her greatly improved.

Maude was her same old self, chatty, full of life and spirits,
and a little inquisitive withal.

“Had Mrs. Churchill or Roy ever heard from Mrs. Charlie
during their absence, and where did they suppose she
was?”

Roy answered that “he had heard from her a few times by
way of her aunt, but that he did not know where she was,
as she still chose to keep her place of abode a secret from
them.”

Having said so much, he would gladly have changed the
conversation, but his mother was not inclined to do so, and
she talked about “the girl,” and Roy's proposition to find
her if possible, and bring her home with him.

“He thinks I need some young person with me all the
time,” she said; “and perhaps I do, for my sight is failing
every day, and soon I shall be blind.”

Her lip quivered a little, and then she added: “But
whether Edna would be the one, I do not know. What do
you think, Georgie? I must have somebody, I suppose.”

There was a slight flush in Georgie's face as she replied,
that “if Edna were the right kind of person, she should
think it an excellent plan.”

“And we will never know what she is until we try her,”
Roy rejoined, while Maude, who had been very quiet during
this conversation, now spoke up and said: “In case you
cannot find Edna, allow me to make a suggestion, and propose
a dear little friend of mine; a charming person every
way, pretty, and lady-like, and refined; in short, just the one
to be with Mrs. Churchill. I refer to that Miss Overton,
whom I met at Rocky Point last year, niece to Mr. Philip
Overton, Roy's agent, you know. I wish you would take
her, Mrs. Churchill; I am so sure you would like her.”

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Mrs. Churchill was not yet quite prepared for Edna, and
as she really did feel the need of some one in the house besides
the servants, she took the side of Miss Overton at once,
and asked numberless questions about her, and finally expressed
her willingness that Maude should write and see if
the young lady would come. Georgie, too, favored the
Overton cause, while Roy stood firm for Edna, and when the
ladies arose to go he accompanied them to the door, and
said to Maude in a low tone: “I would rather you should
not write to that Miss — what did you call her?—until I
have seen Miss Pepper, as I fully intend doing in a short
time. I am resolved to find Edna, if possible; and having
found her, to bring her and mother together, trusting all the
rest to chance.”

“Very well,” was Maude's reply; but before she slept
that night she wrote a long letter to “Dot” telling her what
the probabilities were of her becoming, ere long, a member
of Roy's household, and telling her also of Roy's intended
visit to her aunt, who might as well be forewarned.

Four days after the date of this letter, which threw Edna
into a great state of excitement, Aunt Jerry read with total
unconcern that Roy Leighton was coming to see her and ascertain,
if possible, where her niece was living.

“But don't tell him, Aunt Jerry, please,” Edna wrote.
“As Miss Overton I may possibly go to Leighton Place,
and Mrs. Churchill is sure to like me better as a stranger
than if she knew I was `that dreadful girl' who ran away
with Charlie; so keep your own counsel, do.”

“As if I needed that advice,” Aunt Jerry muttered to herself,
as she folded up the letter and put it in the clock, wondering
“when the chap was coming, and how long he would
stay.”

“Not that I'm afraid of him or any other man, only I'd
like to be looking decent on the girl's account,” she said, as

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she glanced about her always tidy, well-kept house, to see
what there was lacking. “The winders were awful nasty,”
she concluded, and she went at them at once with soap and
sand, and rubbed them till they shone, and scoured her cellar
stairs, and put fresh linen on the bed in the front chamber,
in case he should stay all night, and carried water up
there and a bit of Castile soap, and put a prayer book on
the stand at the head of his bed, and wondered if he was
high or low, and whether he would expect to ask a blessing
at the table.

“I shall ask him to, any way,” she said, and then she
made a fresh cask of root beer, which she always kept in
summer, and baked a huge pound cake, and made some balls
of Dutch cheese, and wore her second-best calico every
morning, and her best gingham every afternoon, in expectance
of her guest, who did not appear for more than two
weeks, and who took her at the last wholly unawares, as is
so frequently the case.

She had given up his coming, and was making a barrel of
soap in the lane, but so close to her front yard as to be
plainly visible to any one who should stop at her gate.
She did not wear her second-best calico that morning, but
was arrayed in her cleaning-house costume, a quilted petticoat,
patched with divers colors and kinds of calico, delaine,
and silk, blue, green, and black, with here and there a bit of
scarlet, the whole forming a most wonderful garment, which
would at first sight remind one of Joseph's coat.

She never wore hoops in the morning, and her short,
patchwork quilt, hung loose and limp about her feet, which
were encased in what she called her “slips,” a pair of low,
cloth shoes, she had herself manufactured. A loose calico
sacque, or short gown, surmounted her petticoat, and with
the exception of the shaker on her head, with its faded
brown cape, made from an old barege veil, completed her

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costume. She was equipped for her work, with no thought
of Roy Leighton in her mind, and the fire was blazing
brightly under her big iron kettle, and the soap was boiling
merrily, and with her sleeves above her elbows, she stood,
saucer in hand, stirring and cooling some of the glutinous
mass, and had about concluded that it needed a little more
lye, when the sound of wheels was heard, and a covered
buggy and a gay, high-mettled horse came dashing round the
corner of the church, and stopped before her gate, where a
fine, stylish-looking man alighted, and seemed to be looking
curiously about him, and possibly speculating as to whether
he really had seen the whisk of a gay-colored skirt disappearing
round the house or not.

Aunt Jerry had always expected Roy in the stage, and had
never thought of his hiring a carriage at Canandaigua, and
driving himself out; but the moment she saw him she
guessed who it was, and in her surprise dropped her saucer
of soap, and came near slipping down from setting her foot
in it as she hurried out of sight.

“The very old boy! if that ain't Roy Leighton, and I
lookin' more like an evil spirit than a decent woman!” was
her first exclamation.

Then her natural disposition asserted itself, and instead
of stealing into the house and effecting a change of toilet
before receiving her guest, she resolved to brave it out, and
make the best of it.

“I'm dressed for my work,” she said, “and if he don't like
my appearance, he can look t'other way.” And holding her
head very high, Aunt Jerry came round the corner of the
house just as Roy was knocking, for the second time, at the
open door.

He saw her, and could scarcely keep his face straight, as
he asked “if Miss Pepper lived there?”

“Yes; I'm Miss Pepper.” And Aunt Jerry began to unroll
one of her sleeves, and button it around her wrist.

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“Ah, yes; I am glad to see you. I am Roy Leighton,—
Edna's brother-in-law.”

“Oh, you be!” Aunt Jerry answered, rather dryly; and
as he had come close to her now, and her soap was near
boiling over, she darted toward the lye leech, and seizing a
wooden dipper poured some of the dark fluid into the boiling
mass, while Roy stood looking on, wondering what she
was doing, for it was his first experience with soap-making,
and thinking of Macbeth's witches:


“ `Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble,' ”
he said, very softly, to himself, adding, in a little louder
tone, as she threw in the lye:

Aunt Jerry caught the last line, and turning upon him,
ladle in hand, she said, a little proudly:

“I suppose I look so like an old hag that you don't think
I know anything about what you are muttering to yourself,
but I do. I held that book before the Bible when I was
young, and now,

“ `By the pricking of my thumbs,

“ `Something wicked this way comes.' ”

Roy laughed merrily, and offering her his hand, said to her:

“Shakespeare with a vengeance; but I trust the pricking
in your thumbs does not insinuate that I am the `wicked
something' which comes your way, for I assure you I come
`on peaceful thoughts intent,' but tell me, please, what you
are doing in that seething caldron; and if the toad, and
the bat, and the Jew's liver, are all in the poisoned broth?”

Aunt Jerry looked at him a moment, to see if his ignorance
were real or feigned, and then replied:

“Where was you born, not to know soft-soap when you
see it?”

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“I was born in Bleecker street, New York, when that was
the place where to be born,” Roy replied; and with the ice
thus broken, the two grew very sociable, and Roy made himself
master of the mysteries of soap-making, and began to
feel a deep interest in this strange woman, who made no
movement toward the house until her soap was done, and
the brands carefully taken from under the kettle.

Then she invited him into her kitchen, and disappearing
in the direction of her bedroom, emerged therefrom in a few
moments arrayed in her purple calico and white apron, which
for several days she had worn in expectation of his coming.
Aunt Jerry was something of a puzzle to Roy. Regarding
her simply as an ordinary stranger, she amused and interested
him, but when he thought of her as Edna's aunt, and
remembered the first letter received from her, he winced a
little, and wondered if her niece was like her. They spoke
of Edna at once, and Roy told why he had come, and asked
if Miss Pepper would give him her niece's address.

But Aunt Jerry was firm as a rock. “She never had told
a lie since she joined the church,” she said, “and she did
not believe she should commence at this late day, with one
foot in the grave. She promised Edna not to tell, and she
shouldn't. The girl was doing well, and was more of a
woman than she had ever 'sposed she could be. She has
paid a good share of her debts,” she continued, “leastwise
she's paid nearly all she owes me; but if you think me mean
enough to keep it,—and from what you wrote me once about
a receipt I take it you do,—you are greatly mistaken. I've
put every dollar of the four hundred in the Savings Bank,
and as much more with it, in Edna's name; and when she's
twenty-one, or if she marries before that time, I intend to
give it to her. Let them that's richer do better if they will.”

She jerked out the last words with a side motion at Roy,
who took her meaning but said nothing of his own intentions

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with regard to Edna, further than his wish to find her and
take her to Leighton Place. But he might as well have
talked to a stone, for any effect his words produced on Aunt
Jerusha.

“When Edna says I may tell, I will, and not before. I
was harsh and unreasonable with her when she was young,
perhaps, but I'll do my duty now,” she said; then turning
rather fiercely toward Roy, she continued: “My advice is
that you let Edna alone, if you don't want to make more
trouble for that mother of yours, who thinks her boy stooped.
If I do say it that shouldn't, there's something mighty takin'
about Edna, and every boy in these parts was bewitched after
her before she was knee-high to a grasshopper. She ain't
much more than that now, and she's a wonderful pretty girl,
such as a chap like you would be sure to fancy. How old
be you?”

Roy confessed to thirty, and Aunt Jerry complimented
him by saying “she'd 'sposed him older than that,” and then
glancing at the clock, which pointed at half-past eleven, she
asked him to stay to dinner, “and see how poor folks
lived.”

Roy's first impulse was to decline, but in spite of himself
he was attracted by this queer woman, who boiled soap in
so unsightly a garb, and quoted Shakespeare while she did
it, and showed, in all she said and did, a striking originality
of character, which pleased while it surprised him. He accepted
her invitation to dine with her, and while she was
making the needful preparations, looked curiously around
the home which had once been Edna's. It was scrupulously
neat and clean, and very comfortable, still he could
imagine just how a bright young girl would pine and languish
there, and long to break away from the grim stillness
and loneliness of the house.

“Poor Edna,” he said to himself, more than once, while

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there awoke in his heart a longing to take the little girl in
his arms and comfort her, after all she had borne of loneliness
and sorrow.

Aunt Jerry's dinner, though not like the dinners at
Leighton Place, was tempting and appetizing, and Roy did
full justice to it, and drank two cups of coffee, for the cream,
he said, and ate two pieces of berry pie, and a fried cake for
dessert, and suffered from dyspepsia for the remainder of the
day. Aunt Jerry asked him to spend the night, but Roy
declined, and said good-by to her soon after dinner was
over. His attempt to find Edna was a failure, and he went
back to his mother, who, secretly, was glad, for she was not
at all enthusiastic with regard to having her daughter-in-law
for a companion. She greatly preferred Miss Overton from
Rocky Point. Indeed, she had conceived quite a liking for
that unknown young lady, and as soon as Roy came home and
reported his ill success, she made him write at once to Miss
Overton, asking if she would come, and what her terms were.

“Perhaps you'd better name three hundred and fifty
dollars a year; that surely is enough,” Mrs. Churchill said;
and so Roy, to whom a few dollars more or less was nothing,
and who felt that to be constantly with a half-blind,
nervous invalid was no desirable position, made it four
hundred dollars, and asked for an early reply.