“Ontario Co., N.Y., Dec. 4th, 18—.
“Mrs. Churchill:
“Dear Madam—I’ve had it on my mind to write to you ever since that terrible disaster by which you were deprived of a son, who was taken to eternity without ever the chance for one last prayer or cry to be saved. Let us hope he had made his prayers beforehand and had no need for them. He had been baptized, I suppose, as I hear you are a church woman, but are you High or Low? Everything to my mind depends upon that. I hold the Low to be purely Evangelical, while the High,—well, I will not harrow up your feelings; what I want to say is, that I do not and never have for a single moment upheld my niece, or rather my great niece, Edna, in what she has done. I took her from charity when her father died, although he was higher than I in his views, and we used to hold many a controversial argument on apostolic succession, for he was a clergyman and my sister’s son. His wife, who set up to be a lady and taught music in our select school, died when Edna was born, and I believe went to Heaven, though we never agreed as to the age when children should be confirmed, nor about that word regeneration in the baptismal service. I hold it’s a stumbling block and ought to be struck out, while she said I did not understand its import, and confounded it with something else; but that’s neither here nor there. Lucy was a good woman and made my nephew a good wife, though she would keep a girl, which I never did.
“When William died, twelve years ago, I took Edna and have been a mother to her ever since, and made her learn the catechism and creed, and thoroughly indoctrinated her with my views, and sent her to Sunday-school, and always gave her something from the Christmas tree, and insisted upon her keeping all the fasts, and had her confirmed, and she turned out High Church after all, and ran away with your son. But I wash my hands of her now. Such a bill as I have got to pay the teachers in the seminary for her education! It was understood that after she graduated she was to stay there and teach to pay for her schooling, and what does she do but run away and leave me with a bill of four hundred dollars! Not that I can’t pay it, for I can. I’ve four times four hundred laid up in Mr. Beals’s bank, and like an honest woman, I took it out and paid the bill and have got the receipt in my prayer-book, and I showed it to her, for she’s been here; yes, actually had the cheek to come right into my house on Thanksgiving day, when I was at church; and a good sermon we had, too, if our new minister did bow in the creed, which rather surprised me, after telling him, as I did only the day before, that I looked upon that ceremony as a shred, at least, if not a rag of Popery. He lost a dollar by that bow, for I had twelve shillings of milk-money I calculated to give him, but when he bowed over so low right at me as if he would say, ‘You see, Miss Pepper, I’m not to be led by the nose,’ I just put on my fifty cents, and let it go at that.
“The stage came in while I was at church; but I never thought of Edna till I got home and smelled the turkey I had left in the oven more than I should have smelled it if somebody hadn’t hurried up the fire; and there was the vegetables cooking, and the table set for two; and Edna, in her black dress, stood before the fire with her hands held tight together, and a look on her face as if she felt she’d no business there after all she had done.
“‘Edna Browning,’ I said, ‘what are you doing here, and how dare you come after disgracing me so?’
“Then she said something about its being the only place she had to go to, and my being lonely eating dinner alone Thanksgiving day, and began to be hystericky, of course.
“If there’s anything I pride myself on more than another, it’s firmness and presence of mind, and I am happy to say I maintained them both, though I did come near giving way, when I saw how what I said affected her.
“I told her that to get into any family the way she did into yours was mean and disgraceful, and said she was to blame for the young man’s death; and asked who was to remunerate me for that four hundred dollars I had to pay for her schooling; and who was to pay for all the trinkets at Greenough’s in Canandaigua, and if she was not ashamed to wear a wedding ring a stranger had to pay for.
“Up to this point, I must say Edna had not manifested much, if any feeling, and I really felt as if she was hardened and did not care; but when I spoke of the ring something about her made my flesh creep, and told me I had gone far enough.