Edna Browning;

“Oh, how pleasant and nice. Am I to sleep here?” Edna asked, as she skipped across the floor, and knelt upon the hearth-rug in front of the fire. “What’s become of that little room? I thought——”

She did not say what she thought, for Becky interrupted her with:

“Oh, dat’s no ’count room; jes’ put folks in thar when they fust comes, then moves ’em up higher, like they does in Scripter. Marster’s mighty quare.”

“How long have you lived with him?” Edna asked, and Becky replied:

“Oh, many years. I was a slave on the block, in Car’lina, and Marster Phil comed in and seen me, and pitied me like, and bid me off, and kep’ me from gwine South with a trader, an’ brought me home and sot me free, and I’ve lived with him ever since, an’, please Heaven, I will sarve him till I die, for all he’s done for me. Is you gwine to stay, Miss Overton?”

Edna told her that she was, and that she was sure she should like it very much if she could get something to do.

“You likes to work then, and so did Miss Maude, though she ’pears more of a lady than ’nough I’ve seen what wouldn’t lift thar finger to fotch a thing,” Becky said, and Edna asked:

“Who is Maude? Uncle Phil has spoken of her once or twice.”

“Why she’s Maude Somerton, from New York,” Becky replied; “and she came fust to Prospect Cottage, as they call a house way up on the hills whar the city gentry sometimes stay summers for a spell, and whar Miss Maude’s Aunt Burton was onct with her daughter called Georgie, though she was a girl.”

Edna was interested now, and moved a little nearer to Becky, who continued:

“I know precious little ’bout them Burtons, only they was mighty big feelin’, and Miss Maude was a kind of poor relation, I s’pects; leastwise she wanted to teach school, and Uncle Phil was committee-man and let her have it, and she was to board round, and didn’t like it, and went at Marster Phil till he took her in, though he hated to like pison, and it was allus a mystery to me how she did it, for he don’t hanker after wimmen much, and never could bar to have ’em ’round.”

Here Aunt Becky paused a moment, and taking advantage of the pause, we will present our readers with a picture which Aunt Becky did not see, else she would have known just how Maude Somerton persuaded Uncle Philip to let her have a home beneath his roof. The time, five o’clock or thereabouts, on a warm summer afternoon: the place, a strip of meadow land on Uncle Phil’s premises: the Dramatis Personæ, Uncle Phil and Maude Somerton: She, with the duties of the day over, wending her way slowly toward the small and rather uncomfortable gable-roofed house up the mountain-road, where it was her fate to board for that week, aye, for two or three weeks, judging by the number of children, who seldom left her alone for a moment, and who each night contended for the honor of sleeping with the “school marm.” He, industriously raking up into mounds the fragrant hay, and casting now and then a wistful glance at a bank of clouds which threatened rain; when suddenly, across the field, and bearing swiftly down upon him, came an airy form, her blue linen dress held just high enough to clear the grass, and at the same time show her pretty boots, with the Broadway stamp upon them, and her dainty white petticoat, whose tucks and ruffles were the envy of all the girls in Rocky Point, and the bane of the wash-woman’s life. Uncle Phil saw the apparition, and saw the tucks and ruffles, and thought what pretty feet Miss Somerton had, and what tall boots she wore, and wondered why she was coming toward him in such hot haste.

“Most likely some of those Beals’ boys have been raisin’ Cain, and so she comes to me as committee-man. I’ll be blamed if I don’t throw up the office, for I can’t have wimmen taggin’ after me this way,” he thought, and pretending not to see the young girl, now so near to him, he kept on with his raking, until right before his very face came the vision of blue and white, and a little, fat, dimpled hand was laid upon his rake, and a pair of soft, blue eyes looked up into his with something like tears in them, while a pleading voice told him how terrible it was to board round, to eat the best cake every day, to be company all the time, and never feel at home; besides, having from one to three children fighting to sleep with you every night, when you wanted so much to be alone. And then, still grasping the rake, Maude asked if she might stay altogether at his house, where everything was so nice, and cool, and quiet, and she could have a room to herself, undisturbed by children.

“You will, I know you will, Mr. Overton,” and she stopped for his reply.

Uncle Phil was more astounded than when asked by Edna to kiss her. Of his own accord, he would quite as soon have taken a young alligator into his family as a girl, a woman; but there was something about this one standing there before him, and now actually grasping his hand instead of the rake, which completely unmanned him. Those eyes, and the touch of the white fingers clinging so closely to his own, could not be resisted, and with a quick, nervous motion, he began to step backwards, and sideways, and then forwards, ejaculating meanwhile, “Lord bless me,—yes, yes! I feel very queer; yes I do. Let go my rake. This is sudden. Yes, yes. You don’t like sleepin’ with all the young ones in the deestrict. Don’t blame you. I’d as soon sleep with a nest of woodchucks. Yes, yes. This is curis. I must have some snuff.”

He got his hand free from Maude, took two or three good pinches of his favorite Macaboy, offered her some, and then, giving a hitch to his suspender, replied to her question, repeated, “May I stay with you, Mr. Overton?”

“Yes, yes; I s’pose you’ll have to, if Beck is willin’. I’ll see her to-night, and let you know.”

He said this last by way of giving himself a chance to draw back, for already he began to repent, and feel how terrible it would be to have a young woman in his house all the time,—to-day, to-morrow, and next day. It was a great deal worse than sleeping with every child in town, and he brought up Beck as the pack-horse who was to carry the burden of his refusal on the morrow. But Maude outwitted him there.

“Oh, thank you, thank you!” she cried. “You are the dearest man in the world. Becky is all right. I saw her first, and she said if you were willing, she was. I shall move this very day, for I cannot stay with Mrs. Higgins another hour. Thank you again, ever so much, you dear, darling man.”

She was tripping off across the fields, leaving the enemy totally routed and vanquished, and sick at his stomach, and dizzy-headed, as he tried to think how many more weeks there were before vacation.

“Nine, ten, TWELVE!” he fairly groaned. “I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it. I’ll put a stop to it,—see if I don’t. Yes, yes; to have them boots trottin’ up and down the stairs, and them petticoats whiskin’ through the doors, and makin’ me feel so curis. I’ll go crazy,—I feel like it now.”

He tried snuff,—six pinches; but that didn’t answer. Then he tried raking hay so fast, that to use his own words, “he sweat like a butcher;” then he tried cooling his feet in the brook near by, and wiping them on his bandanna; but nothing was of avail to drive away “that curis feelin’ at the pit of his stomach,” and long before sunset he left his work, and wended his way homeward.

The enemy was there before him, or, at least, a part of her equipments, for two of the Higgins’ boys had brought over Maude’s satchel, and sun-umbrella, and water-proof, and two or three books, and a pair of overshoes; all of which were on the kitchen-table, while the boys were swinging on the gate in the front yard.

Uncle Phil ordered the boys home, and “the traps” up in the little “back chamber.”

“That’ll start her. She’ll find that worse than sleepin’ with the Higginses,” he thought, as he gave the order, and then went and took a dose of something he called “jallup.” “He had an awful headache,” he said to Aunt Becky, when she inquired what was the matter; and his headache increased, and sent him to bed before Maude arrived, flushed, delighted, and full of spirits that her boarding ’round was over.

He heard her go up to her little hot back room, and wondered how she liked it, and how long she’d stay in it, and half wished he had nailed the window down so she could not open it.

She was up bright and early the next morning, and drove the cows to their pasture, a distance of half a mile, and brought back a bunch of flowers, which she arranged upon the table; and she looked so fresh and pretty in her blue gown, which just matched her eyes, and ate cold beans so heartily, that Uncle Phil began to relent, and that night she slept in the north-west room instead of the little back one. There she stayed a week; and then, after having helped Uncle Phil rake up his hay one day when a shower was coming up, she was promoted to the north, and best chamber, and some nice striped matting was bought for the floor, and a pretty chestnut set took the place of the high-post bedstead and old-fashioned bureau; and some curtains were hung at the windows, for Uncle Phil said “he didn’t want the whole town to see the girl undress, if they did him.”

And here for weeks Maude reigned, a very queen, and cheered and brightened up the old farm-house until, when in the fall she left and went back to Oakwood, Aunt Becky cried for sheer loneliness, and Uncle Phil took a larger dose of “jallup” to help the feeling at his stomach, than when she first came to him.

And this was how Maude Somerton chanced to be an inmate of Uncle Phil’s family, and enshrined in his heart, as well as in old Becky’s, as a kind of divinity, whom it was not so very wrong to worship.

“’Pears like we never could get over hankerin after her,” Becky said to Edna, “she was so chirk and pert-like, and made the house so different.”

Edna was longing to ask another question, but did not quite know how to get at it. At last she said:

“Does Miss Somerton live in New York all the time? Has her Aunt Burton no country residence?”

“Yes, bless you, a house as big as four of this, down to Oakwood, whar thar’s looking-glasses as long as you be, Miss Maude said, and furniture all covered with satin.”

Edna was no nearer her point than before, and so she tried again.

“Have they any neighbors at Oakwood, any families they are intimate with?”

“Yes, thar’s the Leightons, to my way of thinkin’ quite as sot up as the Burtons, and thar place, Miss Maude say, is handsomer and bigger than the one to Oakwood.”

“Oh, indeed, Mrs. Leighton must be a happy woman. Did you ever see her?” Edna asked, and Becky replied,

“Thar ain’t no Miss Leighton; she’s Miss Churchill, married twicet; her oldest boy, Mr. Roy, owns the property, and is the nicest man I reckon you ever seen. He stayed to the hotel oncet a few weeks, and I done his washin’, ’case he couldn’t find nobody handy, and Marster Phil let me do it and keep the pay. He wore a clean shirt a day, and cuffs and collars, and white vests, and pocket handkerchiefs, and socks without end; and gave me seventy-five cents a dozen just as they run, which made me a nice handful of money.”

“Yes,” Edna said, musingly; “I suppose he must be very rich? Is he the only child?”

“Ne-oo,” and Aunt Becky spoke a little scornfully, while Edna moved so as to hide her burning face.

She had reached the point at last, and her heart beat almost audibly as Aunt Becky continued:

“Or he wasn’t the only child when they was here. Thar was a younger one, a Charles Churchill, who got killed on the railroad a spell ago. You should speak well of the dead, and I mean to; but I reckon he wasn’t of so much ’count in these yer parts as Master Roy.”

“Did he do anything bad,” Edna asked, and her voice was very low and sad.

“No, not bad, only wan’t of much ’count. He druv fast horses, and smoked all the time, and bragged about his money when he hadn’t a cent, and flirted with the girls awfully. Thar’s Miss Ruth Gardner, all of three years older than him, thought she should catch him sure, and little Marcia Belknap was fairly bewitched; and both on ’em cried when they heard he was dead, though he left a wife, the papers said, married that very day.”

“Oh, dreadful,” and Edna groaned aloud, for she saw again that awful scene, and the white, still face upturned to the angry sky, and it seemed wrong to sit there and make no sign while Becky went on.

“I hain’t seen Miss Maude since, so I don’t know nothin’ about his wife, who she was, nor whar she is. Down to the Leighton Place, maybe, though it’s been surmised that she warn’t much,—kind of poor white folksy, I reckon; and if that’s so, Miss Churchill ain’t a-goin’ to own her, ’case she’s mighty big feelin’, and turned up her nose at Miss Ruth, and took her boy home to git shet of her. But Miss Ruth is enough for her, and I’ve hearn she talked awful about that wife of Charlie’s, and said she jest wished she could see her long enough to tell her she had the best and fustest right to her husband. Oh, she’s a clipper, Miss Ruth is.”

Edna’s hands were locked firmly together, and the nails were making red marks upon her flesh, while she longed for Aunt Becky to leave her. She had heard enough, and she looked so white and tired, that Becky noticed it at last, and asked if she was sick.

“No, only tired,” she said; and then Becky said good-night, and left her alone with her sad thoughts, which, however, were not all sad and bitter.

She had lost her first love in more ways than one, and as, with her head bent down, she sat thinking of him and all she had heard, she felt a fresh pang of remorse cut through her heart at her own callousness in feeling that perhaps for herself it was better that Charlie died. But only for herself. When she thought of him, and what he might have been, had space for repentance been granted him, her tears flowed like rain, and, prone upon her face, she prayed that if the prayers of the living for the dead could avail, hers might be heard and answered for her lost, wayward Charlie.