It was dusk when she reached her destination, and according to his promise her uncle was at the depot to meet her.
It was with genuine joy that he hurried forward to greet the girl, though they had parted but a few short months ago in such bitter anger.
"I am glad to get you back again, little Jessie," he declared, eagerly; "and, as I wrote to you, we will let by-gones be by-gones, little girl, and forget the past unpleasantness between us by wiping it out of our minds as though it had never been. I missed you awfully, little one, and I've had a lonesome time of it since your cousin went away. Home isn't home to a man without a neat little woman about to tidy things up a bit and make it cheerful."
How good it seemed to Jessie to have some one speak so kindly to her! He was plain and homely, and coarse of speech, but he was the only being in the whole wide world who really cared for her and offered her a shelter in this her hour of need. But how desolate the place was, with its little old-fashioned, low-ceiling kitchen, the huge fire-place on one side, the cupboard on the other, whose chintz curtains were drawn back, revealing the rows of cups and saucers and pile of plates of blue china, more cracked and nicked than ever, and the pine table, with its oil-cloth cover, and the old rag mat in the center of the floor!
The girl's heart sank as she looked around.
Could she make this place her home again? Its very atmosphere, redolent with tobacco smoke and the strong odor of vegetables, took her breath away.
Ah! it was very hard for this girl, whose only fortune was a dower of poverty, and who had had a slight taste of wealth and refinement, to come back to the old life again and fall into the drudgery of other days.
She could not refuse her uncle when he pleaded to know where she went and where she had been since the night he had driven her, in his mad frenzy, out into the world.
He listened in wonder. The girl's story almost seemed like a fairy tale to him. But as he listened to the ending of it—surely the saddest story that ever was told by girlish lips—of how she had left the Varrick mansion, and of what Mrs. Varrick had accused her of doing, his rage knew no bounds.
"You might have known how it would all turn out!" he cried. "A poor little field wren has no business in the gilded nest of the golden eagle! You are at home again, little one. Think no more of those people!"