"I am fourteen past, Aunt Hepsy; Tom is twelve."
Miss Hepsy dropped her paring-knife and stared.
"Bless me, child, you don't look more'n nine, and that great boy looks years older'n you. What have ye fed on?"
Lucy smiled faintly. "I have not been very strong this summer, Aunt Hepsy; and I was so anxious about mamma being so poorly. I couldn't sleep at nights, nor eat anything hardly. I suppose that's what made me thin." Miss Hepsy sniffed.
"Have any of ye been to school?" was her next question.
"No, Aunt Hepsy. Papa taught us till he died, and then mamma kept up our lessons as well as she could. Tom is a good scholar; and, oh, such a beautiful painter!"
"Painter!" echoed Miss Hepsy. "What, fence rails and gates?"
Lucy looked very much shocked. "Oh no; he draws landscapes and things, and went to the Art School as long as mamma could afford it. Then he practised at home. He means to be a great painter some day, like the ones he read about."
"Humph!" said Miss Hepsy contemptuously. "I guess his uncle'll find him work in painting the farm an' the gates afresh this fall. It'll save a man. Now then, there's them taters on. Come upstairs an' I'll show you your room."
Lucy rose at once, and obediently followed her aunt along the wide flagged passage and up the polished oak steps to a tiny little chamber in the attic fiat. It was poorly furnished, but it was scrupulously clean; and from the window Lucy's delighted eyes caught a glimpse of the broad green meadow, the shining water of the river, and beyond, the houses of the town nestling in the shadow of the giant slopes of Pendle Peak.