CHAPTER XXVI.AFTER ANOTHER YEAR.

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 almostas 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. Ihavepaid 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,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 whetherEdnawould 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.”

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 shouldnotwrite 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, asshe 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 hercostume. 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.

“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,’”

“‘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:

“‘Cool it with a babboon’s blood,Then the charm is firm and good.’”

“‘Cool it with a babboon’s blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.’”

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,

I know that

“‘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 youaredoing 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 knowsoft-soapwhen you see it?”

“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 intentionswith 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 boystooped. 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, whilethere 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.

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