“Oh, dreadful,” and Edna groaned aloud, for she saw again that awful scene, and the white, still face upturned to the angry sky, and it seemed wrong to sit there and make no sign while Becky went on.
“I hain’t seen Miss Maude since, so I don’t know nothin’ about his wife, who she was, nor whar she is. Down to the Leighton Place, maybe, though it’s been surmised that she warn’t much,—kind of poor white folksy, I reckon; and if that’s so, Miss Churchill ain’t a-goin’ to own her, ’case she’s mighty big feelin’, and turned up her nose at Miss Ruth, and took her boy home to git shet of her. But Miss Ruth is enough for her, and I’ve hearn she talked awful about that wife of Charlie’s, and said she jest wished she could see her long enough to tell her she had the best and fustest right to her husband. Oh, she’s a clipper, Miss Ruth is.”
Edna’s hands were locked firmly together, and the nails were making red marks upon her flesh, while she longed for Aunt Becky to leave her. She had heard enough, and she looked so white and tired, that Becky noticed it at last, and asked if she was sick.
“No, only tired,” she said; and then Becky said good-night, and left her alone with her sad thoughts, which, however, were not all sad and bitter.
She had lost her first love in more ways than one, and as, with her head bent down, she sat thinking of him and all she had heard, she felt a fresh pang of remorse cut through her heart at her own callousness in feeling that perhaps for herself it was better that Charlie died. But only for herself. When she thought of him, and what he might have been, had space for repentance been granted him, her tears flowed like rain, and, prone upon her face, she prayed that if the prayers of the living for the dead could avail, hers might be heard and answered for her lost, wayward Charlie.
CHAPTER XXI.
MISS OVERTON.
To the young and healthy sleep comes easily, and notwithstanding her excitement, Edna slept soundly in her new home; and when the first signs of daylight began to be visible in her room, and she heard sounds of life below, she arose with a feeling nearer akin to happiness than she had known since Charlie died. Aunt Becky soon appeared, chiding her for getting up before her fire was made, and finally coaxing her back to bed, while she kindled a blazing fire upon the hearth, and then brought a pitcher of hot water for her young lady’s ablutions. Breakfast would be ready in half an hour, she said, as she left the room; and then Edna rose again, and remembering what Uncle Phil had said about her grandmother’s hair, and inferring therefrom that he liked curls, she brushed and arranged her own thick tresses in masses of wavy curls, and then went down to Uncle Phil, who, after bidding her good-morning, said, softly, as he held his hand on her flowing hair:
“Wear it so always; it makes me think of my sister.”
“I am going to town,” he said, when breakfast was over, “to see what I can do towards scarin’ up a school, though I haint a great deal of confidence; but if I fail, there’s still the factory to Millville, and the hired-girl business, you know.”