And with a sigh, the lonely woman locked up her treasures till another year, and went back to her household cares and her lonely life. But there was a softer look upon her face, and when, as she was dusting, she came to Edna’s picture, which from some unaccountable impulse she had only a few days before framed and hung upon the wall, she held her feather duster suspended a moment, and looked earnestly at the face of the young girl who for twelve years had been with her on Thanksgiving day. And as she looked there arose a half wish that Edna was there now, disgraced though she thought her to be by her unlucky marriage.
“She bothered me a sight, but then it’s kind of lonesome without her. I wonder what she’s doing to-day,” she said, as she resumed her dusting and thought again of Martha Ann Barnes, who might be induced to occupy Edna’s old seat at the table.
But Martha Ann was not at church. Miss Pepper must eat her dinner alone; and with the thought that “it did not pay to buy that head of celery and make a parade just for herself,” she turned to the Prayer-Book and minister, and felt her ire rise so high at his bowing so low in the creed, that, as she wrote to Mrs. Churchill, she withheld a dollar and gave as her offering only fifty cents; taking care as she came out of church to tell what she had done to one who she knew would communicate it to her pastor. Excellent Miss Pepper! the Thanksgiving sermon must have done her a world of good, and she went home prepared to enjoy as best she could her solitary dinner, but not prepared to find her niece waiting there for her.
CHAPTER XVI.
AUNT JERRY AND EDNA.
If Miss Pepper had owned the truth, she was not sorry to see Edna, and the feeling of loneliness which all the morning had been tugging at her heart, began to give way at once; but she was one of those people who feel bound to “stick to their principles,” whether right or wrong, and as one of her principles was that her niece had behaved very shabbily and deserved punishing, she steeled her heart against her, and putting on her severest look and manner, said to her:
“Edna Browning, how dare you come here after disgracing me so?”
This was the speech with which Miss Pepper had intended to greet her niece if she ever came back unannounced, and she had repeated it many times to herself, and to Tabby, and to the teakettle boiling on the stove, and the clock ticking upon the mantel, and from having said it so often, she had come to repeat it without any great amount of genuine indignation; but this Edna did not know, and the eager, expectant look on her face died out in a moment as she heard the words of greeting.
“Oh, auntie,” she cried, and her little hands clasped each other more tightly as she took a step forward, “don’t speak so to me. I am so desolate, and I had not anywhere else to go. I thought you would be lonely eating dinner alone, and might be glad to see me.”
“Glad to see you after all you’ve done! You must think me a saint, which I don’t pretend to be,” was the harsh reply, as Aunt Jerusha hurried past Edna, without noticing the hand involuntarily stretched out toward her.