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EDNA had promised Georgie that not a long time
should elapse before she would make herself
known to Roy and his mother. She had also
promised Uncle Phil an early visit to Rocky Point; and
within a week or so after Jack's departure for Europe, she
asked and obtained permission from Mrs. Churchill to go to
her old home. It was very lonely at Leighton without her;
and Roy found the time hanging heavily on his hands, and
was trying hard to make himself believe that his property at
Rocky Point required personal looking after, when he received
through Miss Pepper a letter from Edna, expressing
her sympathy with him in his recent loss, and saying that if
he would come to Allen's Hill, at such a time, she would be
there to meet him.

Roy had not heard from Edna before in a long, long time.
Indeed, she had written to him but once since his engagement
with Georgie. Then she had sent him a hundred dollars
toward the payment of her debt, and had said a few
words about his intended marriage, hoping he might be
happy with his bride, but declining to tell him where she
was living. And that was all he knew of her; and he was
not quite as enthusiastic on the subject as he had once been.
Miss Overton was his absorbing thought. Still he felt glad
that at last he was to see and know his mysterious sister-in-law,
and felt especially glad of any excuse which would take
him away from home and into the vicinity of Rocky Point;
for he meant to go there first. It would be only a short run
from Albany, and detain him but a day at the most, and
Brownie was sure to be glad to see him. It is true she had

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never said much to him of Edna, or evinced any great interest
in her; but she would be glad because he was glad; and
he hoped the two young girls would like each other; for of
course Edna would now live at Leighton, which was also to
be Brownie's home forever. He had settled that last point
satisfactorily with himself, and he meant to settle it with
Brownie before long. Georgie herself had hinted it to him.
Georgie had been willing, and had bidden him not to wait
because she was dead. And he would not; he would speak
to her and tell her of his love; and if she could love
him in return, they would wait a reasonable time, and then
he would make her his wife, and install her mistress of
Leighton, where Edna should always have a place as the
sister of the house.

This was his plan; and he found his pulse quickening as
he drew near to Rocky Point, where he expected to find
his Brownie. But the bird had flown,—had gone, Uncle
Phil said, to visit some of her kin. And when Roy asked
where her kin lived, the old man answered, “Oh, in
forty places. She is goin' to Albany first, and then to
Schenectady, and Utica, and Canestoty, and Syracuse, and
Auburn, for what I know. You'd better let her run a spell
whilst you hunt up t'other one; two gals at a lick is too
much.”

There was a knowing twinkle in Uncle Phil's eyes; but it
was lost on Roy, who, in his disappointment, did not once
think that Uncle Phil had mentioned the different points
along the railroad line through which it was necessary to
pass in order to reach Allen's Hill. He only felt that he
must bear his suspense a little longer, and that it was hard
to do so.

The next day he took the train for Canandaigua, where
he spent the night, and the following morning drove himself
out to Allen's Hill, just as he had done once before, when

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Edna as now was the object he sought. There was no soap
boiling in the caldron kettle this time, and no Macbethian
witch bending over it in wonderful costume, as Roy came
round the corner of the church, and tied his horse to the
post. Aunt Jerry was expecting him, and welcomed him
cordially, and invited him in, and then tortured him by talking
for ten or fifteen minutes upon every topic but the one
uppermost in his mind. At last, when he could wait no
longer, he said to her, abruptly:

“Your niece wrote me that she would meet me here any
day this week, and I have lost no time in coming. She will
not disappoint me now, I trust. I am very anxious to find
her.”

“Yes, I s'pose so. She's here, though not in the house
this minute. She went to the woods an hour or so ago.”

“Can I find her there, do you think? Show me the way,
please, and I'll try it,” Roy said with sudden animation,
rising to his feet, and seeming full of eagerness and impatience.

It could not have been anything in Aunt Jerry's manner
which communicated itself to him, nor anything in the atmosphere
of the house. It was rather a presentiment of the
coming happiness, a remembrance of Uncle Phil's demeanor
and mysterious hints, which, put together, came over Roy
with a sudden suspicion of the truth, or rather a suspicion
that it might be just possible, nothing more. It was too delightful
a possibility to be true; and he must not harbor the
hope for a moment, he said to himself, as, waiting only for
Aunt Jerry's somewhat indefinite directions, he started for
the west woods, where Edna was to be found.

“There's a brook down there, and a bank under a tree:
maybe you'll find her there,” Aunt Jerry had said, and Roy
kept on his way down the hill, past the site of the old school-house
where Edna had learned her alphabet; through the

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bars, which he did not wait to let down, but over which he
vaulted at one bound; and on across the grassy patch until
the border of the woods was reached, and there he paused
a moment to look about and reconnoitre a little.

It was one of those balmy, autumnal days when earth and
sky seem more beautiful even than in early summer. A
recent rost had just tinged the leaves of the maple with scarlet,
and here and there a leaf was falling from the trees, and
a ripe, brown nut was dropping through the hazy air down
to the ground, while the murmur of the brook was plainly
heard as it ran singing on its way, now through the bed of
ferns whose broad leaves dipped themselves in its cool
waters, and now widening out into a broader channel, with
little fishes playing in it, and tall trees reaching their arms
across it, making a delicious shade, on that warm, sunny
morning. Roy followed the brook until he reached the
point where it began to widen, then a little farther on, and
then he stopped again, and felt every nerve quivering with
an ecstasy of delight, so great and overpowering, that for an
instant he leaned for support against a tree, while his lips
framed the words, “I thank Thee, my Heavenly Father, for
this great joy of which I never dreamed.”

Twenty rods or so in advance, and sitting under a tall
maple, with her hat on the ground beside her, and her back
to Roy, was a little girlish figure, which Roy was certain he
knew. The attitude, the poise of the head, and more than
all, the curls of golden brown, and the dress of blue cambric,
which he had always admired so much in Brownie, proclaimed
that it was Brownie herself, the woman whom he
felt at this moment he loved more than his life. Everything
he had said to Georgie concerning his disapproval of disguises,
was forgotten in that moment of supreme delight,
when, with a few rapid strides he reached the figure on the
bank, and met the soft, laughing eyes he knew so well, and

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saw the blushes deepen on the beautiful face upturned to his
when Edna first became aware of his close proximity to her.

“My darling,” was all he said, all he could say, as he took
her in his arms, and laid his mouth to the sweet lips which
kissed him back without a moment's hesitation.

There was little need for more open declaration and acceptance
of love than was expressed in that first embrace.
Roy had confessed himself in the kisses he rained upon her
lips, her forehead and her hands, while she, in suffering it,
had accepted him; and both felt that they were pledged to
each other, when at last Roy released her and drew her to a
seat beside him on the grass.

“Now, tell me,” he said, as he put his arm around her,
and held her hand in his, “tell me the whole story, why you
deceived us so, and how you did it so successfully?”

“You are not angry with me then, for being such an impostor?
Oh, Mr. Leighton, I have hated myself so much
for the imposition,” she said; and Roy replied:

“Angry? I should think not; but please drop that formal
Mr. Leighton. Let me be Roy to you.”

She always called him Roy to herself, when thinking of
him, and the name came readily enough.

“Well, Roy, then,” she began, “I wanted you and your
mother to like me, and I fancied I should succeed better as
a stranger, than as Charlie's wife;” and then she told him
of her life at Uncle Phil's; of Maude's recognition of her; of
the watch she sold, and which by some strange chance had
come round to Maude, who did not know until just before
she sailed whose watch it was she was carrying; of Uncle
Phil's wish that she should take another name than her own;
of Maude's arranging for her to go incog to Leighton; and
of the various devices she had resorted to in order to keep
up the delusion, and mystify him with regard to her whereabouts.

[figure description] Page 400.[end figure description]

She uttered no unkind word against poor Georgie. She
merely said, “Had you married Miss Burton, I should have
gone away at once, and never have let you know who I
really was. She knew me from the first, but kindly kept my
secret.”

“Ye-es,” Roy rejoined, between a sigh and a groan, for
he remembered many things Georgie had said in Edna's
presence, and which were far from being kind in her if she
knew, as it seemed she did, who Miss Overton was.

But Georgie was dead; he had buried her from his sight,
and he would put from him even the memory of her faults,
and remember only that at the last she had sanctioned his
love for the young girl beside him, whose bright head he
drew to his bosom, while he kissed the white brow, and said,
“Never to have found you, darling, would have been a calamity,
indeed, both to my mother and myself. She could
not love an own daughter better than she loves you, and I
long so to see her joy when she learns the truth, and that
you are ours for ever.”

Then they talked of that adventure in the cars, and laughed
over the Miss Bettie Edna had so hurriedly dashed off, and
spoke sadly and softly of poor Charlie in his far-off grave;
and then, bending his head so low that his face touched hers,
Roy said, “Georgie foretold this thing, and bade me not to
wait because she was dead. Shall it not be as she said, my
darling? Shall we be married at once?”

Then Edna's love of mischief broke out, and withdrawing
herself from him, she answered saucily, “Married! who has
said anything to me about marriage? Surely not you, and
here you ask for an early day. I am astonished at you, Mr.
Leighton.”

“Edna,” Roy said, bringing her again to his side, and
holding her so closely that she could not get away. “This
is no time to trifle. You know well what my kisses meant

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when I first saw you here, and found that Edna was the same
with the girl whom I named Brownie to myself, and whom I
now think I have loved almost since I first saw her standing
at my mother's side, and answering to the name of Miss
Overton. But lest you misunderstand me, and deem yourself
not wooed au fait, I formally ask you to be my wife,
feeling confident that after what has passed between us you
will not refuse me.”

She wanted to tease him dreadfully, but something in his
manner forbade it; she must deal openly with him, and so
she replied frankly and honestly, “I do love you, Roy, and
am willing to be your wife, only I had promised myself never
to marry until the whole of my indebtedness to you was paid.
I have been extravagant since I have been at Leighton,
where I saw so much of dress. I have not paid you as fast
as I might have done. I still owe you—”

“Seventy-five dollars, I believe,” Roy said, interrupting
her, and adding, laughingly: “It was a foolish thing, your
trying to be so independent, but since you have been, and
there is still something my due, suppose we make it an even
thing, and you give yourself in lieu of the money—”

“Which will make me worth just seventy-five dollars to
you. I hoped you valued me higher than that,” Edna said,
pretending to look aggrieved, while Roy bent down and
kissed her pouting lips, and said that to her which told that
money could not liquidate the price at which he held her,
and that to lose her now would be to lose the very brightness
of his life, and leave it all a blank.

While they sat there too much absorbed in each other to
heed the lapse of time, or hear first the bell, and then the
tin horn, which Aunt Jerry in her impatience had used alternately
as a reminder of dinner, that worthy spinster herself
suddenly appeared before them, her brow clouded, and her

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mouth puckered up in the peculiar fashion which Edna knew
was indicative of displeasure.

Aunt Jerry's first act after Roy had left the house in quest
of Edna, was to unhitch the check-rein of the horse standing
at the gate, and her second to give it water and handfuls
of the tall grass growing near. Kindness to brutes was
a part of her nature, and nothing which had life was ever in
danger of being ill-used where she was, unless it were a child.
For children she had not a great deal of love; but where
animals were concerned she was a second Bergh, and she
cared for Roy's horse and patted its neck, and when she saw
how high it threw its head at first, and how it shrank from
her, she said:

“Poor critter! I know by the way you act that your
keeper abuses you. No horse kindly used is ever as nervous
as that. The wretch! I wish I had him by the nape of
the neck!”

When the horse was cared for, the dame, with thoughts
intent on dinner, pounced upon a group of fowls feeding at
her back-door, and catching the youngest, fattest one, had
its neck off in a trice, and picked, and dressed, and had it in
the pot within an hour after. Aunt Jerry's forte in cookery
was pot-pie, and she now did her best, and made such a crust,
as, to use a common culinary phrase, would almost “melt in
one's mouth.” White and light, and flaky, it looked like
bats of cotton wool, and her spirits rose proportionably as
she arranged her table and prepared her vegetables.

Everything was done at last. The baked tomatoes were
browned just right; the corn pudding was white, and creamy,
and sweet; the custard was delicious, and the coffee sent a
fragrant odor through the house; but the guests did not
come. She had rung the bell, and blown the horn, and at
last, as the clock struck one, she started herself for the delinquents,
exclaiming when she saw them, “Well, you are

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smart!” but ere she got farther, Roy arose, and taking
Edna's hand in his, said to her:

“I have found her, you see, and she has promised to live
with me always. She is to be my wife, if you do not object.”

“Umph! a pretty time of day to ask if I object, after it's
all cut and dried, and dinner spoiling in the oven. Didn't
you hear the bell, nor the horn I blew an hour ago?”

Both culprits pleaded guilty, and both made haste to follow
Miss Jerusha, who never spoke again until the house
was reached, and contrary to her prediction, she found that
the pot-pie was not spoiled, though she insisted that it would
have been better half-an-hour before.

By the time dinner was over, Aunt Jerry was completely
mollified, and after her dishes were washed and put away, and
her floor swept, and the cat fed, and the horse watered again,
she was ready to hear Roy on the subject uppermost in his
mind. He loved Edna; he wanted her for his wife; and
wanted to know if Miss Pepper had any objections to the
match.

“It's most too late to give them, if I have,” Aunt Jerry
said. “But that's the way nowadays. Young folks have
got the whip row of us, and will keep it, I suppose. No, I
have no objections. If she must marry, and I suppose she
must, I'd as soon she'd have you as anybody, and she won't
go to you poverty-stricken either. Every dollar she paid me,
I put in Beals's bank, in her name, and added another to it,
so that she has now as good as a thousand laid up. I shall
give her another thousand, too, and a feather bed, and I
want it secured to her and her heirs forever.”

“Oh, auntie, how kind you have been to me, when I
thought, sometimes, you did not care,” Edna said.

The money in the bank was new to her, and she felt the
tears rush into her eyes as she thought how she had

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misjudged her aunt. As for Roy, he could scarcely repress a
smile at the woman's eagerness to have the two thousand
dollars settled on Edna beyond his reach, but he promised
to see that it was done, and then said it was also his intention
to give his bride, out-and-out, such a sum as would
make her independent in case of his dying insolvent, a catastrophe
by the way, which he did not anticipate. When he
asked for an early day, and named Christmas as the time
when he hoped Edna would come to him, Aunt Jerry demurred.

“It was not decent,” she said, “and did not show proper
respect for that dead woman with the boy's name.”

Roy reassured her on that point by telling her what
Georgie's wish had been, and she gave way at last, but her
face wore a very forbidding look, and reminded Edna of the
days when she used to cut carpet-rags up in the back chamber.
Roy could not tear himself from Edna at once, so he
remained all night, and made himself thoroughly at home in
Aunt Jerry's house, and interested himself in whatever he
saw interested her. First, however, he wrote to his mother
that he had found Edna, and that he should stop at Allen's
Hill a few days, and then bring her home with him. He
wished to surprise her, and so did not tell her who Edna was.
He only wrote, “You will like her. She is a pretty little
creature, and will be a great acquisition to our family circle.
I need not bespeak a welcome for her, I am sure, for you
will receive her as a daughter, I know, and love her with a
mother's love.”

It was rather late when he retired, and he would not have
gone when he did, if Aunt Jerry had not told him it was after
her bedtime, and she shouldn't sit up any longer for anybody.
Roy felt that he would gladly have dispensed with
her company, and enjoyed himself quite as well, but he refrained
from giving expression to his thoughts, and taking

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the lamp she brought him, went to his room at the end of
the hall.

Meantime, Edna had been longing for some expression of
sympathy from her aunt. Her heart was so full of happiness
that she wanted to share it with some one, to talk with
some one, who ought to know something how she felt; and
after Roy had said good-night, she drew a little stool to her
aunt's side, and laying her head in her lap, as she had
never lain it before, said to her:

“Auntie, have you no word of congratulation, for me?
Are you not glad because I am so happy, oh, so much happier
than I ever thought I could be, when—”

Here she stopped abruptly, feeling that she was treading
on dangerous ground, but her aunt took up the unfinished
sentence and said, “When you lived with me, and I made a
little nigger of you; that's what you mean. Don't spoil a
story for relations' sake. I was hard on you at times, and
mean as pussly, too. But, Edna,” and the voice began to
tremble, “I never meant to be bad. I didn't understand
children, or that they could grow up to be a comfort, as I
know now you would be, and since you come back I've
thought how nice it would be to have you live with me, and
now he's come, and you'll go with him, and the old woman
will be alone again, all alone.”

There was a pitiful sound in Aunt Jerry's voice, and it
brought the tears to Edna's eyes, but before she could speak,
Annt Jerry went on. “I am glad for you, child; it's the
ordained way to marry, and you've got a good man, I believe,
and you'll be happy with him. You think, of course,
old Aunt Jerusha don't know what it is to love, but I do. I
was nearer once to being married than you are now; so near,
that the day was set, and my wedding dress was made, and
my hot temper got the better of me, and we quarrelled
about a trivial thing, and I wouldn't yield an inch, and got

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so mad at last that I vowed I'd never marry him, and I
never have, and we have lived our lives alone, he in his way,
I in mine.”

“Oh, auntie, I never suspected such a thing; and he is
living yet, you say, and maybe sometime—you'll—”

“No we shan't,” and Aunt Jerry spoke quickly. “I ain't
such a fool as that. We have not met in thirty years, and
the sight of me now would make him sick at the stomach.
I was young then, and not bad-looking either; now I'm old
and wrinkled, and hard and gray, and he is old, and fat, and
queer, and pussy, I have no doubt. No, child, don't build
castles for me. Be happy yourself and I am satisfied.”

She stroked Edna's hair softly for a moment, and then
said abruptly but kindly, “There, now, you've got just what
you wanted; be off to bed. Don't you see it is going on to
twelve o'clock.”

So Edna left her with a good-night kiss, and stole up to
her room, there to muse over her own great happiness,
and to think of the story Aunt Jerry had told her of her
early love affair, which terminated so disastrously. Who,
and where was the man, she asked herself without ever a
thought of the truth, and while speculating upon it, and
thinking how queer it seemed that Aunt Jerry was ever
young and had a lover like herself, she fell asleep and
dreamed that the lover was Mr. Freeman Burton!

p595-412

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