CHAPTER XII.
HOW AUNT JERUSHA RECEIVED THE NEWS.
Aunt Jerusha had never heard of Charlie Churchill, or dreamed of her niece’s love affair, and she sat milking Blossom, her pet cow, with her skirts tucked up around her, and an old sun-bonnet perched on her head, when the boy from Livonia station came furiously round the corner of the church, and reined up his panting, hard driven horse so suddenly, that Blossom, frightened out of her usually grave, quiet mood, started aside, and in so doing upset the pail, and came near upsetting the highly scandalized woman, who, turning fiercely to the boy, demanded what he wanted, and what he meant by tipping over all that milk, which was as good as a quarter right out of her pocket.
The boy, who knew the contents of the telegram, made no reply with regard to the milk, except a prolonged whistle as he saw the white liquid streaming along upon the ground, and then glanced curiously at the tall, grim woman confronting him so angrily.
“Here’s a telegraph,” he said, “and there’s two dollars to pay on it, ’cause I had to fetch it so far; and your nephew, or niece, Edna, I forgot which, is dead, killed by the cars.”
At the mention of the price she must pay for that bit of paper, Miss Pepper bristled at once, and began to revolve the propriety of not taking it from the boy, who could not compel her to pay for what she never received; but when, boy-like, he blurted out the contents, making a great blunder, and telling her Edna was dead, she grew whiter than the milk which Tabby, her cat, was lapping at her feet, and forgetting the two dollars leaned up against the fence, and taking the telegram in her hands, began to question the boy as to the when and how of the terrible catastrophe.
“Edna killed!” she gasped, and to do her justice, she never thought of the piles of carpet-rags the girl was to have cut that winter; for she had made up her mind to bring her home when she went with her poultry to Canandaigua; but she did think of the dreary look she had so often seen in the young girl’s face; of the tears, which Edna had shed so plentifully when under discipline; and there arose in her heart a wish that she had been less strict and exacting with the girl who was said to be dead. “How came she near the cars to get killed?” she asked, and the boy replied:
“Read for yourself, and you’ll know all I do.”
It was growing dark, and Miss Pepper led the way into the house, and bade the boy sit down while she hunted up a tallow candle and lighted it from a coal taken from the hearth. There was certainly a tear on her hard face as she blew the coal to a blaze, and the pain in her heart kept growing until with the aid of the candle she read:
“Iona, October 8th, 18—.