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.”
He gave Edna a knowing wink, offered her a pinch of snuff, told her “to
keep a stiff upper lip,” and then rode off on old Bobtail to Rocky
Point.
Long before noon everybody in town knew that the young lady in black was
Miss Louise Overton, Uncle Phil’s niece, who wanted a school, and could
teach music and drawing and everything, and Miss Ruth Gardner’s name was
actually down as a pupil in drawing, while Squire Gardner headed the
list with his two youngest children. It was a stroke of policy on Uncle
Phil’s part to get the Gardners interested, especially Miss Ruth, whose
name as a pupil in drawing was the direct means of gaining several more,
so that when at noon Uncle Phil went home to dinner, it was settled that
a select school should be opened at once in one of the rooms of the old
Academy, Uncle Phil pledging himself to see that it was thoroughly
cleaned and put in order, besides supplying the necessary fuel. Twenty
scholars were promised sure, and Uncle Phil rode home in great spirits,
and gave Bobtail an extra amount of hay, and then went in to Edna, to
whom he said:
“I dunno ’bout the school, but there’s a place you can have at Squire
Gardner’s as second girl, to wait on the door and table, and pass things
on a little silver platter; wages, two dollars a week and found. Will
you take it?”
“Certainly, if nothing better offers. I told you I would do anything to
earn money,” Edna replied, whereupon Uncle Phil called her a “brick,”
and said:
“He’d like to see her waiting on Ruth Gardner, yes he would,” and took a
pinch of snuff, and told her the exact truth, and that Miss Ruth was to
call on her that afternoon and see some of her drawings, and talk it
over with her.
Miss Ruth, who was very proud and exclusive, was at first disposed to
patronize “Miss Overton,” whose personal appearance she mentally
criticised, deciding that she was very young and rather pretty, or would
be if she had a little more style. Style was a kind of mania with Ruth,
who, being rather plain, said frankly, that “as she could not be
handsome, she _would_ be stylish, which was next best to beauty;” and so
she studied fashion and went to the extreme of everything, and
astonished the Rocky Pointers with something new every month, and
carried matters with a high hand, and queened it over all the young
people, whom she alternately noticed and snubbed, and did more to help
Edna by being a pupil herself than any six other young ladies could have
done. She liked Edna from the first, and being of a romantic turn of
mind, she liked her the more because she fancied her to be suffering
from some other cause than the mere loss of friends. “A love affair,
most likely,” she thought; and as one who knew how to sympathize in such
matters, she took a great interest in her young teacher, and, after a
time, grew confidential, and in speaking of marriage, said with a sigh
and a downcast look in her gray eyes, that “her first and only love was
dead, that the details of his death were too dreadful to narrate, and
had made so strong an impression upon her that it was not at all
probable she should ever marry now.”
And Edna listened with burning cheeks, and bent her head lower over the
drawing she was making from memory of a bit of landscape seen from Aunt
Jerry’s upper windows. Edna stood somewhat in awe of Miss Ruth with her
dash and style, and flights of fancy, but from the moment little Marcia
Belknap called and looked at her with her great, dreamy eyes, and spoke
with her sweet low voice, she was the young girl’s sworn friend, and
when the two grew so intimate that Marcia, who was also given to
sentiment and fancies, and had a _penchant_ for blighted hopes and
broken hearts, told her teacher one night, just as Ruth had done, of
_her_ dead love, Edna caressed her bowed head and longed to tell her how
foolish she was, and how the lost fruit, if gathered, would have proved
but an apple of Sodom.
“Charlie was not worthy of so much love,” was the sad refrain ever
repeating itself in her heart, until at last the old soreness began to
give way, and she felt that the blow which had severed his life from
hers had also set her free from a load she would have found hard to bear
as the years went on, and she saw more and more the terrible mistake she
had made.
The school was a great success, thanks to Uncle Phil, who worked like a
hero to get her scholars, and who carried her each day to and from the
old academy, while Becky vied with him in caring for and petting her
young mistress. And Edna was very happy. Her school, including her
pupils in drawing, was bringing her in over one hundred and fifty
dollars a quarter, and as she had no outgoing expenses she was
confidently expecting to lessen her debt to Roy in the spring, besides
sending Aunt Jerry a draft which should surprise her.
As soon as her prospects were certain she wrote her aunt a long letter,
full of Rocky Point and Uncle Phil, whose invitation for Aunt Jerry to
visit him she gave word for word.
“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?”
Edna made no reply, for something in his manner made her sorry that she
had shown him Aunt Jerry’s letter, and she resolved never to do so
again. She had written to Jack Heyford, telling him of her new name and
prospects, and her proximity to Charlie’s friends, and Jack had replied
in a long, kind, brotherly letter, in which he told her that Georgie was
at present with him, but he did not know how long she would stay.
“Annie is better,” he wrote, “but we fear will never be able to walk
again without the aid of crutches. She talks of you a great deal, and
wonders where you are. I have not told her, for I thought it better not
to do so while Georgie is here, as I fancy your uncle has some reason
for not wishing the Leightons to know where you are at present. I am
thinking of changing my quarters from Chicago to Jersey City, where I
have a chance in an Insurance Company, but nothing is decided yet. Will
let you know as soon as it is, and perhaps run up for a few days to
Rocky Point, as there is something I wish to say to you, which I would
rather not put on paper. I was there once with Roy Leighton some years
ago; his mother was at the Mountain House, and Georgie was there too.
Strange how matters get mixed up, is it not?”
Jack signed himself “yours truly,” but something in the tone of his
letter made Edna’s heart beat unpleasantly, as she guessed what it was
Jack Heyford had to say to her, which he would rather not commit to
paper, and thought of the disappointment in store for him.
There was no Christmas tree at Rocky Point that winter. The Unitarians
thought of having one, but gave it up on account of the vast amount of
labor which must necessarily fall upon a few, and contented themselves
with a ball, while the Orthodox portion of the community, who did not
believe in dancing, got up a sleigh-ride to Millville, with a hot supper
at the hotel, followed by a game of blind man’s buff, in which Marcia
Belknap bruised her nose until it bled, and had the back breadth of her
dress torn entirely from the waist, in her frantic endeavors to escape
from Uncle Phil.
For Uncle Phil, though a Unitarian to his very marrow, cast in his lot
for once with the other side, and hired a fancy team, and went to the
sleigh-ride, and took Edna with him, and astonished the young people
with his fun and wonderful feats of agility.
But, if there was no Christmas _tree_ at Rocky Point, Santa Claus came
to the old farm-house, and deposited various packages for “Miss
Overton.” There was a pretty little muff, and the box which contained it
had “Chicago” marked upon it; and Edna felt a keen pang of regret as she
thought how much self-denial this present must have cost the generous
Jack, and how poorly she could repay it. Another package from Aunt
Jerry, contained the promised book of sermons, and a pair of lamb’s-wool
stockings—“knit every stitch by myself and shaped to my own legs,” Aunt
Jerry wrote; adding, in reference to a small square box which the
package also contained: “The jimcracks in the box, which to my mind are
more fitting for a South Sea Islander than a widow, who has been
confirmed, was sent to me by Roy Leighton, who deigned to say they was
for his sister, Mrs. Charles Churchill,—a Christmas gift from himself;
and he wanted me to give them to you, if I knew where you was, as he
supposed of course I did by this time; and asked me to give him your
address. Maybe you’ll think I did wrong, but I just wrote to him that
I’d got the toggery, and would see that you had it,—that you was taking
care of yourself, and earning money to pay your debts, and inasmuch as
you did not write to him, it was fair to suppose that you wanted to stay
_incog._, and I should let you. You can write to him yourself, if you
wish to.”
The box when opened was found to contain a full set of beautiful
jets,—bracelets, ear-rings, pin, chain, and all,—with a note from Roy,
who called Edna “My dear little sister,” and asked her to accept the
ornaments as a Christmas gift from her “brother Roy.” There was a warm,
happy spot in Edna’s heart for the remainder of that day, and more than
once she found herself repeating the words, “my dear little sister.”
They were constantly in her mind, both at home and on the way to
Millville, when the sleigh-bells seemed to chant them, and the soft
wind, which told of rain not far away, whispered them in her ears, as it
brushed her hair in passing. But as her heart grew warmer with the
memory of those words written by Roy Leighton, so the little hands
clasped together inside Jack Heyford’s muff, grew colder and colder, as
she wished he had not sent it, and thought of the _something_ he was to
say when he came to Rocky Point.