He did not charge Edna with his brother’s death, and would feel no animosity toward her even if his mother died, but he could not then speak for her, and brave Georgie’s look of indignation against “that girl.” This, however, Maude Somerton did, and her blue eyes grew dark with passionate excitement as she turned fiercely upon Georgie and said:
“Better call her a murderess at once, and have her hung as a warning to all young girls with faces pretty enough to tempt a man to run away with them. You know, Georgie Burton, she wasn’t a bit more to blame than Charlie himself, and it’s a shame for one woman to speak so of another.”
To this outburst Georgie made no reply, but Roy in his heart blessed the young girl for her defence of Edna, and made a mental memorandum of a Christmas present he meant to buy for Maude.
CHAPTER VII.
MISS PEPPER’S LETTER.
Mrs. Churchill was better, and Georgie was talking again of going to Chicago, and had promised to find Edna and render her any service in her power. Roy had written to Edna at last, but no answer had come to him, and he was beginning to wonder at her silence and to feel a little piqued, when one day early in December Russell brought him a letter mailed in Canandaigua and directed to his mother in a bold, angular handwriting, which stamped the writer as a person of striking originality and strongly marked character. In his mother’s weak state it would not do to excite her, and so Roy opened the letter himself and glanced at the signature:
“Yours to command,
“Jerusha Amanda Pepper.”
And that worthy woman, who rejoiced in so euphonious a name, wrote from her own fireside in Richmond to Mrs. Churchill, as follows:
“Richmond, Allen’s Hill,