“Yes, Mrs. Churchill is a noble woman, and tries to forgive the girl, and thinks she has done so; but I, who know her so well, can see the effort she makes to speak kindly of her, and just how she shudders when her name is accidentally mentioned. No, glad as I would be to help and befriend the girl, I am naughty enough to hope Roy cannot find her. But pray, Miss Overton, don’t repeat what I have said. I hardly know why I have spoken so freely, unless it is that you have a way of taking our hearts by storm, and not appearing in the least like a stranger. By the way, you look a little like Mrs. Charlie Churchill; I thought of it the first time I saw you here, and spoke of it to Roy, and just for fun asked if it would not be a good joke if you were Edna in disguise.”
“What did he say?” Edna asked, and, without looking at her victim, Georgie replied: “He seemed to take altogether a different view of the joke from what I did, and expressed himself decidedly against disguises of all kinds. It would displease him very much to have Edna do such a thing, he said. But I fear I have wearied you with talk which cannot interest you, of course. You look pale and fagged. It’s the hot morning, I guess. Suppose we go back to the house. Ah, there’s Roy now; I think I’ll join him for a little walk upon the lawn.”
If Edna had ever entertained a thought of staying at Leighton after Georgie was mistress there, it would have been swept away effectually by what Georgie had said to her, just as that nice young lady meant it should be. And what was worse than all, she could never let Roy know who she was, after having been so foolish as to come to him incog. Why had she done it? she asked herself many times. Why had Maude and Uncle Phil suffered it; aye, contrived and advised it, and why hadn’t she listened to Aunt Jerry, who had opposed it from the first. But it was too late now. She was there as Miss Overton, and as such she must always remain to Roy and his mother. By her own act she had precluded the possibility of ever showing herself to them in her own proper person. Mrs. Churchill, who already disliked Edna Browning and looked upon her as Charlie’s murderer, would hate her should she know the truth, and Roy would hate her too, and that was more than she could bear. She could not lose his respect, and so she must never claim him as her brother; never see him after she went away from Leighton. It was very hard, and Edna cried bitterly for a few moments, while away in the distance walked Georgie and Roy, up and down the wide lawn, but always where Georgie could command a view of the little figure sitting so disconsolately under the shadow of the grape-vine, and weeping, as she knew from the motion of the hands which went so often to the face. Georgie was glad. She had made Edna’s exit from Leighton a sure thing, and her spirits rose proportionately with the mischief she had done. She was very gay for the remainder of the day; very attentive to Mrs. Churchill; very affectionate to Roy; very kind and patronizing to the servants, and very familiar with Miss Overton, whom she petted and caressed, and kissed gushingly, when, at night, she finally shook the dust of Leighton from her garments and departed for Oakwood.
CHAPTER XXXV.
LETTERS.
In course of time there came a letter to Edna from Roy. It had been sent by him to Aunt Jerry, and by her to Uncle Phil, who forwarded it to his niece, together with a few lines of his own, telling how “all-fired lonesome he was, and how he missed her gab, and the click-clack of her high heels on the stairs, and the whisk of her petticoats through the doors.”
“The synagogue is getting along slowly,” he wrote, “for the cusses—” (he erased that word as hardly consistent for a man who was running a church, and substituted “cattle,” so that it read) “the cattle are on another strike, what hain’t gone over to work on the Unitarian meetin’ house, which is havin’ the greatest kind of overhaulin’ inside and out. The persuasion meets now in the Academy, and go it kind of ritual, with the litany and some of the sams, which they read slower than time in the primmer. Ruth Gardner leads off, and is getting up another carouse to buy a Fount to dip the young ones in, and expects to catch the new minister. But let ’em run. Old Phil don’t ask no odds of Unitarian nor Orthodox, nor nobody else. He’ll build his own church and pay his own minister, if necessary, and burn innocence too, if he wants to.
“I send a letter from Roy, I guess, and it has done some travellin’, too, having gone first to that remarkable woman, your Aunt Jerushy, who wrote to me as follows:
“‘Philip Overton, forward the enclosed to Edna, and oblige, Jerusha Amanda Pepper.’
“Short and sweet, wasn’t it? but like the old gal, as you described her. If Maude is there, tell her I am real hungry for a sight of her blue eyes and sassy face. Come up here, both of you, as soon as you can. Yours to command,