"Well, well, well!" she said, breaking off suddenly. "All that does not interest you little ones."
"So you couldn't give the letters to your Uncle Lem-u-el?" questioned Dot, careful to get the name right this time.
"I never could even see my Uncle Lemuel," said Mrs. Eland, with a sigh. "I believe he knew I was searching for him during the last few years of his life; but he always kept out of my way."
"Oh! wasn't that bad of him!" cried Tess.
"I don't know. His end was most miserable. People said he must have at one time accumulated a great deal of money. He was supposed to be as rich a man as lived in Milton—richer than your Uncle Peter Stower. But he must have squandered it all in some way. He died finally in the Quoharis poorhouse. He did not belong in that town; but he wandered there in a storm and they took him in."
"And didn't they find lots of money in his clothes when he was dead?" queried Dot, who had heard something about misers.
"Mercy, no! He had no money, I am quite sure," said the lady, confidently. "The old townfarm keeper over there tells me that Mr. Lemuel Aden left nothing but some worthless papers and letters and a little memorandum book, or diary. I suppose they are hardly worth my claiming them. At least, I never have done so, and Uncle Lemuel died quite fifteen years ago."
After that Mrs. Eland had no more to say about Lemuel Aden for the time being, but tried to amuse her little visitors, as usual. And Tess never told that joke about Briggs, the baker.
This brings us, naturally, to the eve of All Saints, an occasion much given over to feasting and foolery. "When churchyards yawn—if they ever do yawn," suggested Neale, as he and the two oldest Corner House girls set forth on the crisp evening in question, to walk out to Carrie Poole's place.
"I guess folks yarn about them, more than the graves yawn," said Agnes, roguishly. "Remember the garret ghost, Ruth?"