That room at Aunt Jerry’s, looking out upon the graveyard, was a palace compared to this cheerless apartment; and sitting down upon her trunk after Becky left her, she cried from sheer homesickness, and half resolved to take the next train back to—she did not know where. There was no place for her anywhere, and in utter loneliness and despair she continued to cry until Becky came up with a pitcher of warm water and some towels across her arm. She saw that Edna was crying, and half guessing the cause, said very kindly:
“I reckon you’re some homesick, and ’tain’t to be wondered at; this room ain’t the chirkest in the house, and ’tain’t no ways likely you’ll stay here, but I dassen’t put you in no other without marster’s orders; he’s curis, and if he takes to you as he’s sure to do, you’re all right and in clover right away. He sarves ’em all dis way, Miss Maude an’ all, but now nothin’s too good for her.”
Edna did not ask who Miss Maude was, but she thanked Becky for her kindness, and after bathing her face and eyes, and brushing her hair, went down to the kitchen to wait with fear and trembling for the coming of the “marster who was so curis in his ways.”
Becky did not talk much that morning. She had “too many irons in the fire,” she said, and so she brought Edna a book which Miss Maude had left there more than a year ago, and which might help to pass the time. It was “Monte-Cristo,” which Edna had never read, and she received it thankfully, and glancing at the fly-leaf saw written there, “Maude Somerton, New York, May 10th, 18——”
Becky’s Miss Maude, then, was Maude Somerton, who lived in New York, and whom some wind of fortune had blown to Rocky Point, where she seemed to be an immense favorite; so much Edna inferred, and then she sat herself down to the book, and in following the golden fortunes of the hero she forgot the lapse of time until the clock struck two, and Becky, taking a blazing firebrand from the hearth, carried it into the south room, with the evident intention of kindling a fire.
“Marster always has one thar nights,” she said, “and when we has company we sets the table thar. His bed ain’t no ’count, turned up with the curtain afore it.”
And so in honor of Edna the table was laid in the south room, and Aunt Becky, who had quietly been studying the young girl, and making up her mind with regard to her, ventured upon the extravagance of one of her finest cloths, and the best white dishes instead of the blue set, and put on napkins and the silver-plated forks and butter-knife, and thought how nicely her table looked, and wished aloud that “Marster Philip” would come before her supper had all got cold.
As if in answer to her wish there was the sound of some one at the gate, and looking from the window Aunt Becky joyfully announced that “marster had come.”
CHAPTER XIX.
UNCLE PHIL.
