Her lip quivered a little, and then she added: “But whether Edna would 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 should not write 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, as she 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.