“I have no idea she’ll come,” Edna said to herself as she folded up the letter, “but maybe she will feel better for the invitation.”
And Aunt Jerry did, though the expression of her face was a study for an instant as, by her lone evening fire, with only Tabby for company, she read her niece’s letter. She did not exactly swear as Uncle Phil had done, when he first heard her name and knew that Edna was her niece, but she involuntarily apostrophized the same personage, addressing him by another name.
“The very old Harry!” she exclaimed, and a perceptible pallor crept into her face, as, snuffing her tallow dip, she commenced again to see if she had read aright.
Yes, there it was in black and white. Philip Overton was Edna’s great uncle, to whom in her distress she had gone, and he had taken her as his daughter, and given her his name, and sent a friendly message to her, Jerusha Pepper, asking her to visit him, and couching his invitation in language so characteristic of the man that it made the spinster bristle a little with resentment. She sent more than a quart of milk that night to the minister’s wife, whose girl, as usual, came for it, and wondered with her mistress to find her pail so full; and next day at the sewing society she gave five yards of cotton cloth to be made into little garments for the poor children of the parish, and that night she wrote to Edna, telling her, “she was glad to know she was so well provided for, and hoped she would behave herself, and keep the right side of her uncle, and not go to the Unitarian meeting if she had any regard for what her sponsors in baptism promised for her, let alone what she took on herself the time she renewed the promise. The Orthodox persuasion was a little better, though that was far enough from right; and if she couldn’t be carried over to Millville, and it wasn’t likely Mr. Overton was one to cart folks to church, she’d better stay at home and read her prayer-book by herself and one of Ryle’s sermons. She would send the book as a Christmas gift.” The letter closed with, “Thank your uncle for inviting me to his house, but tell him I prefer my own bed and board to anybody’s else. I’ve toughed it out these thirty years, and guess I can stand it a spell longer.”
Uncle Phil brought the letter to Edna, and when she had finished reading it, asked:
“What does the Pepper-corn say? or maybe you wouldn’t mind letting me see for myself. I own to a good deal of curiosity about this woman.”
Edna hesitated a moment, and then reflecting that the letter was quite a soft, friendly epistle for Aunt Jerry to write, gave it to Uncle Phil, who, putting on his glasses, read it through carefully till he came to the part concerning the proper way for Edna to spend her Sundays. Then he laughed aloud and said, more to himself than Edna, as it would seem:
“Yes, yes, plucky as ever. Death on the Unitarian church to the end of her spine; Orthodox most as bad; Ryle and the prayer-book; good for her.”
Then, when he reached the reply to his invitation to visit him, he laughed so long and loud, and took such quantities of snuff, that Edna looked at him with a half fear lest he had suddenly gone mad. But he had not, and he handed the letter back, saying as he did so:
“Tough old knot, isn’t she?”