University of Virginia Library

21. 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.”

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 ot 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.