AUNT BETTY’S RECEPTION OF HER GUEST.
When the sleigh stopped before the back door, it was slowly opened, and Marion saw a tall, lank old woman with thin gray hair, small, faded blue eyes, a long, sharp nose, and thin lips, standing in it.
“I hope I see you well,” said a not unkindly voice, and something like a smile played over the hard old face. A knotty hand was held out toward her, and when she put hers timidly within it, it drew her into a large kitchen, where a cooking-stove, that shone like a mirror, sent out rays of heat even to the open door.
It was like Kate Underwood’s “Tableau kitchen,” yet how different! It had such an air of cleanliness and comfort, that everything, even to the old chairs and tables, the long rows of bright pewter that adorned a swinging shelf, the hams clothed in spotless bags, hanging from the old crane in the big chimney, all had a certain air of refinement which went at once to Marion’s heart.
Aunt Betty took off one of the lids of the stove, jammed in all the wood it could be made to hold, then moved a straw-bottomed chair, laced and interlaced 144 with twine to keep the broken straw in place, close to the stove, and motioned Marion to sit down in it.
Then she stood at a little distance looking at her curiously. “You don’t favor the Parkes,” she said, after a slow examination. “You look more like your Aunt Jerushy; she was on my mother’s side. Your brown hair is hern, and your gray eyes; you feature her too. When you’re warm through, you can go up-stairs and lay off your things. I don’t have folks staying with me often, but I’m glad to see you.”
This she said with a certain heartiness that went straight to Marion’s heart. She held up her face for a welcoming kiss, and, blushing like a young girl, Aunt Betty, after a quick look around the room, as if to be sure no one saw her, bent down, and kissed for the first time in twenty years.
Then Marion followed her up some steep stairs, leading from the kitchen to an unfinished room under the rafters. Here everything again was as neat as wax, but how desolate! An unpainted bedstead of pine wood, holding a round feather-bed covered with a blue-and-white homespun bed-quilt; a strip of rag carpet on a floor grown beautiful from the care bestowed upon it; a small table covered with a homespun linen towel, a Bible in exactly the middle of it; two old yellow chairs, and not another thing.
It was lighted by a three-cornered window, which 145 Marion learned afterward, being over the front door, was considered the one choice ornament of the house.
In spite of its desolation, its neatness was still a charm to her. It was, as she knew, the family homestead, and that subtile influence, so strong yet so indescribable, seemed to her to brood over the room. Here generation after generation of those whose blood was running now so blithely through her veins had lived, died, and gone out from it. Gently reverent she stood on its threshold. Aunt Betty, looking at her curiously, wondered at her.