“Philip Overton.”
This was Uncle Phil’s letter, and Edna cried over it a little, and knew just how lonely the old man was without her, and half wished she had not left him, “though it would have been dreadful never to have known Roy at all,” she said to herself, as she opened next Aunt Jerusha’s letter, in which Roy’s was enclosed, and read what that worthy woman had to say.
There was a good deal about her “neurology,” and a sure cure she had found for it, and about the new rector, who was as much too low as the other had been too high, inasmuch as he went to the Methodist prayer-meetings and took a part in them, and said he wasn’t quite sure about the direct line down from the Apostles; it might be straight enough, but he guessed it had been broken a few times, and had some knots in it where it was mended, and he fully indorsed young Tyng, and believed in Henry Ward Beecher and Woman’s Rights, all of which she considered worse than turning your back to the people, and bowing to the floor in the creed, and so latterly she had staid at home and read the Bible and Prayer-Book by herself, and sung a hymn and psalm, and felt she was worshipping God quite as well as if she had gone to church and been mad as fury all the time. She hoped Edna felt better now she was at Leighton, though she was a big fool for going, and a bigger one if she staid there after that woman with a boy’s name came as my lady.
“Roy was not satisfied with sending me a letter for you, but he must needs write to me too, and tell me he was going to be married; and that he should insist upon knowing where you were, so he could persuade you to live at Leighton, your proper place.
“So you see what’s before you, and you know my advice, which, of course, you won’t follow. You are more than half in love with Roy yourself; don’t deny it; I know better; and that critter with the boy’s name will find it out, if she has not already, and you’ll hate one another like pisen, and it’s no place for you. Better come back to Aunt Jerusha, and keep the district school this winter. They want a woman teacher, because they can get her cheap, and she’ll do her work better, as if there was any justice in that. I believe in Woman’s Rights so far as equal pay for the same work; but this scurriping through the country speech-making, and the clothes-basket full of dirty duds at home, and your husband’s night-shirt so ragged that if took sick sudden in the night he’d be ashamed to send for the doctor, I don’t believe in, and never will.
“According to orders, I send this to your Uncle Philip, and s’pose you’ll answer through the same channel and tell if you’ll come home about your business, and teach school for sixteen dollars a month, and I board you for the chores you’ll do night and morning.
Yours with regret,
“Jerusha A. Pepper.”
“Go back to Allen’s Hill, and teach school, and board with Aunt Jerusha, and do chores?” Edna repeated to herself, as she finished the letter; she might have added, “and leave Roy?” but she did not, though her face turned scarlet as she recalled the words, “You are more than half in love with Roy yourself.”
Was that true? She could not quite answer that it was, and she tried to believe it was her attachment to Mrs. Churchill which made Leighton so dear to her, and that Roy had nothing to do with it, except as he helped to make her life very pleasant. She was not in love with him, she decided at last; if she were, she should think it her duty to leave at once, but as it was, she should remain until the wedding, which had not yet been appointed. Some time before Christmas, Georgie had told her, while Mrs. Churchill had said: