“That’ll start her. She’ll find that worse than sleepin’ with the Higginses,” he thought, as he gave the order, and then went and took a dose of something he called “jallup.” “He had an awful headache,” he said to Aunt Becky, when she inquired what was the matter; and his headache increased, and sent him to bed before Maude arrived, flushed, delighted, and full of spirits that her boarding ’round was over.
He heard her go up to her little hot back room, and wondered how she liked it, and how long she’d stay in it, and half wished he had nailed the window down so she could not open it.
She was up bright and early the next morning, and drove the cows to their pasture, a distance of half a mile, and brought back a bunch of flowers, which she arranged upon the table; and she looked so fresh and pretty in her blue gown, which just matched her eyes, and ate cold beans so heartily, that Uncle Phil began to relent, and that night she slept in the north-west room instead of the little back one. There she stayed a week; and then, after having helped Uncle Phil rake up his hay one day when a shower was coming up, she was promoted to the north, and best chamber, and some nice striped matting was bought for the floor, and a pretty chestnut set took the place of the high-post bedstead and old-fashioned bureau; and some curtains were hung at the windows, for Uncle Phil said “he didn’t want the whole town to see the girl undress, if they did him.”
And here for weeks Maude reigned, a very queen, and cheered and brightened up the old farm-house until, when in the fall she left and went back to Oakwood, Aunt Becky cried for sheer loneliness, and Uncle Phil took a larger dose of “jallup” to help the feeling at his stomach, than when she first came to him.
And this was how Maude Somerton chanced to be an inmate of Uncle Phil’s family, and enshrined in his heart, as well as in old Becky’s, as a kind of divinity, whom it was not so very wrong to worship.
“’Pears like we never could get over hankerin after her,” Becky said to Edna, “she was so chirk and pert-like, and made the house so different.”
Edna was longing to ask another question, but did not quite know how to get at it. At last she said:
“Does Miss Somerton live in New York all the time? Has her Aunt Burton no country residence?”
“Yes, bless you, a house as big as four of this, down to Oakwood, whar thar’s looking-glasses as long as you be, Miss Maude said, and furniture all covered with satin.”
Edna was no nearer her point than before, and so she tried again.