“Yes, miss, he does; walk in, please,” and she involuntarily courtesied politely to the young lady, who, save that she was shorter and smaller every way, reminded her of her favorite Miss Maude. “You’ll have to come right into my kitchen, I reckon; for when master’s out all day we never has a fire in the south room till night,” she continued, as she led the way through the “south room” into her pleasant quarters, which, in spite of the preparations going on for dinner, looked home like and inviting, especially the bright fire which blazed upon the hearth.
Edna went up to this at once and held her cold hands near the blaze, and Becky, who was a close observer, noticed first the cut of her dress, and then decided that “it had as long a tail as Miss Maude’s” (the reader will bear in mind that this was before the days of short dresses), “but was not quite as citified.” She noticed, too, the little, plump, white hands which Edna held up to the fire, and said within herself,—
“Them hands has never done no work; I wonder who she can be?”
Edna told her after a moment that she had come from Chicago, from Mrs. Dana’s, whom Becky might perhaps remember, as she was once an inmate for a time of the farm-house. Becky did remember Miss Susan, and after expressing her surprise and regret at her sudden death, she continued:
“You’ve come to visit yer uncle,—have you ever seen him?”
Edna had never seen him, and she had not exactly come visiting either. In fact she hardly knew why she had come, and now that she was here, and had a faint inkling of matters, she began to wish she had staid away, and to wonder herself why she was there. To her uncle she intended to tell everything, but not to Becky, though she instinctively felt that the latter was a person of a great deal of consequence in her uncle’s family, and must have some explanation, even though it was a very lame one. So she said:
“I lived with Mrs. Dana when she died. I have lost all my friends. I have no home, and so I came to Uncle Overton, hoping he would let me stay till I find something to do. Mrs. Dana said he was kind and good.”
“Yes, but mighty curis in his ways,” was Becky’s rejoinder, as she wondered how her master would receive this stranger, who had no home nor friends unless he gave her both. “It’s jest as the fit catches him,” she thought, as she asked Edna to lay aside her wrappings, and then told her to make herself at home till the “marster came.” “He’s gone over to Millville, six or eight miles or so, and rode old Bobtail, who never trots faster than an ant can walk, so he won’t be home till three o’clock, and I’m goin’ to have dinner and supper all to oncet, but if you’re hungry, and I know you be, I’ll jest clap on a cold bite and steep a drawin’ of tea,” she said.
But Edna was not hungry; she had breakfasted at the station not many miles from Albany, and could wait until her uncle came.
“I’ll fetch yer things in, only I dunno whar marster’ll have ’em put. Any ways, I’m safet in the back bedroom,” Becky continued, and with Edna’s help, the trunk was brought into the house and carried up the back stairs to a little room directly over the kitchen, where the bare floor and the meagre furniture struck cold and chill to Edna’s heart, it was so different from anything she had ever known.