“Becky tells me you are my kin, grand-niece, or grandaunt, or grandmother. I’ll be hanged if she made it out very clear. Maybe you can explain what you are to me?”
He held her hand tightly in his own, and kept looking at her with an earnest, searching gaze, before which Edna dropped her eyes, as she replied:
“I can claim no nearer relationship than your grand-niece. My mother was Lucy Fuller.”
“Who married the parson and died from starvation?” Uncle Phil rejoined.
And with a heightened color, Edna answered quickly:
“She married my father, sir, an Episcopal clergyman, and died when I was a few days old.”
“Yes, yes, all the same,” Uncle Phil answered, good-humoredly. “I dare say she was half-starved most of the time; ministers’ wives mostly are, Episcopal ones especially. I take it you are of the Episcopal persuasion, too?”
“I am.”
And Edna spoke up as promptly as if it were her mother she was acknowledging.
“Yes, yes,” Uncle Phil said again; and here releasing Edna’s hand, which he had been holding all the time, he took a huge pinch of snuff, and then passed the box to Edna, who declined at once. “What, don’t snuff? You miss a great deal of comfort. It’s good for digestion and nervousness, snuff is. I’ve used it this thirty years; and you are an Episcopalian, and proud of it, I see: jest so. I’ve no great reason to like that sect, seeing about the only one I ever knew intimately turned out a regular hornet, a lucifer match, the very old Harry himself; didn’t adorn the profession; was death on Unitarians, and sent the whole caboodle of us to perdition. She’ll be surprised to find me settin’ on the banks of the river Jordan when she comes across, paddlin’ her own canoe, for she will paddle it, I warrant you. Nobody can help her. Yes, yes. Such is life, take it as you find it. Maude is an Episcopal, red-hot. I like her; maybe I’ll like you; can’t tell. Yes, yes; sit by now, and have some victuals.”