Edna Browning;

It was one of those old-fashioned farm-houses rarely found outside of New England, and even there growing more and more rare, as young generations arise with cravings for something new, and a feeling of having outgrown the old homestead with its “front entry” and crooked stairway leading to another “entry” above; its two “square rooms” in front and its huge kitchen and smaller sleeping apartment in the rear. Those who do not emigrate to some more genial atmosphere, where their progressive faculties have free scope to grow, have come to feel a contempt for the old brown houses which once dotted the New England hills so thickly; and so these veterans of a past century have gradually given way to dwellings of a more modern style, with wide halls and long balconies and bay-windows, and latterly the much-admired French roofs. But Uncle Phil Overton was neither young nor a radical, nor was there anything progressive in his taste. As his house had been forty years ago, when by his father’s death and will it came to him, so it was that day when Edna stood knocking at the door. It had been yellow then and it was yellow now; it had been void of shade-trees then and it was so now, if we except the horse-chestnut which grew near the gate, and which could throw no shadow, however small, upon the house or in the great, glaring rooms inside.

Uncle Phil did not like trees, and he did like light, and held it a sin to shut out Heaven’s sunshine; so there never was a blind upon his house; and the green-paper shades and curtains of Holland linen, which somehow had been smuggled in and hung at a few of the windows, were rolled up both day and night. Uncle Phil had no secrets to shut out, he said, and folks were welcome to look in upon him at any time; so he sat before the window, and washed before it, and shaved before it, and ate before it, and dressed before it; and when his housekeeper, old Aunt Becky, remonstrated with him, as she sometimes did, and told him “folks would see him,” he answered her, “Let ’em peek, if they want to;” and so the curtains remained as they were, and the old man had his way.

Many years ago, it was said that he had thought to bring a wife to the farm-house, which he had brightened up a little, putting a red and green carpet on the floor of the north room, painting the wood-work a light blue, and covering the walls with a yellowish paper of most wonderful design. Six chairs, and a looking-glass, and bureau, and table, had completed the furnishing of that room, to which no bride ever came; and, as Uncle Phil had been wholly reticent with regard to her, the story came gradually to be regarded as a mere fabrication of somebody’s busy brain; and Uncle Phil was set down as one whose heart had never been reached by anything fairer than old black Becky, who had lived with him for years, and grown to be so much like him that one had only to get the serving-woman’s opinion to know what the master’s was. Just as that stiff, cold north room had looked years ago, when made ready for the mythical bride, so it looked now, and so, too, or nearly so, looked the south room, with its Franklin fireplace, its painted floor, and the two strips of rag carpet before the fire, its tall mantel-piece, with two cupboards over it, holding a most promiscuous medley of articles, from a paper of sage down to the almanacs for the last twenty years. Uncle Phil didn’t believe in destroying books, and kept his almanacs as religiously as he did his weekly paper, of which there were barrels full, stowed away in the garret. Besides being the common sitting-room, the south room was also Uncle Phil’s sleeping apartment, and in one corner was his turned-up bed, with its curtain of copperplate, and beyond it the clock-shelf and the clock, and a tall writing-desk, where Uncle Phil’s valuables were kept. Two or three chairs, one on rockers, and one an old-fashioned wooden chair with arms and a cushion in it, completed the furniture, if we except the table, on which lay Walker’s Dictionary, and the big Bible, and a book of sermons by some Unitarian divine, and Uncle Phil’s glasses. The pleasantest room in the whole house was the kitchen, where Aunt Becky reigned supreme, even Uncle Phil yielding to her here, and never saying a word when she made and put down a respectable rag carpet at the end of the long room in which she kept her Boston rocker for company, and her little stuffed sewing chair for herself, and her square stand covered with a towel, and on it a pretty cushion of blue, which matched the string of robins’ eggs ornamenting the little glass hanging beside the window, with its box for brush and combs made of pasteboard and cones. This was Aunt Becky’s parlor, and her kitchen was just as neat and inviting, with its nicely painted floor, and unpainted wood-work, scoured every week, and kept free from dust and dirt by daily wipes and dustings, and a continued warfare against the luckless flies and insects, to whom Becky was a sworn foe. Out in the back room there was a stove which Becky sometimes used, but she would not have it in her kitchen; she liked the fireplace best, she said, and so in winter nights you could see from afar the cheerful blaze of the logs Becky piled upon the fire, giving the “forestick” now and then a thrust by way of quickening the merry flames, which lit up her old black face as she stooped upon the hearth to cook the evening meal.

And this was the house where Edna stood knocking for admission, and wondering why her knock remained so long unanswered. Old Becky was at the barn hunting for eggs with which to make her master’s favorite custard pie, and never dreamed that she had a guest, until, with her woollen dress pinned up around her waist, and a wisp of hay ornamenting her hair, she returned to the house, and entering the kitchen by the rear door, heard the knock, which by this time was loud and imperious. No one but strangers ever came to the front door in winter, consequently Aunt Becky, who had a good deal to do that morning, bristled at once, and wondered “who was making that to do, and why they didn’t come to the kitchen door, and not make her all that extra trouble.”

“Whale away,” she said, as Edna again applied herself vigorously to the knocker. “I shan’t come till I’ve put up my aigs and let my petticoats down.”

This done, she started for the door, and, catching sight through the window of Edna’s trunk, exclaimed:

“For Heaven’s sake, if thar ain’t a chist of clothes, a visitor; Miss Maude, perhaps, and I nothin’ for dinner but a veal stew, or,—yes, I can open a bottle of tomarterses, and roast some of them fall pippins.”

And with this consoling reflection, old Becky undid the iron bolt and opened the door; but started back when, instead of the possible Miss Maude, she saw a young girl dressed in black, “with just the sweetest, sorriest, anxiousest face you even seen, and which made my bowels yearn to oncet,” she said to Miss Maude, to whom she afterward related the particulars of her first introduction to Edna.

“Does Mr. Philip Overton live here?” Edna asked so timidly that Becky, who was slightly deaf, could only guess at what she said from catching the name Overton.

“Yes, miss, he does; walk in, please,” and she involuntarily courtesied politely to the young lady, who, save that she was shorter and smaller every way, reminded her of her favorite Miss Maude. “You’ll have to come right into my kitchen, I reckon; for when master’s out all day we never has a fire in the south room till night,” she continued, as she led the way through the “south room” into her pleasant quarters, which, in spite of the preparations going on for dinner, looked home like and inviting, especially the bright fire which blazed upon the hearth.

Edna went up to this at once and held her cold hands near the blaze, and Becky, who was a close observer, noticed first the cut of her dress, and then decided that “it had as long a tail as Miss Maude’s” (the reader will bear in mind that this was before the days of short dresses), “but was not quite as citified.” She noticed, too, the little, plump, white hands which Edna held up to the fire, and said within herself,—

“Them hands has never done no work; I wonder who she can be?”

Edna told her after a moment that she had come from Chicago, from Mrs. Dana’s, whom Becky might perhaps remember, as she was once an inmate for a time of the farm-house. Becky did remember Miss Susan, and after expressing her surprise and regret at her sudden death, she continued:

“You’ve come to visit yer uncle,—have you ever seen him?”

Edna had never seen him, and she had not exactly come visiting either. In fact she hardly knew why she had come, and now that she was here, and had a faint inkling of matters, she began to wish she had staid away, and to wonder herself why she was there. To her uncle she intended to tell everything, but not to Becky, though she instinctively felt that the latter was a person of a great deal of consequence in her uncle’s family, and must have some explanation, even though it was a very lame one. So she said:

“I lived with Mrs. Dana when she died. I have lost all my friends. I have no home, and so I came to Uncle Overton, hoping he would let me stay till I find something to do. Mrs. Dana said he was kind and good.”

“Yes, but mighty curis in his ways,” was Becky’s rejoinder, as she wondered how her master would receive this stranger, who had no home nor friends unless he gave her both. “It’s jest as the fit catches him,” she thought, as she asked Edna to lay aside her wrappings, and then told her to make herself at home till the “marster came.” “He’s gone over to Millville, six or eight miles or so, and rode old Bobtail, who never trots faster than an ant can walk, so he won’t be home till three o’clock, and I’m goin’ to have dinner and supper all to oncet, but if you’re hungry, and I know you be, I’ll jest clap on a cold bite and steep a drawin’ of tea,” she said.

But Edna was not hungry; she had breakfasted at the station not many miles from Albany, and could wait until her uncle came.

“I’ll fetch yer things in, only I dunno whar marster’ll have ’em put. Any ways, I’m safet in the back bedroom,” Becky continued, and with Edna’s help, the trunk was brought into the house and carried up the back stairs to a little room directly over the kitchen, where the bare floor and the meagre furniture struck cold and chill to Edna’s heart, it was so different from anything she had ever known.

That room at Aunt Jerry’s, looking out upon the graveyard, was a palace compared to this cheerless apartment; and sitting down upon her trunk after Becky left her, she cried from sheer homesickness, and half resolved to take the next train back to—she did not know where. There was no place for her anywhere, and in utter loneliness and despair she continued to cry until Becky came up with a pitcher of warm water and some towels across her arm. She saw that Edna was crying, and half guessing the cause, said very kindly:

“I reckon you’re some homesick, and ’tain’t to be wondered at; this room ain’t the chirkest in the house, and ’tain’t no ways likely you’ll stay here, but I dassen’t put you in no other without marster’s orders; he’s curis, and if he takes to you as he’s sure to do, you’re all right and in clover right away. He sarves ’em all dis way, Miss Maude an’ all, but now nothin’s too good for her.”

Edna did not ask who Miss Maude was, but she thanked Becky for her kindness, and after bathing her face and eyes, and brushing her hair, went down to the kitchen to wait with fear and trembling for the coming of the “marster who was so curis in his ways.”

Becky did not talk much that morning. She had “too many irons in the fire,” she said, and so she brought Edna a book which Miss Maude had left there more than a year ago, and which might help to pass the time. It was “Monte-Cristo,” which Edna had never read, and she received it thankfully, and glancing at the fly-leaf saw written there, “Maude Somerton, New York, May 10th, 18——”

Becky’s Miss Maude, then, was Maude Somerton, who lived in New York, and whom some wind of fortune had blown to Rocky Point, where she seemed to be an immense favorite; so much Edna inferred, and then she sat herself down to the book, and in following the golden fortunes of the hero she forgot the lapse of time until the clock struck two, and Becky, taking a blazing firebrand from the hearth, carried it into the south room, with the evident intention of kindling a fire.

“Marster always has one thar nights,” she said, “and when we has company we sets the table thar. His bed ain’t no ’count, turned up with the curtain afore it.”

And so in honor of Edna the table was laid in the south room, and Aunt Becky, who had quietly been studying the young girl, and making up her mind with regard to her, ventured upon the extravagance of one of her finest cloths, and the best white dishes instead of the blue set, and put on napkins and the silver-plated forks and butter-knife, and thought how nicely her table looked, and wished aloud that “Marster Philip” would come before her supper had all got cold.

As if in answer to her wish there was the sound of some one at the gate, and looking from the window Aunt Becky joyfully announced that “marster had come.”