So he silenced his conscience, and let her go on blindly toward her fate, and surprised her one day with a proposition to elope.
At first, Edna refused; but when the mail brought her a letter from Aunt Jerusha, she began to waver. She had asked her aunt for a dollar of pocket money, and her aunt had written a stinging reply, telling her she had a dollar when she left home three weeks ago, and asking what had become of that.
“I know,” she wrote, “that if you follow my instructions, you have put five cents every Sunday on the plate; that makes fifteen cents; then, you may have wanted some boot-lacings,—you always do,—and possibly some elastics, but that is all you have any business to want; and you ought to have on hand fifty cents at least, and still allow for some extravagance I can’t think of. No; I shan’t send you any dollar for three weeks to come; then, if the roads are not too muddy, I shall be in town with some butter, and eggs, and poultry, and, if I hear a good account of you, shall give you, maybe, seventy-five cents.
“P.S. I’ve been half sorry that I let you go back to school this winter, for I ain’t feeling very well, and I shouldn’t wonder if I took you home with me for a spell. I’ve got stuff enough together to make a nice carpet, and you could cut and sew the rags.”
Now Edna had not spent her dollar of pocket money in ways of which her aunt would at all approve. Fifteen cents had gone on the plate, and five cents more to Sunday-school. Fifteen more had gone for chocolates, and twenty-five more for the blue ribbon on her hair which Charlie liked so much; twenty-five more to a poor woman, carrying one child in her arms and leading another by the hand, while the remaining fifteen had been paid for a saucer of ice-cream which she shared with two of her companions; nothing for shoe-lacings, nothing for elastics, and only twenty cents for anything which would commend itself to her stern aunt, who would call the beggar woman an impostor, the blue ribbon trash and vanity, which Edna had promised to renounce, while the chocolates and cream would be classed under the head of gormandizing, if, indeed, the literal Miss Jerusha did not accuse her of “gluttony and stuffing.”
All this Edna knew was in store for her whenever the state of the roads would admit of her aunt’s journey to town with her butter, eggs, and poultry; but, aside from these, there was the dreadful possibility of being taken from school and compelled to pass the dreary winter in that lonely house by the graveyard, with no companions but the cat and her own gloomy thoughts, unless it were the balls of carpet-rags she hated so terribly. When Edna thought of all this, and then remembered that Charlie had said, “I shall see you again to-night, when I hope to find you have changed your mind and will go with me yet,” she began to hesitate, and balance the two situations offered for her acceptance. One, the lonely house, the dreary winter, the rasping aunt, and the carpet-rags; the other, Leighton Place, with its freedom from all restraint, its life of perfect ease, and Charlie! Can we wonder that she chose the latter, and told Charlie yes instead of no, and planned the visit to Mrs. Dana, her mother’s cousin, and looked upon the proposition to accompany her sick friend home as something providential. There was no looking back after that, and Edna hardly stopped to think what she was doing, or to consider the consequences, until she found herself a bride, and stepped with Charlie on board the train at Buffalo. She was very happy, and her happiness showed itself in the sparkle of her eye, and the bright flush on her cheeks, and the restlessness of her little head, which tossed and turned itself airily, and kept the golden brown curls in constant motion.
Charlie, too, was happy, or would have been, could he have felt quite sure that Roy would send some money, without which he would be reduced to most unpleasant straits, unless he pawned his watch. He could do that, and he decided that he would; but as it could not be done until he reached Chicago, and as his purse, after paying the clergyman, and paying for his tickets, and paying for the book which Edna wanted, was none the heaviest, he feigned not to be hungry when they stopped to dine, and so had only Edna’s dinner to pay for, and contented himself with crackers and pop-corn for his supper; and when Edna proposed sharing them with him, he only made a faint remonstrance, and himself suggested that they should travel all night, instead of stopping at some horrid hotel where the fare was execrable.
And Edna consented to everything, and, as the evening advanced, and she began to grow weary, nestled her curly head down on Charlie’s shoulder, and slept as soundly as if she had been at home in her own room looking out upon the graves behind the churchyard. Once, about midnight, as they stopped at some station, Charlie went out for a minute, and when he returned and took his seat beside her, he said, hurriedly, as if it were something for which he was not very glad:
“I have just recognized two old acquaintances in the rear car, Jack Heyford and Georgie Burton. I hope they won’t see us. I like Jack well enough; but to have that Georgie’s great big eyes spearing at you I could not bear.”
“Who is Georgie Burton, and who is Jack Heyford?” Edna asked; and Charlie replied, “Georgie lives at Oakwood, near Leighton, and is the proudest, stuck-up thing, and has tried her best to catch old Roy. I think she’ll do it, too, in time, and then, my ——, won’t she snub you, because—”