The orphan did not speak for a moment, but looked up in the brown, wrinkled face, and then, pushing back her bonnet and veil, she said eagerly:
"Mrs. Wood, don't you know me?"
The miller's wife looked curiously at her visitor, glanced at her dress, and shook her head.
"No, miss; if ever I set my eyes on you before, it's more than I remember, and Dorothy Wood has a powerful memory, they say, and seldom forgets faces."
"Do you remember Aaron Hunt, and his daughter Hester?"
"To be sure I do; but you a'n't neither the one nor the other, I take it. Stop—let me see. Aha! Tabitha, Willis, you children, run here—quick! But, no—it can't be. You can't be Edna Earl?"
She shaded her eyes from the glare of the sun and stooped forward, and looked searchingly at the stranger; then the coral wreath fell from her fingers, she stretched out her arms, and the large mouth trembled and twitched.
"Are you—can you be—little Edna? Aaron Hunt's grandchild?"
"I am the poor little Edna you took such tender care of in her great affliction—"
"Samson and the Philistines! Little Edna—so you are! What was I thinking about, that I didn't know you right away? God bless your pretty white face!"